Flip just turned on a Law and Order repeat, and my buddy Olivia Benson has a cold too. Of course she still looks drop-dead gorgeous, while I just look as if I recently died. I hardly ever get sick but when I do, it's bad. I think my body saves up all its sick coins and then blows them on one major contagion. I am a terrible patient. Chicken soup makes me sick and I have probably exceeded the legal limit on cough drops. I was going to soak in a hot bath with epsom salts but it's too much effort. I don't feel well enough to be sick. I have a stack of Kleenex boxes as tall as I am, but someone is eating all my sick person popsicles, especially the tangerine ones.
I do not lack for entertainment, however. For six days, a tiny bird who lives in a big tree by our windows has been pecking on the glass constantly. Folk superstition holds that this portends a death in the house and since I am sick, it has crossed my mind about 2,000 times.
We are also babysitting for Joey-the-cat who lives upstairs. Joey and the bird quickly discovered each other and now the bird and his mate are hurling themselves into our windows repeatedly, fluttering feathers like a troupe of Burlesque dancers to taunt the great white and black hunter. I cleared a path through my plants so he could get a better view and all his killer instincts kicked in, even though he has not had to bring down a can of cooked chicken in a very long time. Fortunately, the glass is thick and Joey is trapped inside a plastic Elizabethan collar to prevent him from scratching a sore on his head. He thinks we are morons because he asked us with yowls and pantomime to remove it, but we didn't. Of course, every cat and dog knows that humans are mentally inferior, hardly worth the trouble if we didn't have thumbs. But he protects us from small, marauding birds anyway, because he's that sort of cat. He even guards me while I shower, sprawled menacingly across the bathroom threshold. Cats know how dangerous water is, and besides, I know where all the cans are buried.
