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This week: How Pets Can Tickle our Funny Bones Edited by: SophyBells  
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| Hi, I'm SophyBells ~ your editor for this edition of the Comedy Newsletter. This week I'll share a funny story about our old cat Dugan, which may tickle your comedy-writing funny bone and inspire you to write about some of your own pet adventures. |
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Dugan's Great Adventure
For seventeen years Dugan, a Siamese cat, deigned to share his home with us.  . We got him as a kitten, and he immediately started to amuse us from the day we brought him home by galloping through the house, occasionally smacking into the side of doorways on his way through because we think his crossed eyes must have made him see double. Don't worry, he was always fine -- he shook it off and kept on running. He was adorable -- often curling up to sleep in strange places (the bathroom sink, a small basket). One of my favorites was when he would collapse, literally in mid-run, and fall asleep on the floor where he dropped. And his purring! Hard to imagine such a loud engine in such a small body.
Alas, Dugan was only a cute cuddly kitten for so long, however, and once he became a cat, his disdain for us was palpable at times. His affection for us was always on his terms (and usually in the middle of the night, when we were fast asleep and he decided to cuddle with us, on our heads/faces). In between those rare moments of familial bonding, he had quite an adventurous existence. Here is one example.
I always liked to make visual contact with Dugan before leaving the house for work in the morning, just to make sure he was okay. One morning I couldn't find him anywhere in the house, and after checking every closet and under all of the beds, I started to call for him. I could hear him answering me, faintly, but couldn't determine where he was. I could hear him best in the family room, over by the fireplace. I opened the glass doors on the off chance he'd gotten in there somehow, and heard him louder than ever.
After determining that he wasn't sitting in the fireplace, or outside of the house next to the chimney, I figured out that he was in the wall next to the fireplace. Evidently, during one of his early morning adventures, he'd found his way up into the drop ceiling in our unfinished laundry room, and traveled along the duct-ways for our furnace, coming to the end of the trail at the far end of the house, and falling down between the outside wall and the inside drywall in the space next to the chimney.
My husband was out of town, so I called the local animal rescue agency to see if they could help get him out of the wall. They tried to pry open the metal chimney guard, but to no avail - and after they left, his meowing was noticeably weaker. My father suggested putting tuna fish near the opening he'd crawled into, thinking he'd smell it and crawl out to it, but that didn't work because the space where he'd fallen had no way for him to climb out. Not to mention that he was the one cat in the universe who was not fond of tuna.
Finally I called a neighbor who came over and cut a ten-inch hole in the drywall, just above the mantle of our fireplace. Using a flashlight and mirror, we confirmed that Dugan was, in fact, trapped below the mantle, next to the bottom of the fireplace. By this point he'd been trapped for at least eight hours, and was desperate to get out. But the space he had fallen into had drywall on two sides, metal flashing from the chimney, and outdoor paneling on the third side - all straight up, with no place for him to get a good grip to climb up and out. And he was too far down for an arm to reach him. So we dropped a rope down, with a noose at the end, hoping we could ease it down over his shoulders and under his arms. Which of course, we could not manage, because he was a mad, tired, hungry, thirsty cat, unwilling to cooperate with our plan.
So my neighbor informed me that he did have the noose around Dugan's neck, and the only thing he could think of to do was to pull him quickly out of the hole by his neck, and remove the noose as soon as he came out, before he choked to death. I agreed to the plan, because it did seem to be the only way, and so he pulled the noose a little tighter around Dugan's neck, and then, on the count of three, hoisted him as gently as possible up out of the wall.
Our plan was to pull him out and remove the noose quickly - however we weren't prepared for the whirling dervish of snarling teeth and claws that came out of the hole in the wall. Dugan was so terrified and angry that he came out with all guns firing, and my neighbor dropped him before either of them was injured. Dugan took off up the stairs, with the noose tightly around his neck - and I was afraid he'd choke to death before I could find him. So I did the first thing that occurred to me and stepped on the end of the rope, which stopped him cold. Then I quickly ran to him, removed the noose, and watched him run back to the laundry room - where he was intent on climbing back up into the drop ceiling to get away from us (and probably go for another trip into the wall). Luckily, I was able to foil his plans ...
Perhaps all those times he hit his head on the doorways as a kitten did more damage than we originally thought?
~ SophyBells |
Below you'll find some humorous offerings from other WDC members about animals -- if you read and enjoy them, remember to leave a rating/review for the member!
First a few from "The Writer's Cramp" :
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And a few more from around the site:
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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Now for a few comments from my last Comedy Newsletter, "Comedy Newsletter (February 23, 2011)" :
<insert sound of crickets>
What? No comments? <sniffle> I guess no one finds wacky holidays amusing but me, eh? 
     
Wll then, I guess that's all for this month -- see you next time! And on behalf of the other regular Comedy Newsletter Editors, Waltz Invictus  and Ẃeβ࿚ẂỉԎḈĥmas  remember to WRITE AND LAUGH ON!  SophyBells |
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Comedy: March 23, 2011 Issue [#4294]
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