Distract the Dad

"Now, you two, behave yourselves. No going crazy here," StoryMistress admonished her 9 year old son and 8 year old daughter.

"But you know us, Mom," her son replied. "We're good. We never go crazy. OH LOOK, SIS -- they're having a seventeen per cent discount on cat food!"

With that, the two children had dashed off to the pet food section. "We need to get seventeen cans of cat food for our seventeen cats!" the little girl yelled, knocking down a whole pile of tins in her excitement.

Seventeen shop assistants came dancing up. "You have some cats, dooh dooh, dooh, you have some cats, dooh dooh dooh," they sang, as they stacked the tins back in rhythm.

"A baby cat, dooh dooh, dooh," the boy replied, in tune.

"A Daddy cat, dooh, dooh, dooh," the girl tapped her feet in time and sang.

StoryMistress was watching. When she saw the shop assistants weren't angry, she clapped her hands in time and joined the merry dancers.

"A Mommy cat, dooh, dooh, dooh," she trilled.

There was a film crew there -- they'd come to do a commercial for the shop. They stopped whatever they were doing and watched the StoryFamily dance. "That family got the moves," the director said.

"The moves and the mews," the camera-person agreed.

In an instant, the Mommy and kids were surrounded by seventeen cameras. all trying to get the correct angles and capture all the trio's moves on tape.

The three of them jigged, waltzed, cha-chaed, salsaed ... did the Bharat Natyam and Kuchipudi, and eleven other types of dances, to make it seventeen types of dances in all. Hey, try doing those to the tune of 'baby shark', adapted to 'baby cat', and you'll know what a feat they achieved.

But suddenly

there was an interruption.

Someone was at the door, demanding to see his family.

"I'm the StoryMaster," he was telling the guard. "I've been waiting seventeen hours for my family to come out of that store, what on earth are they doing in there?"

"They're dancing, sir," the guard replied. "And singing. But you were in your car seventeen hours without noticing?"

"Yeah. I got kind of carried away. I gave the Cramp prompt yesterday, you see, and I was reading the seventeen entries and reviewing them ..."