The Terrible State of the Litter Box
Once upon a time, there was a naughty kitten named Miss Motley Hallow. Motley’s origins were questionable. A kind-hearted therapist and his wife found her on the side of a desolate mountain road when they heard her yowling amidst the weeds. She played quite coy at first, coming almost within hands reach and then scampering off into the bushes again. The therapist finally won her over with some pepperoni, and he and his wife took her home as a foster fur child.
Even as a young kitten, it was apparent Motley must have had at least four fathers or been designed to be the bride of Frankencat. She had one black ear and one orange ear, one orange tabby arm and one black arm, one black leg and one orange tabby leg, a white belly and chest, a tortoiseshell back, an orange tabby face, and a roguish black patch over one eye. Some who saw her speculated that she was the familiar of the trickster god Loki, a wicked little harlequin sent to earth to wreak havoc amongst us poor mortals.
Eventually Motley left the therapist and his wife to settle in the Nilsen household, and that was when she met Krueger. While Motley resembled a Halloween harlequin, Krueger looked like a mime who was drunk when he put on his make-up. Irregular black splotches all over his shaggy white coat, Krueger had a smear of black across his nose and an eye patch just like Motley’s. It was a sign that they were destined to be together forever, feline partners in crime.
Beguiled by the pair’s obscene cuteness, their human mistress at first suspected nothing amiss. However, the other cat in the household, a sometimes sweet, sometimes crabby old lady known as Patty the Gift Cat, immediately took umbrage at Motley and Krueger’s presence. Patty tried to warn her mistress about the evil duo’s naughty ways. Growling and spitting, Patty retreated to the basement whenever Motley and Krueger came in sight. Despite her humble beginnings, Motley showed the indifference of a bored aristocrat at Patty’s ravings and generally ignored her. Krueger, an affable, playful sort with the attention span of a flea, kept trying to make friends with Patty. When his repeated efforts met with scorn and rage, he took to following Patty through the house, his yellow eyes widening in hurt surprise every time she turned around and hissed at him. He didn’t know a lost cause when he saw one.
Their mistress first noticed something amiss when she finally let the dogs meet Motley and Krueger. The dogs Bessie and Maddie were large and over-enthusiastic, fond of knocking grown men down and licking their faces with well-meaning but embarrassing, sometimes lethal, displays of affection. They thought nothing of playing football with a live possum and then bringing it in the house and dumping it on the kitchen floor as a present for their screaming mistress. So their mistress thought it best to supervise their contact with the kittens.
Imagine her surprise when Motley, who seemed like such a shy, aloof creature with no previous canine experience, ran up to Maddie and started rubbing herself all over Maddie’s coat, purring like a top the whole time. Maddie, used to cats who hissed and ran so she could chase them, didn’t know what to make of this small creature trying to kill her with kindness. Terror in her brown eyes, Maddie looked to her mistress for rescue as Motley arched her back against Maddie’s chest. However, their mistress was too overcome with laughter to be much assistance.
Krueger, fascinated by these smelly dogs six times his size, stalked Maddie and Bessie through the house and grabbed their wagging tails between his paws. He eventually started trying to eat the tips of their tails, a reversal of roles that so confused the dogs that they had no idea what to do except stare in horror at this small clownish kitten rolling around and gnawing on their pride and joy.
Motley and Krueger turned the Nilsen household topsy-turvy. They took all the best places to sleep, demolished the houseplants, tried numerous times to trip their mistress, jumped on the dining room table in the middle of formal dinners, and even faced down the vacumn cleaner like errant knights confronting an angry dragon. Krueger prowled after house guests and bit them with his nasty little needle teeth if they didn’t pet him enough. When his mistress took him for therapy, the analyst diagnosed him with an oral fixation and recommended more affection to make up for the apparent lack in early kittenhood. All this resulted in, however, was Krueger assuming he had the run of the house to the point that he leapt in to the middle of a guest’s dinner plate one night and polished off the Chinese cuisine. This earned him the ominous moniker of Kitten Chow Mein.
Eventually Motley and Krueger frightened away all their mistress’s friends. They had driven Patty to distraction and turned the dogs into quivering lumps of canine woe. Considering their work done and tired of the terrible state of the litter box, they moved on to the wide world. They pretended their true colors were merely costumes and make-up and ended up joining a circus that needed a harlequin and mime for the clown troop. The rumor is that Motley and Krueger eventually got the owner arrested and hauled off to jail, subdued the elephants, and took over the circus. Now they terrorize hundreds of people a night with their antics.
