The Catapult

Today's muse: Six Sentences

Further antics of Fred-the-Cat.

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The Catapult

My husband called me at work and, without preamble, said: "Now before I tell you this, everything is OK." No good conversation has ever started with that sentence and a million things ran through my mind; none of which came close to what he said next: “Fred the Cat took a nose dive off our fourth floor balcony.”

It seems that as my husband stepped out onto the balcony, Fred the Cat scooted out and, upon realizing where she was, ran back and forth from end to end in a blind panic until she shot through the side bars, sailing down three flights, where she ricocheted off the front door canopy, before landing on the ground. There wasn’t a scratch on her and when I got home, she spent an hour telling me all about her exciting adventure and bemoaning the fact that, at the tender age of eight months, her cache had already dwindled down to seven lives.

For several months thereafter, my husband would ask the cat: “Hey, kitty, what’s this?” And when she turned to him, with the expectant look of a beloved pet about to receive a delicious treat, he would cup his hands around his mouth like a bullhorn and chant “Meeeeeoooooowwwww!”