Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Timely Subject Matter

Yesterday, my sister and I washed her cat, Shizu, who probably weighs eleven pounds, every ounce of it muscle. She's stronger than our forty-some pound dog, and that's not an exaggeration at all. (In fact, recently she's taken to banging on our sliding door to try to open it, and she seems to have knocked it slightly off its rails. We gave her the nickname "Shizuquakes" because of her proclivity for knocking down just about anything and everything when she climbs and jumps around, although she's gotten more careful and it's a less frequent occurrence in the last year or so.)

It's funny, because Shizu is a gentle, good-natured cat who vacillates between acting like a small dog and being terrified of everything (in mind-bendingly cute ways at times), but when she's cornered, she fights like a demon. Not that she ever tries to hurt us, but she hates having baths or having strange substances (flea medication) put on her. (We read once that cinnamon repels fleas. It turned out to be a crock, but Shizu was still freaking out whenever somebody made toast months later.)

This Close to Home comic (Close to Home is a lot like The Far Side was, but a bit less consistently funny) could only have been more timely for us if it had been yesterday instead of today.

Incidentally, once things reached the drying-off stage, she suddenly had a change in attitude and was suddenly super-happy to be where she was. Naturally.

-Signing off.

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