May 13, 1993
Dear Everyone:
Anybody want a free cat?
“Jeannie” has a cat that is looking for a good home.
Actually, it's
“Jeannie” that's looking for a good home.
As far as the cat is concerned,
he's found a good home,
complete with fresh food and water, a nice place in the sun and a fine
place to sleep. This cat
knows a good thing when he sees it.
“Jeannie” first noticed the cat few months ago.
When she reported a strange cat
appearing on her patio, the first words out of my mouth were, "Don't
feed it!"
Of course, that was the same
thing I said when she spotted Monroe on our back deck in
Walnut
Creek. At that time, she
replied, "Oh, was that tuna fish not a good idea?"
Not if you don't want a cat.
This time, “Jeannie” had learned her lesson and she was earnestly
avoiding feeding the strange cat…until she discovered that she'd been
feeding it all along. On days
when she has to go to work and Monroe is outside, she leaves some dry
cat food in a bowl on the patio, in case Monroe gets hungry during the
day. It was probably the food
that attracted the strange cat in the first place.
The strange cat, by the way, is of medium height, medium build, medium
long dirty-white hair and used to be male.
He has no name because “Jeannie”
believes that if you give a cat a name, he becomes yours.
The opposite, however, is not
true. Monroe was well on her way
to producing her first (and only!) litter of kittens before “Jeannie”
finally gave her a name, based on the way she walked while pregnant.
“Jeannie” thought that, from the
back, she walked a lot like
Marilyn Monroe.
Accurate, if not very flattering
to the late Marilyn.
“Jeannie” really has been doing her best to find a home for The Cat With
No Name. We took pictures, with
my Polaroid® camera. That alone
caused TCWNN to disappear for several hours.
Cats don't like having their
pictures taken. She mounted
"Found" posters and canvassed the neighborhood.
No takers.
She heard of someone who always had a white cat in the window and went
to see if this was their cat. The
man who answered the door was holding his white cat.
Not the same white cat.
On weekends, she takes The Cat With No Name to a pet adoption place,
where you can try to match pets up with potential pet-owners.
Unfortunately, it is currently
kitten season and many people are looking for impressionable youngsters
to adopt, rather than a distinguished gentleman.
But “Jeannie” keeps trying.
In the meantime, the weather is warming up and that means that “Jeannie”
leaves the upstairs window open at night.
Now, when she wakes up in the morning, she finds
two cats sleeping with her. The
Cat With No Name didn't take long to figure that one out.
In other news…
Dave.
Critics are saying that it's
"just another
Moon Over
Parador".
Critics are apparently too young to remember
The Prisoner of
Zenda; and, because the Critics watch movies for a living, they
probably never read books like Twain's
The
Prince and The Pauper, du Maurier’s
The
Scapegoat or-Heinlein’s
Double Star.
Hey, nobody said it was an original idea.
A bears is
a striking (if coincidental) resemblance to
B.
Before he knows it,
A has assumed B’s
identity, usually for the
noblest of reasons. A is concerned that people will realize that he's a fake; but of
course, they never do (except in one of the aforementioned novels, in
which the wife never caught on, but the mistress figured it out in
seconds).
Dave
doesn't try to be anything more than it is:
Two hours of gentle good humor.
With the usual digs at the
ineptitude of government and the implication that any schmuck could walk
in off the street and do a better job than the professional politicians.
No rough stuff. No unnecessary
sex. No
necessary sex, either,
although there is a charming scene involving a shower.
Even the bad guys are likable
(“Jeannie” thought one of them looked a lot like a
bald eagle--how
can you hate that?)
Go. Take a couple hours off from
work, house, chores and enjoy yourself. It
won't change your life, just entertain you for a little while.
And isn't that what movies are
for?
Love, as always,
Pete
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