I finished my dinner, removed the plates, silverware, glass, and napkin from the computer table, and set them on the teacart. I had about twenty minutes before I needed to pick up the cats’ dinner dishes, so I turned back to the computer to see what fresh hell might arrive in an email.
Hey! Who did this? Annabelle screamed.
I turned back to the teacart, where Annabelle stood in my dinner plate with four paws covered in spaghetti sauce.
Oh, Annabelle! What did you do, little girl?
I just jumped up to relax on my cart . . . and look at me!
I laughed, Well, Missy, that will teach you to look before you leap.
She’ll never learn! Thatch yelled from the window, where he and Stella had been talking to the pigeons.
That cat is a dead cat, she said to me before she yelled at Thatch, You are dead, Thatch! Dead! You hear me?
Annabelle, calm down. It’s just pasta sauce.
I’m covered in it. I can’t move.
I’ve told you, Missy, over a million times: this teacart is to help me move things around the apartment. It is not your personal cart.
I say it is. And look at me! I’m covered in your dinner, thanks to your carelessness.
Here, let me clean you off.
It’s the very least you could do.
Calm down. Your feet are covered in pasta sauce, that’s all. Let me clean you off.
I removed the paper towels I was using as a place mat on the cart and set them on the computer table. Then I cautiously lifted Annabelle off the plate and set all four paws on the paper towels.
There, Missy! Are you happy now?
I bet no one’s ever treated Ethel Merman like this and lived.
©2025, Larry Moore
Annabelle & Thatch 