I wrote it first for an entry in the Cat People tribe thread asking for humorous stories. I showed it to the hubby, and he added his angle one night editing into the wee hours:
the TV set
My husband had never lived with a cat before he married me. He emphatically stated that he was a loyal, loving devoted "dog person". As a child he had grown up with, lived, shared, played and loved several different family golden retriever dogs, up through high school. Cats weren't on his top 10 list of favorite animals, as he disliked their independent, sharp clawed demeanor and their mysterious, finicky ways. Dogs were SO much better than cats to him, being man's best friend - In my presence, he often repeated his main mean bad cat "joke" whenever "cat" came up in any conversation - "I really LOVE cats, ... they taste just like chicken !! Yum !".
Well, Love has amazing power ... it allowed him to initially become cat tolerant, and then slowly induced him over time to become a cat lover. The time between the tolerance/acceptance stage and his eventual arrival at cat lover stage created the best amusement!
It is our first week cohabitation, 3 months pre-wedding. In my office, serving as the staging zone to assimilate his transplanted "stuff" into the rest of the house, are stacks of things- furniture, books, and a 20" SONY Trinitron color-TV set.
As an aside- I have to say I am not a television watching person- I never owned one, I hate being in a room with one on, blah blah blah. Even the TV cable hung on our house fell off without any help from me. It's my vibe.
Now, from stage left, Enter the hubby to be...
entering the scene from stage right, Me, under the influence of Love, being mellow and tolerant of his Sony Triniton color TV's existence.
I went in to work early on Saturday morning, leaving him to sleep with a bit of a hangover from playing music into the wee hours the night before. Several hours later at work, I get a phone call from Bob...
I pick up the phone and hear, "Honey?"
"Yeah", I reply.
"I have something to tell you...
It's, ... iit.sss .. it's ... Juliette", he mumbles in a strange uncertain somber dialect.
Juliette is the sweet fluffy harlequin calico Center of the Universe kitty at our house. She is VERY aware of anything new in her space- and immediately zeros in on the item. After giving it the sniff test and a visual once over, she instantly files and saves this new information, safely and permanently, deep into her kitty memory, and proceeds (pending her majesty's approval) to rub it with her chin, climb on top of it, chew on the corner of it, even sit on it and nap!
"What's wrong with Juliette?!", I ask, feeling a bit of panic.
"Well, she... ah, ..um, ...", he sputtered.
I blurted in terror, imagining the worst kitty crisis imaginable...
"What's going on! What's up with Juliette? Is she OK??"
There, on my work phone, was my silent fiance. Breathing in deep gulps of air, choking back tears, lower lip trembling, he at last managed to find the voice in his throat.
"She, .. sh, .. she..e.. Killed my TV !! It's destroyed !! Mmm ...my TV is... 's Dead!"
Politically incorrect as it was, I could not help bursting out laughing. HA HA HA!
This had nothing to do with me- I didn't do this terrible thing! Juliette was doing what she needed to do, and acted in my highest anti-TV interest. My little hero! I LOVE her... And my husband loved TV more than cats.
In her curious, busy kitty mode, confronted with a room full of new stuff to inspect, approve, and needing to begin work and conduct kitty inventory and file this safely away, Juliette had chosen the TV for investigation that morning.
The TV- ... was sitting on a rickety table- .. actually it sat precariously balanced upon a poorly, home-made, wobbly "lazy susan-like", unstable, rotating swivel device, which then sat on this small, but sturdy, night stand table. This TV swivel device/table had worked excellent for my fiance through all of his cat free years of tumultuous NFL wild football weekends, live rock 'n' roll music, parties, etc., and he felt that his TV could stand up to any test.
Juliette jumped up on top of the Sony to begin her thorough inspection- and, with this sudden, unexpected destabilizing swivel-design shift of it's weight, the Sony tipped off-balance from it's lifelong pontificating throne and fell crashing face forward onto the carpeted floor. The picture tube imploded with a quick, loud, glass-breaking popping sound, muffled only by the shag carpet, and intermingled and diluted with all the busy sounds from home-improvement neighbors on the weekend, sending Miss Juliette scurrying in a panic from the scene of the crime to the bedroom for comfort.
The sound of the crash registered somewhere in Bob's skewed sleep/dreamland and he stirred and thought- ... "those damn noisy weekend morning neighbors, always sawing tons of wood, hammering nails, drilling, building stuff I'll never see to no end, demolishing stuff they noisily built on weekends from years past. My head is throbbing ... need quiet and darkness and" ... Juliette bolted in then pounced on his stomach, landing all terrified, light up and wild eyed, bringing Bob abruptly to consciousness with her emergency at hand.
Seeking water and aspirin for the hangover, wondering what the commotion was that had Juliette throwing herself at him, he discovered his former shell of a TV, shattered, lifeless and wasted, still plugged in -face down on my office floor. DOA. Stunned, in shock and confused, he began to pick up some of the broken glass fragments wondering what hurt more - the TV or his head ? He picked up the phone and called me at work to share his tragic news.
At the end of the workday, when I arrived at home through our backyard gate, the dead TV was laid out in state by the back door, draped with a black plastic shroud, as if to save what little useless life was left for this electronic mind control for as long as scientifically possible. Soft rain fell from a steely gray sky. My honey, still in his bathrobe, stared in disbelief out the window at his deceased TV, holding his head down.
"It was like new. I mean, I can't believe this has happened!", he lamented, with a deep soap opera sigh, as I came through the kitchen door.
Trying to be sensitive I asked, "How long ago did you get it?" Laughing out loud earlier in the day on the phone hurt his feelings. I didn't want to do that again, especially in person.
"Uhh, 1989 I think... it was a really fine Sony color 20 inch TV with remote."
No need for my fingers to do the math here; I respond, "ah-Hmm-mm- Hey! That's 11 years ago! Hardly a new TV! That's an OLD TV. Just get a new one!"
"I bought it brand new in the box, I still have the store receipt, the manual, warrantee, the remote... it was purrfect, an expensive, valuable TV that I depended on- I didn't need a new one!", he moaned.
"Why did your cat destroy my TV ?? Why, oh why tell me, huh ?? I hate those f*#*%#+*g cats !"
All's well that ends well. Time eventually heals. Bob never did get another TV, he lost desire for watching his electronic mind control with swivel-device - except for some educational shows like the Simpson's, NFL Football and The X-files. Miss Juliette, uninjured, knew what was up and acted as the situation dictated: cute. Bob forgave her; he actually brags to anyone who will listen how sensitive and accurate her household Global Positioning Satelite perception is of every single little material object, in every room, in a three dimensional, Euclidean Geometry Kitty coordinates.
Most importantly, from that day forward, the herculean force of cat curiosity determines the safe placement of sacred objects around our house.
the TV set
My husband had never lived with a cat before he married me. He emphatically stated that he was a loyal, loving devoted "dog person". As a child he had grown up with, lived, shared, played and loved several different family golden retriever dogs, up through high school. Cats weren't on his top 10 list of favorite animals, as he disliked their independent, sharp clawed demeanor and their mysterious, finicky ways. Dogs were SO much better than cats to him, being man's best friend - In my presence, he often repeated his main mean bad cat "joke" whenever "cat" came up in any conversation - "I really LOVE cats, ... they taste just like chicken !! Yum !".
Well, Love has amazing power ... it allowed him to initially become cat tolerant, and then slowly induced him over time to become a cat lover. The time between the tolerance/acceptance stage and his eventual arrival at cat lover stage created the best amusement!
It is our first week cohabitation, 3 months pre-wedding. In my office, serving as the staging zone to assimilate his transplanted "stuff" into the rest of the house, are stacks of things- furniture, books, and a 20" SONY Trinitron color-TV set.
As an aside- I have to say I am not a television watching person- I never owned one, I hate being in a room with one on, blah blah blah. Even the TV cable hung on our house fell off without any help from me. It's my vibe.
Now, from stage left, Enter the hubby to be...
entering the scene from stage right, Me, under the influence of Love, being mellow and tolerant of his Sony Triniton color TV's existence.
I went in to work early on Saturday morning, leaving him to sleep with a bit of a hangover from playing music into the wee hours the night before. Several hours later at work, I get a phone call from Bob...
I pick up the phone and hear, "Honey?"
"Yeah", I reply.
"I have something to tell you...
It's, ... iit.sss .. it's ... Juliette", he mumbles in a strange uncertain somber dialect.
Juliette is the sweet fluffy harlequin calico Center of the Universe kitty at our house. She is VERY aware of anything new in her space- and immediately zeros in on the item. After giving it the sniff test and a visual once over, she instantly files and saves this new information, safely and permanently, deep into her kitty memory, and proceeds (pending her majesty's approval) to rub it with her chin, climb on top of it, chew on the corner of it, even sit on it and nap!
"What's wrong with Juliette?!", I ask, feeling a bit of panic.
"Well, she... ah, ..um, ...", he sputtered.
I blurted in terror, imagining the worst kitty crisis imaginable...
"What's going on! What's up with Juliette? Is she OK??"
There, on my work phone, was my silent fiance. Breathing in deep gulps of air, choking back tears, lower lip trembling, he at last managed to find the voice in his throat.
"She, .. sh, .. she..e.. Killed my TV !! It's destroyed !! Mmm ...my TV is... 's Dead!"
Politically incorrect as it was, I could not help bursting out laughing. HA HA HA!
This had nothing to do with me- I didn't do this terrible thing! Juliette was doing what she needed to do, and acted in my highest anti-TV interest. My little hero! I LOVE her... And my husband loved TV more than cats.
In her curious, busy kitty mode, confronted with a room full of new stuff to inspect, approve, and needing to begin work and conduct kitty inventory and file this safely away, Juliette had chosen the TV for investigation that morning.
The TV- ... was sitting on a rickety table- .. actually it sat precariously balanced upon a poorly, home-made, wobbly "lazy susan-like", unstable, rotating swivel device, which then sat on this small, but sturdy, night stand table. This TV swivel device/table had worked excellent for my fiance through all of his cat free years of tumultuous NFL wild football weekends, live rock 'n' roll music, parties, etc., and he felt that his TV could stand up to any test.
Juliette jumped up on top of the Sony to begin her thorough inspection- and, with this sudden, unexpected destabilizing swivel-design shift of it's weight, the Sony tipped off-balance from it's lifelong pontificating throne and fell crashing face forward onto the carpeted floor. The picture tube imploded with a quick, loud, glass-breaking popping sound, muffled only by the shag carpet, and intermingled and diluted with all the busy sounds from home-improvement neighbors on the weekend, sending Miss Juliette scurrying in a panic from the scene of the crime to the bedroom for comfort.
The sound of the crash registered somewhere in Bob's skewed sleep/dreamland and he stirred and thought- ... "those damn noisy weekend morning neighbors, always sawing tons of wood, hammering nails, drilling, building stuff I'll never see to no end, demolishing stuff they noisily built on weekends from years past. My head is throbbing ... need quiet and darkness and" ... Juliette bolted in then pounced on his stomach, landing all terrified, light up and wild eyed, bringing Bob abruptly to consciousness with her emergency at hand.
Seeking water and aspirin for the hangover, wondering what the commotion was that had Juliette throwing herself at him, he discovered his former shell of a TV, shattered, lifeless and wasted, still plugged in -face down on my office floor. DOA. Stunned, in shock and confused, he began to pick up some of the broken glass fragments wondering what hurt more - the TV or his head ? He picked up the phone and called me at work to share his tragic news.
At the end of the workday, when I arrived at home through our backyard gate, the dead TV was laid out in state by the back door, draped with a black plastic shroud, as if to save what little useless life was left for this electronic mind control for as long as scientifically possible. Soft rain fell from a steely gray sky. My honey, still in his bathrobe, stared in disbelief out the window at his deceased TV, holding his head down.
"It was like new. I mean, I can't believe this has happened!", he lamented, with a deep soap opera sigh, as I came through the kitchen door.
Trying to be sensitive I asked, "How long ago did you get it?" Laughing out loud earlier in the day on the phone hurt his feelings. I didn't want to do that again, especially in person.
"Uhh, 1989 I think... it was a really fine Sony color 20 inch TV with remote."
No need for my fingers to do the math here; I respond, "ah-Hmm-mm- Hey! That's 11 years ago! Hardly a new TV! That's an OLD TV. Just get a new one!"
"I bought it brand new in the box, I still have the store receipt, the manual, warrantee, the remote... it was purrfect, an expensive, valuable TV that I depended on- I didn't need a new one!", he moaned.
"Why did your cat destroy my TV ?? Why, oh why tell me, huh ?? I hate those f*#*%#+*g cats !"
All's well that ends well. Time eventually heals. Bob never did get another TV, he lost desire for watching his electronic mind control with swivel-device - except for some educational shows like the Simpson's, NFL Football and The X-files. Miss Juliette, uninjured, knew what was up and acted as the situation dictated: cute. Bob forgave her; he actually brags to anyone who will listen how sensitive and accurate her household Global Positioning Satelite perception is of every single little material object, in every room, in a three dimensional, Euclidean Geometry Kitty coordinates.
Most importantly, from that day forward, the herculean force of cat curiosity determines the safe placement of sacred objects around our house.
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SF Bay Area
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