Training the Cat

My wife enjoys training our cat.

But she is afraid she “looks stupid”.

She glances at me a lot while she does it.

The cat likes his special snacks

which are bite-sized, moist, and shaped like fish.

 

She bends from the waist and loudly commands, “Sit!”

If the cat is confused, she smiles.

If the cat performs correctly, she is delighted.

This is the image I most enjoy of my wife training the cat:

she is bent halfway at the waist, cajoling.

The cat tilts his head sideways.  He glances forward and aft.

 

My wife is very pleased with our cat.

And the cat is becoming more and more pleased with my wife.

He can do “Sit!”, “Roll over!”, “Shake”, and “Big Tiger!”

For this latter trick he hops onto a chair and roars like a circus lion.

At first, he would not let my wife hold him.

But now he is less standoffish.  They are beginning to be pals.

 

My wife tries to get me to join in her endeavor, but I have no feel for it.

I enjoy holding the cat though, and giving him little kisses on the forehead,

massaging his tummy and breathing his fragrance.

I enjoy how relaxed he is, how lithe and the graceful way he twists.

I like holding him to my ear and hearing his small, cantankerous “meow”,

and his infantile “mew”.

 

I exist in a cloud of speculation.  Its mist drifts past windows mornings,

while my wife trains our cat.

And then, sort of out of the blue one day

my wife speculated about being an animal trainer.

And I enjoyed helping her build on this little cloud of speculation.

I helped add the drawbridge, turrets and extended the spires.

We had pens in the backyard… a horse pasture down the road.

People brought by their refractory animals…

And we ended up agreeing it was most often the owners who were the problem,

and how would we deal with that?

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