Welcome to your Community Bulletin for the week of November 13th, 2016
Things have been quiet here, with the change of seasons sending everybody into their kitchens and workshops. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, lots of folks feel a need to hunker down and either prepare for the festival of friends, family, and food, or lay low until Edna opens her doors that evening for Turkey Sandwiches.
Even though it is two weeks away the Ansari household is making preparations, not for dinner, but for welcoming an army. Each of Abraham and Sara’s three kids managed to each raise up healthy-sized families of their own, and this year, they are all descending upon the old homestead for a weekend of feasting and joy. This will be the first time Abraham has gotten to see his youngest two grandkids, since Jeff and Susan have been in Australia for the last year. Sara got to go down and help out with the new mom at the time, and as is required by international law, came home with a sunburn and a bad Australian accent. Neither one managed to clear up for month and a half.
Even now, Abraham is in his garage laying out what has got to be the most over-engineered set of picnic tables known to man (excepting the ones he built for Brother Louis last year). These things have hidden hinges, 400 foot/lb braces, and can be used to protect from falling rubble in case Godzilla came by with a hankering for cranberry jelly. “You laugh,” Abraham said “but these kids are spirited. Much like their Grandmother. You never know what they might get up to. Yes. Must build these very strong, but easy to store. I do not want to lose my garage to these things.”
Sophia was giving him a hand. She was over at the Ansari’s grabbing the last of her stuff. She says she is settled in nicely, and finally has what her apartment needed.
She got a cat.
A stray.
A big sweetie with emerald eyes that just invited himself in one day as she brought in her groceries.
Needless to say, we all froze in horror. She went on to talk about how many cats they had growing up, and how she hasn’t lived anywhere that permitted pets since she left home, and how complete it makes her feel, and… and why are you all staring with that horrified look on your faces?
It took quite awhile before anybody to respond without a stutter.
“Cat…STRAY cat? Here? No. Nono. There is only one stray cat here, and you do not want it.” Abraham finally got out.
“What? Why not?”
Abraham grabbed his phone and brought up a picture on it. “Is that the cat?”
“Awww…, yes, that’s him, where did you…” she started.
The rest of us gasped. This must be how Cousteau felt every time he sent another Phillipe beneath the waves.
Well, our reactions kind of hurt Ms Sixkiller’s feeling a bit, because the next day, he little office was full of snapshots of the sweetest, most playful blasphemous hellspawn to ever claw its way from the darkest recesses of The Pit.
Rumplestilszkat has marked Ms Sixkiller as his own.
We mentioned this to Mayor Amundsen, but he just kept shopping, a smile growing across his face. “We’re free? …Free.” he said to himself with ever-widening eyes. It was like a great burden had sloughed from his shoulders. I don’t think I have seen that man stand up that straight and tall since he came out of the service. We pressed him about the cat, but his response was a very distant “We never had a cat. Sorry, friend, but you are mistaken. Go back to the Museum. Wish Ms Sixkiller the best. I hope things are happy for her.”
He then sped off in his minivan, blaring Steppenwolf as he peeled out of the parking lot to the tune of “Magic Carpet Ride.”
Meanwhile, we have all shown more of an interest in her new cat than I think is usual in most office environments. She loves him. Named him Andre after the professional wrestler, who it seems was a gentle giant in his own right. Feeds him from her hands. She still has both hands. She has even bathed him. twice, and is working on leash training him.
Rumplestiltzkat. On a leash.
‘No way!’ you are saying to yourself. ‘This cannot be the same horrible hellbeast we have all dreaded for more than a decade.’ Maybe it isn’t. The pictures look the part but none of us have been willing to go investigate. Nobody want to be the hero and offer to help Sophia hang pictures just so they can risk losing their lives to this agent of the abyss.
As to Sophia, she says we are all being very peculiar. “You all want to tell me something horrible about Andre, like he bombed Kosovo and eats puppies, and I don’t know why. But he is a sweetie, and he’s mine to deal with even if he wasn’t.”
The Museum staff will try to be supportive, and stop sneaking glances looking for bites, scrapes, or missing appendages.
This issue of The Community Bulletin is brought to you by an anonymous gift that was left on the doorstep of the museum. A gift that sold well enough on eBay that we could afford to take all the staff out to dinner in Yachats as a treat. Thank you!
