After Your Brain Has Turned to Mush

Paladine the Tailless

Miss Crankypants is standing in her kitchen, wondering why she came in here. She just knows it was to find something important! But for all her mental willpower, she cannot remember what it is.
Meanwhile, there are fingerprints on the fridge!
Now in Miss CP’s household the youngest person is way over the hill, so maybe you’d think it odd to STILL be wiping down paw-prints from every available surface. NOT! The two grown men she lives with (and all three fat cats) love to create artful sticky, muddy or greasy mementos. They adorn the windows, door jambs,  doorknobs and yes, the fridge. Miss Cranky immediately goes to work, restoring the fridge’s gleaming shine.
Something at the way way back of her incredible mind niggles. Suggests there really was something important for which she came to the kitchen. But what could it be?
Before she can file this thought under Miscellaneous Important Stuff, her eye cannot believe what it is spying. A “sneeze print,” and at the exact height of Son Number Two’s nose, right on the sliding glass door. A sneeze? Seriously? She runs for the Windex and saves the day–or at least the day light.
The Important Stuff You Can Never Remember makes throat-clearing sounds. Whatever it is, it must not be as important as this muddy cat paw trail leading to the kibble dish. Miss CP wonders: 1)Who could be doing this? and 2) It must be the guy with the tail. Melchior, the 30 pound cat, is the only male member of the house who owns one of these tails. Paladine, the other resident fat cat, is a Siamese/Manx cross and he is CROSS. He gets teased mercilessly by all the other cats for being tail-less. You think Rudolph had a complex? His nose was dull compared to the fun the neighbor cats have with poor Pally.
So Melchior is the pawprint culprit. Brilliant deduction! Miss Crankypants swiftly grabs her Swiffer and voila! The prints are history.
Still she’s sure there is SOMETHING she’s forgetting here. At her age, she’s lucky to remember her age. So of course this forgetful thing spooks her. She’s written her name, address and phone number in the waistband of all her underpants, in case, you know, she’s fallen and can’t get up. And in case of a real emergency, she’s thinking of sewing in her Medicare card too.
Most of the time, Miss Cranky views these minor lapses with a dash of good humor–after all, if she wasn’t so forgetful, the fingerprints et al might never get cleaned. But this one bugs her. She wishes she could just throw a switch and there’d be a printout of all her thoughts–just like on Facebook. But she’ll be darned if she can think of what she came in here for now.
Ah, well, she thinks. May as well sit down and read the paper.
By Jove that’s it! Her glasses! She can’t see much without them! She came to the kitchen to get her glasses! She slaps her forehead. Of course.
Eureka. There they are, the long-lost tri-focals, perched upon her head. Mission Accomplished!

About Linda S. Clare

I'm an author, speaker, writing coach and mentor. I teach both fiction and nonfiction writing at Lane Community College and in the doctoral program as expert writing advisor for George Fox University. I love helping writers improve their craft and I'm both an avid reader and writer of stories about those with wounded hearts.

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