Skinnybones

MY CAT EATS KITTY FRITTERS BECAUSE …

If she didn’t eat Kitty Fritters, she would die of starvation
.

Kitty Fritters is the only cat food my mother will buy. She buys it because she says it’s cheap. She says she doesn’t care how it tastes, or what it’s made out of. My mother is not the kind of person who believes that an animal is a member of the family. She is one of those people who thinks a cat is just a cat
.

I have an aunt who thinks that her cat is a real person. Every time we go over there, she has the cat dressed up in this little sweater that says
PRINCESS KITTY
on the front
.

This aunt of mine wouldn’t be caught dead giving
her cat Kitty Fritters. She says that Kitty Fritters taste like rubber I’d hate to think that my aunt has actually tasted Kitty Fritters herself, but how else would she know? My mother says that my aunt has a screw loose somewhere
.

Anyway, I think you should keep on making Kitty Fritters as long as there are people like my mother, who don’t think cats mind eating rubber.

THE END

After I finished writing my comments, I went to the closet and took the bag of Kitty Fritters off the bottom shelf. I turned to the back of the bag and read the rest of the directions. It said:

I dug down into the bag, trying to find the entry blank, but I couldn’t feel it anywhere. I tried again, reaching into the other side this time. But still no luck.

Finally, I got so frustrated, I dumped the entire twenty-five-pound bag of cat food out onto the kitchen floor. Even then, I must have sifted through about a million fritters before I found the stupid thing.

At last, I put it on the table and began to fill it out.

Just as I finished up, I heard the cat scratching at the door. I figured she had probably smelled the odor of fritters all the way down the block.

“Go away, Fluffy!” I shouted. “You can’t eat right now. I’m busy!”

I had to get the cat food mess cleaned up before my mother got home.

“Alex Frankovitch! You open this door!” shouted Fluffy.

Fluffy? Fluffy was
talking
now?

No … wait! It was my
mother!

I hurried to let her in.

“Why were you scratching?” I asked as she hurried past me.

It was a stupid question. She was carrying two bags of groceries.

“I wasn’t
scratching
, Alex,” she answered. “I was trying to open the door with my foot.”

After putting the groceries on the counter, my mother spotted the millions of little fritters scattered all over the floor. All things considered, I think she took it pretty well.

“Been fixing yourself a little snack?” she asked dryly.

I had to think fast. Basically, there were two ways of handling this situation. First, I could try to get her to laugh the whole thing off. If that failed, I would move on to Plan B: Blame It on Fluffy.

“Snack? What snack?” I asked. “I haven’t been fixing a snack.”

“I mean all those Kitty Fritters, Alex,” she snapped. “I mean that huge mess all over the floor.”

I looked around. “Floor? What floor?” I asked.

This was where the laughing was supposed to start. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

Mom glared.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

On to Plan B …

“Oh
 … those
Kitty Fritters!” I said, pointing. “Well, you’re not going to believe this, Mom, but I was in the other room watching TV, when all of a sudden I heard this loud crash in the kitchen. I ran in
here just in time to see Fluffy sprinting out the back door. That’s when I looked down and saw this giant mess of fritters all over the floor.”

My mother crossed her arms. She didn’t say anything for a minute.

“Are you
sure
that’s what happened, Alex?” she asked, finally. “Are you positive?”

Oh, man! I couldn’t believe this! She was actually going to
buy
it! My mother was going to buy this whole insane story! For the very first time, I was going to get away with something! Usually I never get away with anything!

“Positive, Mom. Honest. That’s exactly what happened. The cat must have tried to eat out of the bag and she knocked the whole thing over.”

Slowly—
very
slowly—Mom walked over and put her arm around my shoulder. “In that case, would you mind doing me a little favor?” she asked.

I started backing away.

“Oh, no. Come on, Mom. You’re not going to make me clean this mess up, are you? That’s not fair. I already told you I didn’t do it.”

“No, Alex. That’s not the favor,” she said. “What I would like you to do is to go get Fluffy out of the car and bring her inside. I took her to the vet to get some shots, and she’s still a little groggy.”

Then my mother just stood there and grinned.
Not a nice grin, though. One of those “Ha! Caught-you-in-a-big-fat-lie” kind of grins.

Now, most people would probably give up at this point. But not me. No way. A liar at my skill level never gives up without a struggle.

My mouth dropped all the way open and I managed an actual gasp.

“Are you kidding, Mother? Fluffy? Fluffy is in the car?” I said. “Man, I cannot believe this!”

Mom narrowed her eyes. “Can’t believe what, Alex? Can’t believe that you’ve been caught in another ridiculous lie?”

I gasped again.

“Lie? What lie? What are you talking about, Mom?” I asked indignantly. “No. The thing I can’t believe is that one of Fluffy’s little friends would come in here, make a big mess, and then try to run away and blame it on the Fluffster! I’m telling you, when I find out which neighborhood cat did this, he is really going to pay.”

I hurried outside and got Fluffy from the car. As I walked back into the house, I kept talking to the cat so that my mother wouldn’t have a chance to say anything.

“Fluffy, you’re not going to believe this, but one of your little kitty pals almost got you in very big trouble. If you ask me, I think it was Mr. Fuzzy,
from down the street. I’ve always thought that Mr. Fuzzy was the shifty type.”

“Alex?” said my mother.

“Yes?”

“Give up.”

“Give up? What do you mean, give up?”

“I mean, you’re making a complete fool of yourself,” she said. “I mean I’m actually embarrassed for you.”

I paused for a minute. “So what are you saying? Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“Let me put it this way,” answered my mother. “If you were Pinocchio, right now we could saw off your nose and have enough firewood to last the winter.”

With that, she handed me a broom and started out of the room.

“By the way, if it will make you feel any better, I enjoyed the part about Mr. Fuzzy,” she said over her shoulder.

I thought about it.

It didn’t make me feel better.

As soon as she was gone, I started sweeping the Kitty Fritters back into the bag. Meanwhile, Fluffy had begun to eat every single fritter in sight. I’m not kidding. No matter how fast I swept, I just couldn’t get the food into the bag fast enough. Fluffy was
sucking them up like she was a Dustbuster or something.

It took about ten minutes before I was totally finished cleaning up the floor. But Fluffy never stopped eating … not until the very last Kitty Fritter was out of sight.

Just as I was putting the bag back, my mother came in to inspect the floor.

Fluffy made a weird noise.

My mother frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s probably all those Kitty Fritters she ate while I was trying to get them cleaned up.”