New installment as promised!

Read the new installment and leave your comments - I look forward to incorporating all your fabulous changes!!!

Installment 3: Sir Percival III

Sir Percival III, known as Sir Percy to friends, did not appreciate being called “Fluffy.”  He found the disyllabic word crude and phonetically abrasive.  Sir Percy also found the simplistic descriptor rather insulting as he had lost all his hair in a tragic weather-related accident.  That forsaken night was not a dark and stormy night, but rather a cool and unusually warm one.  Sir Percy had spent a rather pleasurable evening with his special lady friend and was retiring to bed in the hay loft when he heard a loud crack.  The barn began to tremble and all of a sudden Sir Percy felt as though he were on fire.  The pain was unbearable.  Sir Percy recalls dragging himself to a dim yellow porch light, and with his burnt paws extended towards the heavens he recalls uttering "Why God, why!" before expiring on the lonely stoop.

Fortunately for Sir Percy, his cries to the heavens did not go unheard.  Fading in and out of consciousness, Sir Percy recalls human hands reaching for him, gently lifting him, and bringing him indoors.  The kind human who had rescued and rehabilitated Sir Percy was responsible for the misnomer, and although Sir Percy found the name distasteful, he could not begrudge the man who had saved his life.  Sir Percy accepted it as his penance that he must tolerate being called “Fluffy” by his benefactor and roommate, Munden.

While Sir Percy was a rather unusual looking cat, he thought Munden was an even more unusual looking human.  Sir Percy had lived in many places in his five years of life.  He had lived in barns, behind restaurants, and sometimes in animal shelters.  Through these wanderings, Sir Percy had encountered many humans and to him they all looked relatively the same.  Sure they would have varying heights, weights, hair color, and skin color, but for the most part they all had symmetrical physiques and similar mannerisms.  Much like many cats appear to look similar to humans, so many humans appeared similar to Sir Percy.  That is, until he met Ralph Munden. 

Munden’s left shoulder was six inches lower than his right, and slightly hunched forward.  When he walked in public, Munden would pick a spot on the ground ten feet in front of him and focus hard on that spot.  Sir Percy assumed this was to avoid contact with others of his kind.  Munden was not very social, nor did he appear to have many friends.  Sir Percy sympathized with this “lone tiger” approach to life.  When Sir Percy was young, he had tried living with a colony of other feral cats, but he found the social structure too confusing and troublesome to navigate.  It seemed to Sir Percy that every time he attempted a social interaction, whether it was grooming a good-looking female or play-fighting with the kittens, the alpha male, Lord Winston, objected.  After a particularly violent physical confrontation with Lord Winston, Sir Percy left the colony.  It was that very evening that Sir Percy found himself on Munden’s doorstep.    

Since that fateful January night, Sir Percy lived in relative peace with Munden.  They ate their breakfast at 7am, they had dinner at 5:30, and they watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy before retiring for bed.  Sir Percy consistently beat Munden at Jeopardy, but every few weeks Sir Percy let him win.  It seemed the two males were just enough company for one another.  Theirs was a truly symbiotic relationship that went unchallenged for years, until Munden brought her into their lives.  Nothing was ever the same after that; not at all the same.  From day one, Sir Percy never liked Martha Mary Phinkle.  In Sir Percy’s opinion, a woman who wore a large sun hat, stockings with opened-toed shoes, and smelled of wet dog was trouble.  Pure trouble….

 

My Apologies

Dear Readers and Blog Followers,

I am so sorry that is has been months since my last post.  Writing a story online has proven challenging to balance with my other daily responsibilities.  However, I hope some of you are still interested in Munden and Martha and what happens to them.  I am feverishly working on the next installment (which will hopefully be posted later today or first hing tomorrow!) and I eagerly await comments and plot suggestions!!!  For those of you still reading, I thank you for your patience and faithfulness.  For those of you who are new to this blog, I encourage you to read previous posts and leave comments, critiques, poetry, pithy quips, and anything else you see fit. 


Sincerely,
Your Humble Blog Author,
JB