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Sweet Natured Tortie

Paul is lying on the couch, reading Would you get me some water, please?

Sage Paul! Look! These amazing things just grew under your butt!

Paul, looking down What things?

Sage I wonder what would happen if you tried to get off the couch? Oh, oh, give it a try. I’m dying to see.

Paul, giggling Ma-maaaaa. [gets off couch]

Sage, clapping My god, it’s a miracle! I bet they’d carry you all the way to the kitchen!

After the cats ate Sue, we’ve decided that the safest new addition to our family would be a cat. Having done volunteer work for a shelter in the past, I know that the kittens are snapped up like slices of Key Lime Pie, and it’s the older cats who are overlooked. Which means that no matter HOW FETCHING the kittens are, we must ethically adopt an older cat. However, we’d also like someone playful who will enjoy hanging out with Paul. Sage and Todd are checking out the local rescue league websites.

Sage Okay, so if you had to choose right now, who would you choose?

Todd The year old tortoiseshell who’s “sweet natured”.

Sage But she’s so young. Don’t you think we should go with someone older?

Todd She’s not a kitten, though.

Sage No, but look, if we adopt an older…if a kitten…I forgot where I was going with this.

Todd If we adopt the year old tortie…

Sage Oh, oh, wait. I remembered. If there are two places available at the shelter, right? And one has a kitten in it, and one has an older cat? Okay, so if we adopt a kitten, then a place comes available. And if we adopt an older cat, a place comes available. But the kitten is going to be adopted anyway, so if we adopt the older cat then that’s practically tantamount to making two spaces available, see what I mean?

Todd Well, yes, but I still say the tortie. We have a serious tortie shortage in this house.

Sage Be impressed! That was, like, math! And statistics and stuff!

The little kids are upset because a big kid is hogging all the play equipment. They ask Sage to mediate.

Sage …so anyway, if you could just give up this big rolling thing, for the little kids. I mean, you have two. There’s not really any reason to have two, since you’re only one person.

Big Kid [stony silence]

Sage Um, so can you give it to me now, please?

Big Kid No.

Sage, sighing Okay, then can you tell me what your mom looks like?

Big Kid Ha! You think I’m going to tell you that?

After I wrote about the Friendly Test I intend to perform on Toronto, I had yet another experience that makes me wonder how Toronto could possibly have scored so low. (And in case you’re beginning to wonder if I’m just really pretty or I have giant boobies and men are moved to help me for those reasons, I can definitively tell you that you’re dead wrong. If it were always femmy dykes who go for the big butch types that were helping, I’d wonder. But it isn’t.) Anyway, Paul and I were juggling all our winter clothes as we exited the bus, and we were about ten feet away when the bus driver honked his horn. I looked back. One of the passengers was leaning out the bus door, calling, “You dropped your hackeysack!” And indeed, there was the hackeysack that Paul had just randomly found at a bus stop which had instantly become a sacred treasure.