SifuPhil
R.I.P. With Us In Spirit Only
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
Several times a week I reenact this wonderful Calvin & Hobbes strip with my two cell-mates, Tigger and Snagglepuss. Beside the entertainment value, I am reminded of how acute is their sense of hearing and smell.
First things first: I get it in my mind to have a tuna fish sandwich. With mayo.
Yes, I know tuna has mercury and other nasties in it. I know mayo is fattening. I know eating a tuna fish sandwich several times a week isn't the healthiest practice.
I don't care – I like it. It tastes good and has protein. It doesn't kill any cows or chickens.
Second thing: I have a strange sleep schedule – it's called polyphasic sleep, and essentially it means that unlike most human beings I don't sleep 8 hours at a time, at night; I sleep in one-hour shifts, 3-4 times per day. As a result, my breakfast/lunch/dinner schedule is also out of whack – I'm just as liable to have a Swiss omelet at 4PM as I am to have a tuna fish sandwich at 3AM.
This is just to let you know that I am basically without a schedule, so that can be ruled out when considering the reactions of Tigger and Snagglepuss.
Okay, point #3 … Tigger and Snags LOVE tuna fish. I've always known that cats love it, but until I met Tigger I didn't know that dogs loved it as well. Early on in our relationship they figured out that I was a soft touch – that I would reserve half the can of tuna for them – so they set about making it a priority in their furry little lives to be present whenever they heard the can opener click-clacking away.
Of course, at first this led to some errors on their part: they would come barreling into the kitchen side by side as if they were a team pulling a Roman chariot, slide on the linoleum floor and crash into the wall, their little paws scrabbling furiously for traction.
Then, once they recovered their dignity, they'd do the begging thing.
Snags was a kitten at that time, and like most kittens he liked to climb. He'd see me wearing the thinnest of my thin sweatpants, rev up his hind legs and go ballistic up my leg, eliciting howls of pain and dire oaths. Tigger meanwhile would start his vocalizations, unlike any I've ever heard issue from a supposed canine before. They are somewhat of a cross between a howl and a scream, exceed 120 decibels and have been proven to cause permanent hearing loss on several occasions.
Too bad that, often as not, I'd be opening a can of beans or mixed veggies. Deafened and bleeding I would finally get the can open, Tigger and Snags would get a whiff of the contents, and they would blithely stroll away together back to whatever dark Hell-spawned hole they came from.
But that was only in the first few weeks of our acquaintance. After that rocky start they somehow developed the ability to know the difference between the sounds of a tuna fish can and every other can in the pantry. Don't ask me how – I've consulted with professionals on this point and they have all been stumped as well – but if I were opening a can of, say, baby corn, no furry beasts would materialize in the kitchen.
But break out the Bumble Bee and poof, there they were.
After a few months of this I decided to utilize my finely-honed ninja skills. I would tip-toe stealthily into the kitchen at 3AM, sloooowly open the silverware drawer, soundlessly remove the can opener (which I believed might be the trigger for their refined hearing abilities), heck, I'd even open the refrigerator door only enough to slide my arm in and press down on the light switch when I was getting the mayo, so the bright light wouldn't notify them of my nocturnal maneuvers.
But to no avail – they both would stroll in at that point (having learned that they had no longer had any need to slam into the walls – the tuna would keep) and assume their customary positions, Tigger slightly behind and right of me and Snags sharpening up his mealtime claws on the kitchen drawers.
They would graciously allow me my usual rant - “How do you two KNOW?!?” - but if I went on in that vein for too long they would start up their choir -
“MEOW!”
“SCREEEEAM!”
“MEOW!”
“SCREEEEAM”
… and yet I wonder why the upstairs tenant moved out last week …
And so it goes. All of my stealth skills – the same ones that allow me to sneak up behind paranoid people, frightening the bejesus out of them, to play tag with wild bears and to b*tch-slap Great White sharks – are as nothing. Tigger and Snagglepuss put me to shame several times a week, all because of their supernatural tuna-sensing abilities.
