LNH20: The Cat Lady #2

[Martin Phipps]

                                                          The Cat Lady
#2
                                                                Road
Trip

  Antonio realized something that he suspected most of his family
hadn't caught on to: he realized that the Cat Lady never went out to
get food.  So where was the food coming from?
  One day Antonio and Angelo were outside and they noticed a van drive
up to the apartment.  A man got out of the van and started unloading
bags of Meowina Cat Chow and Meowina Cat Litter.  The Cat Lady paid
the man and the two of them started carrying the bags inside.
  This was it!  This was where the food came from!  Antonio rushed up
to the van and jumped in.  Angelo followed him in.
  The van, however, was pretty much empty.  There were no more bags of
food, no more bags of litter.  Where had the food come from?  It was a
mystery.
  Suddenly the door closed behind them.  Antonio and Angelo both
realized this was not a good thing: they started meowing loudly but
nobody came to open the door.  They did the only thing they could do:
curl up and go to sleep next to each other.
  Eventually the van door opened and the two cats took the opportunity
to jump down and out.  But they soon realized that they were no longer
in front of the Cat Lady's apartment.  Where were they?
  Antonio and Angelo were in an industrial part of town.  The van had
been parked between two factories owned by the Meowina Company: one
factory which made Meowina Cat Chow and the other which made Meowina
Cat Litter.  Antonio and Angelo followed the distinctive smell of
Meowina Cat Chow into the Cat Chow factory.
  The smell of Cat Chow was all over the factory!  Antonio and Angelo
made their way onto the factory floor which had bits of Cat Chow
scattered about everywhere.  They ate all the Cat Chow they could find
until they were full.  Then they had a new problem: they needed to
poop but they didn't see a litter box anywhere.
  Antonio and Angelo, still unnoticed by anyone working in the
factory, made their way back outside.  It was once they were outside
that their noses picked up the smell of the Meowina Cat Litter.  They
walked over to the Meowina Cat Litter factory and made their way
inside.
  Once inside the factory, they noticed bags of Meowina Cat Litter.
They needed enough cat Litter for both of them so they had no choice
but to rip open one of the bags and let the contents spill out.  They
then relieved themselves.
  Angelo thought this was paradise: it was Heaven, Nervana and
Shangrila all rolled into one!  They had all the food they could want
and all the litter they could want and it was all theirs!
  Alas it turns out that cats cannot poop on a factory floor and
expect to remain unnoticed.
  "What the--?" a factory worker said.  "Get out of here!"
  "Grab them!" one of his co-workers said.
  Soon Antonio and Angelo were on the run from factory workers.  They
were everywhere!  They tried running to hiding places where the
factory workers wouldn't find them but that only served to get them
cornered.  Brave factory workers grabbed them by the legs so they
wouldn't be able to scratch them.
  "In the cage with them!" one factory worker said.  The factory had a
small cage that was made to house a single cat but Antonio and Angelo
were small enough to fit in it together.  "Somebody call animal
control!"  The factory workers then seemed to ignore them and go back
to what they were doing.
  Now normally this would be it for Antonio and Angelo: there would be
no way for them to escape the cage.  Recall, however, that Angelo had
been given a bionic paw after one of his paws had been severed off by
a death ray.
  Again, normally, an artificial paw would be useless... but this is
the Looniverse and the Looniverse is not the real world but a comic
book reality!  Thus "bionic paw" automatically means "super strong
invulnerable bionic paw with razor sharp claws"!  With nobody looking
at them, Angelo took the opportunity to rip through the cage and allow
Antonio to escape with him!
  What now?  They couldn't stay here!  Antonio would have hated to
admit it but they were better off with the Cat Lady!  But how could
they go home?
  Their only option would be to find the original van that brought
them here.  As luck would have it, they soon found the van (or one
that looked just like it) parked between the two factories with the
door open.  They jumped in, hid away in the back and waited for the
doors to close.
  After what seemed like an eternity, the van doors opened again.
Antonio and Angelo jumped out.  Alas, this wasn't the right place
either.  They didn't know it but this was a grocery store: the van
didn't just deliver to the Cat Lady but to grocery stores all around
Net.ropolis.  Antonio and Angelo jumped back into the van.  They were
starting to wonder if they would ever get back home.
  After several false alarms, the two cats finally found themselves
back in familiar surroundings: they jumped off the van and once again
they watched as the man took the rest of the bags off the van and the
Cat Lady helped him take inside.  Antonio and Angelo ran into the open
door and headed straight to the room where the food was served.  They
were really hungry!
  Of course, Antonio and Angelo needed to poop again but now that they
were back home it was just a matter of finding the litter box.
Antonio had left home looking for paradise: he didn't realize he had
already been born into one!

  Again, this is based on a true story: in reality it involves their
mother, Angela.
  You see, we keep the dry food and cat litter in a closed room to
avoid having the cats rip open the bags.  (Putting them in cupboards
won't work because Angela can open cupboards and, with help, drag out
the bags onto the floor and rip them open.)  Thing is, Imelda left the
window open in the room with the dry food and cat litter and Angela
discovered that she could get into that room by climbing out onto the
window ledge and walking over and into that room through the window.
When I discovered Angela in that room and saw a ripped bag of cat
litter with poop inside I thought "How did you get in here?"  I took
Angela out of the room and closed the door behind me so she couldn't
get back in.  I started to clean in the room but after a few minutes I
could hear Angela meowing on the window ledge and that's when I
realized how she was able to get into the room.  The scary thing is
that we are on the fifth floor and, while the ledge is wide enough for
a cat, it is still a bit dangerous for her to be out there!  Anyway,
that's what really happened: the rest is fiction.

Martin