It’s time for me to get a new barber. I get my haircuts and trims for free, but Sabrina always takes too much off the top leading to the wide-spread conclusion that I am balding.
On top of that, something else happened: it had to do, of all things, with a pair of small black-handled scissors.
I have mentioned, we have a cat named ‘Oz.’ He is a Maine Coon, one of the oldest – and largest – natural breeds in North America, native to Maine [duh] where it is the official state cat. One of the more interesting speculations about how the breed came about maintains that a sea captain named Coon had a bevy of long-haired cats which he would carry with him aboard ship. At every port of call he would release them for ‘Shore Leave’ whereupon they [but not Capt. Coon] would mate with the local feral cats.
When long-haired cats began to appear in town, they were called ‘Coon’s Cats.’ Is the story true? Ya pays your nickel and ya…, well, you know. Also set forth as the origins of the Maine Coon is that they were companions to the Vikings, genetically tied to raccoons and that they, pets of Marie Antoinette, were – for their safety’s sake – set on a ship bound for America as Marie’s and Louis’ date with destiny drew nigh. Again, the nickel comes into play.
You have to sift through a lot of kitty litter to find a better cat than Oz Garvin. But he has long Angora hair which is loaded with static electricity. When he comes to the shop with me, he swishes his tail. [I call it ‘dusting’ which I appreciate in that the shop could use a bit of tidying up, and it is free, after all.] When he swishes, sawdust clings tenaciously to his tail. Then he sits in the sawdust, and a similar phenomenon occurs on his hind quarters.
He then prances upstairs to Sabrina who, after eying me evilly, sighs and begins to patiently brush him. I shrug my shoulders helplessly, but say nothing. I may not be a good husband, but I am meticulously trained. Her brushing removes a lot, but not all of the sawdust. The rest sits in clumps around his derriere. This must be clipped away with the above mentioned scissors.
So, the other day, she had finished my haircut [yup, too much off the top] and had set about to trim my moustache. Typically, I sit in front of the bathroom mirror and watch her work. Ah! Almost done. Just a few more snips with the… black-handled… scissors…
“Baby, those scissors look familiar.”
“Oh, Gahv, I’ve owned them for years.”
“Yeah, but aren’t they the same ones you use to trim Oz’s backside?”
She stared at them as if for the first time. “Why I believe they are. Sooo sorry, Gahv.” She turned to put them away, but the slight upturned smile on her face suggested that this was a totally contrived contrition. For this infraction, the half-life of Sabrina’s guilt could be measured in nano-seconds.
Like, I said, time for a new barber. And I’ll do my own trimming.
Watch for Lucky’s books “The Oath of Hippocrates” and ‘A Journey Long Delayed” available locally and on-line.
By Lucky Garvin [email protected]
