Klarinet Archive - Posting 000392.txt from 2000/07

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Shadow Cat proudly announces....
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 20:52:28 -0400

I'm making my stupid pet human type this, to let you know that the tedious
rodent will never bother you again. My superior weaponry and strategic
cunning prevailed. Really, he made an unworthy opponent, hardly a challenge.
Listening to the vile twitterings of the clarinet no doubt dimmed his wits,
even by mousey standards.

It gave me great pleasure to serve Dick Vigorous to the humans for Sunday
breakfast in bed at four o'clock this morning. I like to toss them a
surprise treat now and then, a little tip, for services rendered. They
thanked me graciously, ate him with mustard and said he tasted just like
chicken.

Yours Truly,
Shadow Cat
--------------------

More like, Yours Falsely. Hey, tuna-breath, guess who's makin' Lelia type
right now? Yeah, it's me, Dick Vigorous. Neener neener neener!

Naw, I wasn't nobody's breakfast today, so ya clarinet players ain't lost yer
biggest fan, after all. I wanted to tell ya before, that Shadow Cat was
lyin' about me bein' a mouse, an' lyin' about the three million fleas. I
ain't got no more fleas than usual.

Listenin' to the clarinet ain't made me foolish, neither. Bunkum. Just the
opposite. Hey, I been listenen' so much, I can tell when she's playin'
vonWeber! I been readin' in her mind what ya hotshots wrote about him. He
was a duck, right? Or a goose? Lelia don't just play the same old quackin'
he wrote on the paper, though. She adds all sorts of extra squeals an'
squeaks that ain't wrote down. Them's the best part.

Anyhow, I swallowed the insult an' kept mum, 'cause the mices was plannin' a
big heist in here, and I didn't wanna get Shadow Cat all riled up again.
Well, I done what I could, but that heist went down all wrong. Shadow Cat
wasn't lyin' about everything. She did make a hit this morning.

She knocked off the same mouse that got deported in the little plastic
Hav-A-Heart trap a few weeks ago. Name's Picky Skitterfoot. He got busted
the day after I did. Picky decided not to stay down in the Culvert Colonies,
neither, so he come back up here, too, a day or two earlier than me.

Meanwhile, the Garden Shed Mices come up with a plan to boost some Cheez-Its
the humans keep in the basement wreck room. The mices offered to split the
loot fifty-fifty if me an' my gang would help out, but I sez to 'em, nothin'
doin'! Them Cheez-Its is in a wooden cabinet with a tight-fittin' door.
It'd take twenty mices a week of gnawin' in shifts to crack that crib. A
crew of rats could speed things up, sure, but right under the nose of a
feline stakeout? Shadow Cat's been on Red Alert ever since the deportations
started. Forget about it! I don't take my gang on no suicide missions.

An' if ya do bust into the cabinet, what then? Pass one Cheez-It at a time
under the basement door? Ya think that Shadow Cat's just gonna lay there an'
count cadence for ya? "Heave-Ho! Away we go! Hup, two! Three and four!
Slide the Cheez-It under the door!" Nuh-uh, I don't think so.

So Queen Nimbleshanks, the boss mouse, she come around to my point of view
an' she told them other mices, the deal's off. It ain't practical. Stay
outta there. Then Picky decided on his own that he was gonna be a hero,
scope the joint, an' see if maybe the humans left the cabinet door open a
crack. I'll just skip the gory details. How it ended up was, Shadow Cat
bumped him off.

I bet she thought she could get away with claimin' she rubbed me out, 'cause
when I didn't rag her on klarinet no more, she probably figured I skipped
town, like I said I might. Only I didn't. So here I am to call her a lyin'
sack of meat. I thought about that invitation from that guy Wright, but
ain't he the one with the trebuchet? Yeah, yeah, con me into the house an'
then send me flyin'. Very funny. Thanks but no thanks, pal.

Don't ya believe it about them humans eatin' Picky for breakfast, neither.
Sheesh, they jumped about six foot in the air when Shadow Cat whined 'em
awake an' dumped a body in their bed at four in the morning. They wasn't
thrilled -- they was disgusted. Still, they put the corpse out with the
compost, which was kinda nice of 'em, I thought -- laid Picky out in the
fragrant moulderin' leaves an' seed pods. The humans come back in an' told
Shadow Cat, "We ate the mouse with mustard. It was very nice. Thank you
soooo much for thinking of us." She's so stuck-up, it never occurred to her
that they was bein' sarcastical.

I heard the mices was holdin' a formal Mouse King Ritual in Picky's honor
tonight. The Mouse King is their martyr saint or something', I guess. They
do a ceremony called Ritual Desecration of the Nutcracker. (Ya may not know
it, but in order to officially organize a new mouse colony, ya gotta get
yerself a nutcracker icon first. Ain't no simple deal. Know how many mices
it takes to make off with a metal nutcracker? Ya humans, when ya go to set
up a bowl of nuts at Christmas and ya wanna know where the nutcracker got to
-- that's where.) Anyhow, if ya wanna play some appropriate funeral music on
yer clarinets tonight, the mices would like that.

About the weather at Clarinet Infest, that's in Tornado Alley, ya know, so if
ya hear them sirens, ya do what us rats does an' duck down a hole, quick. I
heard they got human-size burrows there, so ya'll be okay. Say hi to my
cousins for me. They got a big waitin' list for the best listenin' places in
the walls.

Dick Vigorous

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