Stupid cats. Good friends

Every Tuesday morning 4 of my friends come to my house for English. We sit around my dining room table and drink coffee and eat lots of cakes, chocolate, cookies and crackers (sometimes all on the same day!) We talk about our week and then do a bit of studying from a book or a print out. All of these friends have been coming to my house for over 10 years. All of them are animal lovers and two of them are cat owners. Usually my cats gather in the entryway a few minutes before 10:00 when my students/friends are supposed to arrive. I don't know why the cats know that it is Tuesday morning and my students will be arriving soon. Maybe it is because I'm running the vacuum cleaner and setting up the coffee maker. Maybe the cats are just smart. They seem to know that some one of the four ladies will open the cupboard door and give any cat who is around some dried sardines as a cat treat. My cats look forward to Tuesday mornings.

While we ladies are chatting and eating the cats retire to different parts of the house. The sofa, the arm chair, the futon upstairs. Nowadays during the colder months I keep a heater on in the living room and turn on the electric mat under the carpet in the dining room. The cats love to sleep on the warm mat between everyone's feet and it is true that a quiet cat makes a good toe warmer (but the frisky ones attack socks and ankles.) Usually there is an unspoken agreement that if a cat is quiet under the table then he or she can stay there and the humans will try not to step on them.

Last week Mi was sick to her stomach. My two cat owning friends know that an occasional cat ball is par for the course. Mi was having a harder time though and urping up a lot of stuff because THE DUMB CAT ATE MY RUBBER BUNION PROTECTOR!! It was a little rubber piece that I can slip between my toes… anyway, now you know I have bunions. I do remember seeing it upstairs on the dresser. When Mi started urping while under the table I kept finding chunks of rubber and a quick look upstairs proved that my bunion protector was gone. Into Mi. My friends were very sympathetic and someone suggested butter as a way to relieve and "send through" any more chunks. Sigh… Such understanding friends. They waited while I cleaned up. Mi revived in a couple of days.

Today my friends were back for the weekly lesson. Everyone was around the table when somebody noticed that SOME cat, who knows which one, had urped up under the table AGAIN. This time a bunion protector was not at fault. AGAIN English was put on hold while I ran around with paper towels and crawled around under the table. And another urp spot very close to someone's lovely handbag! Oh my goodness!

"If you dumb cats are going to be sick, can't you go do it in private?!!! Why do you have to do your urping between my friends' feet?!"

I'm amazed my friends are still coming back each week. They never know what they might step in or be christened by. I'm not too sympathetic to whichever cat is sick to his/her stomach.

"PLEASE GO USE THE BATHROOM!"