Divided Loyalties

(What’s that suitcase doing there? Uh, oh…)

You know how when your anthros suddenly leave you alone with a kitty-sitter and you think, boy, am I going to miss those two, and then the kitty-sitter puts out some tuna (fresh caught, wild, cut into steaks, on the grill just until crisp outside and rare inside) for you to taste and then says, “Loulou, how did you like that?” and what am I going to say, “Hey, I’m loyal to my anthros and I can’t possibly touch that because 1. I’m not supposed to beg at the table (all I did was peep a little when I smelled it cooking) and 2. I’m not supposed to take food from strangers….

But this is no stranger—Sue has been here before and is so nice and so snuggly and so … well, so British and correct and calls me “Poppet”—is that not the cutest thing you’ve ever heard?

So what I’m saying here is that I am torn in my allegiance to my mama and papa and try to stay aloof and cool and be loyal and not bite the hands that feed me but then I start thinking…hey, this lady has a hand and it’s feeding me, too, and the only thing I wanna bite is that grilled tuna, so what am I doing with this moral dilemma making me run around in circles in my little pea brain, weighing this and calculating that and wanting with all my little kitty heart to be true to my anthros, and by the time I’ve don all this, I’m exhausted and really, really HUNGRY so I just sidle up to Sue, puff up my back and vibrate my tail, which, in kitty-speak is, “So get the tuna down into my dish, will ya”?”

But it is also “Thank you” so Sue is pleased.

But just like Navajo, there are many meanings for one gesture and it is also, “Mama and Papa, you shits, how could you go away and leave me and guess what, I HAVE GRILLED TUNA and you don’t; put that in your pipe and smoke it—nyah, nyah, nyah!”