Tomato Tale (or Circular Reasoning)

During the spring last year, I decided to take a day off from work. A mental health day, as it were. Like it has been this spring, the weather was gorgeous, and I left the front door open so that Ziggy could look out and watch for the Truck God. Every once in a while he would stand up and turn around in a circle several times and then lay down again and look outside. It's like he thought if he spun around enough, H would come home in the truck. But this was before noon, and he had some waiting to do.

I went back through the kitchen to open windows in the family room to allow a nice cross-breeze to come through the house, and as I walked through the kitchen, I saw that the three tomatoes I had left in a bowl on the counter were not in the bowl any more. They were positioned around the bowl. "Why did H take these tomatoes out of the bowl," I wondered, and I put them back into the bowl.

Suddenly I remembered that I had left the door to our bedroom open. A few years ago I knitted a VERY soft afghan that I leave on the foot of our bed. Daily loves that afghan. He stands on top of it, holding part of it in his teeth, and turns around and around, with his eyes crossed and all four feet making biscuits on the afghan, twisting the part that he has in his mouth. "Awwww," a friend said when I told her about this phenomenon, "he thinks it's his mommy." No. Not quite. He thinks it's a little girl kitty. Trust me. I know. Every once in a while I'll hear the sound of him jumping off the bed (Whump!) and I know where he's been and what he's been up to. Sure enough, he trots down the stairs, flops onto the rug in the living room and looks so self-satisfied that you'd expect him to light up a cigarette!

So on this fine day I that I chose to stay home, I forgot to close the bedroom door. That had to be remedied! I ran past the dog, spinning at the door waiting for the Truck God, and up the stairs to find Daily, standing on top of the bed, with a part of the soft afghan twisted up in his teeth, looking cross-eyed at me. I scooped him up, rearranged the afghan nicely on the bed again, and took him out of the bedroom, firmly closing the door behind me.

Down the stairs we went, past the dog spinning in the door waiting for the Truck God. I dropped Daily on the floor in the living room and went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, and what did I see? The tomatoes...OUT of the bowl again. Huh??? I looked around. No one there. So I put the tomatoes back in the bowl, started the tea kettle, and went back past the spinning dog to the living room, where Daily was smoking his imaginary cigarette. At which point I heard a noise in the kitchen.

Aha! I raced past the spinning dog and smoking cat into the kitchen to find Wolfie, standing on top of the kitchen counter, lifting the tomatoes out of the bowl by their stems! He turned to look at me, with one of the tomatoes still in his teeth! What the!!!

And that's my story about a spinning dog named Ziggy, a smoking cat named Daily, and a little four-legged chef named Wolfie. EO may be gone, but there is never a dull moment in our household.