It was dark.
Birds weren’t singing yet.
It was cool.
My brothers and I were pacing. Waiting for the upstairs door to open.
At night, we sleep in the basement.
This started several months ago after mom and dad got sick and tired of us knocking at the bedroom door and trying to get in.
Oh and the pee accidents didn’t help either.
But that’s another story.
This is the STORY ABOUT THE BIG FAT HAIRY SPIDER!!!
We were waiting on the steps.
“You call for mom,” I told Chester. “I need a nap and I want to nap on the chair by the back window.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“YOU call for mom,” I told Tiger. “She thinks you’re old and feeble and she gets all melty and soft hearted when you give that pathetic little yowl that you do when you’re playing up being old and feeble.”
“I don’t think so. I feel too old and feeble.”
“You don’t SOUND old and feeble. You sound like you’re being stubborn!”
“Patience is a virtue.”
Harumph . . .
I can hear the cuckoo clock ticking from the living room. The cuckooer is turned off but I’m counting the ticks and the tocks.
It HAS to be morning.
“I’m bored.”
“Be patient.”
“I’m really really really bored.” ~~sigh~~
“I want to sleep on the big comfy chair!”
Bored bored bored. All we do is sit around and wait in the wee fine hours of the morning. Nothing to do—SPLASH!
Someone flicked water in my face.
I blinked quickly and looked to Chester but he was staring at the water bowl with intense fascination.
“THAT wasn’t funny!”
“Look at him go,” Chester said to no one in particular.
I got splashed again. I was looking right at Chester and I knew it wasn’t him. He was just sitting there, staring at the water bowl.
I knew it wasn’t Tiger, because he was a couple of steps below me.
Oh my.
This is unusual.
I peered carefully into the water bowl.
There was the BIGGEST FATTEST HAIRIEST SPIDER I’d ever seen in my whole life. And he was doing some sort of dog paddle stroke.
Now I’ve seen some really big spiders in my day. We spend a lot of time in the basement after all and as cats, well . . . we’re curious. So we’ll look in the darkest corners and we’ll crawl under Dad’s workbench and we’ll slip over and around the furnace.
But this one. Wowie Kazowie. He was almost as big as the pony Dad brought me back from Korea!
Tiger wanted to see and so all three of us nudged up together, shoulder to shoulder and stared at the water bowl. We were amazed. Not only was he a really big old spider but he was a champion swimmer.
Chester howled at him. He didn’t like the fact that this spider was using our water dish as a sports pool. He howled again. Chester knows a lot of sorrowful howls. Sometimes I try to repeat what he says but I just don’t have the deep barrel range of Chester’s vocal chords.
It’s a haunting kind of yowl. The kind of yowly howly noise they put in movie sound tracks when people walk through fog filled cemeteries . . . at night.
It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
So here I am. A black cat all poofed out, hair standing on end. A big fat hairy spider swimming in our water bowl and Chester continuing to yowl that midnight in the haunted house yowl.
In the distance I heard the floor boards creek and the water run. Mom and Dad were up!
Wait until they see this! Tiger and I jostled for position. We wanted to see mom’s face when she opened the door!!!!!
The door opened . . . mom’s voice said, “Hi guys, are you hungry?” And she was bending down to get the food dish and water dish.
She saw the SPIDER at once! “Yikes! What do we have here?” She carefully picked the bowl up and the spider swam faster and faster. “I think it’s porcelain bowl time for you, buddy!” she said and dumped him in the toilet.
There was a flush . Mom turned to us and said, “Now don’t you worry about him. You’ve seen Finding Nemo. He’s headed out to the ocean . . . eventually.”
She looked back in the toilet bowl. “I don’t THINK SO buddy!” and she flushed again.
Yes.
The big fat hairy spider was so big and fat and hairy that it took TWO flushes to send him the ocean!
