Everyone Should Have This Sort Of Fun At Least Once Per Day

I'll Forget About The Dog Food If She Forgets About All Of The Other Stuff.

"We need to stop and buy dog food," I informed the short person in the back seat.

"I had dog food for snack today at school," Alexis replied.

After I shook off the initial confusion, I asked her to elaborate. A few minutes later, it was clear as mud that she was talking about a variation of Puppy Chow. THANK GOODNESS.

"So, you didn't eat REAL dog food, right?" I said, just to make sure we were on the same page.

"No, silly!" she replied in an exasperated tone. Because, you know, I'm a dork for even considering that she meant her words literally.

"You know, you used to eat real dog food when you were little," I told her. Treat me like I'm a dork, and I'll drudge up one of your finer moments. It's almost a guarantee.

"When I was a baby?" she asked. Alexis is pretty much obsessed with thoughts of herself as a baby. She could sit and stare at her baby photos for days on end, and would spend every second talking and talking and talking and talking about herself.

"Yes, when you were a baby you used to steal Meg and Cody's food and eat it," I told her.

"You used to yell at me to stop but I didn't listen," she continued the story for me. Her statement was 100% accurate. She paused before adding, "But, it was Jasmine's food, not Cody's!"

Jasmine was our pup before Cody. She died unexpectedly two years ago. Alexis still talks about her on a nearly weekly basis. (Those conversations are just as "fun" as they sound.)

Alexis continued on to provide even more details about her dog food eating ways. She described the dark red bowl that was retired two years ago. She explained the odd C-shape of the food, which we stopped buying easily a year ago. She went on and on to provide details that made it really quite obvious she truly remembers something that happened in 2007. When she was one-year old.

I'm going to have to hope that's the only thing she still remembers from way back then. Otherwise, OMG. WE ARE SO SCREWED.

Ali Cat, Bug Destroyer Extraordinaire

I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Some people who are so very fortunate as to be married to me think I do it too much, which, whatever. I'd rather get called Public Defender all the time than be the jerk calling other drivers names when they can't even hear all the insults I'm yelling. Ahem.

I'm going to go ahead and blame that thing where it takes me a long time to be willing to decide someone is a jerk or is dishonest or is stupid as my excuse for why I just recently figured out that our kitten Ali is about as bright as a box of black and gray crayons.

Sure, she spends hours each day lunging at the patio doors trying to catch the wasps on the other side of the glass. Just because she wants to smack a bug doesn't mean she's dumb for ramming her head into the glass fifty times a day, right?

And, yeah, she does spend a lot of time going *boing* *boing* *boing* as she jumps up and smacks at the fish in the aquarium. I can see how chasing a bright orange blob would be fun. Maybe one of these times the aquarium glass won't be there and she'll manage to catch a fish. It could happen! (Really. These things could happen.)

In retrospect, leaping up and smacking a spot of red paint on the wall is sort of a doofus move, but I hate that red paint enough to understand how it may cause a few angry brain cells. Maybe the poor cat thought she could get rid of the spot if she could rub dirt all over it. Or something.

OK, so all of that together should have been enough for me to realize we don't have exactly have the Einstein of cats on our hands. It wasn't, though. It took the epic stinkbug invasion for me to see the light.

Here's the thing--that cat TOTALLY earns her keep each and every day. Ali is a bug-destroying machine, far more effective than a flyswatter, a bug zapper, and a Venus Flytrap combined. She sees a bug, she kills a bug. She kills a bug, she eats a bug. IT'S PERFECT. Not only has she greatly reduced the fly population of SW Pennsylvania, she has destroyed the evidence as she goes.

So it wasn't really a surprise when she started going after any stinkbugs that happened to make it into the house. Many times I have guffawed at the stupidity of a stinkbug as it crawled all over a screen, trying like crazy to find a hole big enough to start an invasion of the indoors. Go ahead, you smelly little jerk, c'mon in! The cat will just kill you!

And she did.

She killed bunches and bunches of them, and managed to do it in a way that kept them from releasing the stink.

I kept getting rid of them before she could resort to making a buffet out of their carcasses. I'm cool like that. But then one day, she started to feast before I could intervene.

The look on her face as she ate that bug was a lot like the look on a baby's face the first time it sucks on a lemon. In fact, I think I have now seen the face that spawned the word "sourpuss." The puss? She was SOUR. And PISSED. She still ate the whole bug, but she made all sorts of angry faces and grunty noises as she did it, which really just made her sound like an out-of-control game of Angry Birds.

(I hate those stupid green pigs, btw.)

I thought surely she-who-looked-like-she-might-puke would have learned her lesson and wouldn't eat another stinkbug. SURELY!

Yeah. Not so much.

She keeps eating them. Each time she acts like it's a total surprise that they taste like poop dipped in puke wrapped in awfulness.

Ali is not too bright, but at least she uses her stupid for good.