Across the street from my home is a house made of red brick. Behind that is a large oak tree which spreads it's great limbs across several yards, including the home just behind the red brick home. In that house lived a cat.
He came to me one fall afternoon during the weekend before it really got cold and people started getting glum for the upcoming holidays. He was going from house to house, an orange tabby affair who looked like he had spent a little too much time with his nose in the wet food.
He finally made it to my front door. “Please, sir,” he said in a fake English accent, “I'm selling these cookies to pay for my airfare when I join the foreign legion.”
“You're not going to get into the foreign legion.” I scoffed. “No one would trust you. At the first available opportunity you're going to go to sleep. Terrorists at the embassy? Snooze time.”
“You're quite mistaken, sir. Once they see how hard I worked to get there they'll let me in.” He looked up at me with those big cat eyes—the ones you see all over the place that come with pathetic little stories about how Mondays suck or how your check engine light is on. “Please, sir, buy my cookies?”
I looked at what he had brought. Typical cat fare—a couple of bottle-caps, a slow moving brown bug of indeterminable origin and something that looked like a choice morsel of leftover mouse. “I don't think so.”
“Please sir—I don't need much more.” He began to rub against my legs.
“If I give you a quarter will you promise to never come here again?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, I prrromise.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out a coin that was fully silver and had my birthdate. I handed it over to him.
“Thank you, sir. You're very kind. I shan't be any more trouble.” In that same annoying fake English accent. He left his pouch of 'cookies' and dashed into the underbrush.
I might have been seeing things but I think he was actually wearing a saber in a scabbard. I learned later that his name was Birdie from the missing cat sign that was posted on the light pole.
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