Muddle Management

 “If the blogs are published in book form –“

“ -- to get the niche audience –“

“We could publish on demand and have no overhead!”

The Smitty jumps up on the porch as if to say: “Hol’ up: whatch’all wheelin’n’dealin’ about widout my ass in the picture?”

“Mr. Smitty wants his cut.”

“Right: 100% off the top. Any new “peeps” I bring in, I got to cut them in, yo.”

“Word.”

“E-mail my lawyers with all the papers and sich, and I’ll put my paw print to it.”

“OK, Mr. Smee!”

So You Think You Can … Be My Peeps

Welcome to the show that asks the question do you have what it takes to be one of Mister Smitty’s peeps. I’m your host, T. Mister! [Applause]. 

Let’s meet our juuudges: Mr. Smitty, Mr. Smee T. Tee, and T. Mister (“the other one, whichever, can’t tell ‘em apart anyway, till they pet me,” etc.)

And our first contestant, a homemaker from Bethesda, Maryland …

Next, a young longhaired black cat with white paws from “across the way”…

“Mngiao!”

“Really? Well then, let’s see if you have what it takes to be one of Mr. Smitty’s Peeps … right after the break!                   (To Be (dis) Continued)

Dating Game

To all employees of Mister Smitty Enterprises (MSE), and our clients, fan(s?), frenemies, homies/peeps:

 In the spirit of our current cultural trend to P.(a)C.-ify our wording so sharp edges are blunted, guard rails erected, child safety caps double sealed, and all things rendered pleasantly beige, Please update your calendars to reflect the following changes: 

B.C. =>  B.C.E  => now to become => B.M.S.E.

A.D. =>  C.E. => now to become => M.S.E.

Nose News is God News

Mister Smitty’s nose is 50 times smarter!

“Than your’n? Or … mour’n? Mister, I did not know that.”

“He’s got like parallel universes of smell stacked up alongside ours – no wonder it takes him so long to mosey on over. Always sniffin’ stuff out, playing referee to four dozen planes of existence we can’t smell.

“But wait: for his nose to be 50 times stronger. We’d have to be 49 times dumber to start with.

“Mister, do the math.”

“Mister, I just did.”

“Mister, it’s not arithmetical; it’s what-uh-yuh-kallit, Malthusian. You know, like hundredth-monkey, interdependent arising, stock market algorythmics- stuff.

Oh, that.

Future Olympic Curling Champion’s Career Thwarted!

Mister Smitty likes to be warm!

                When The Misters got their stand-up, metal-hatted porch heater… The Smee was not far behind.

                “Mister, it’s like the Ye Olde Hearth, with the cat all curled upside it.”

                “Like in a wee children’s book. Of yore.”

                “Cept this heater’s got a scorching coolie hat thingy that’ll toast his little pink paw pads like steaks on the Barbie, mate.”

                “No warm and fuzzy (Olympic?) hearth-curling, for you, Mr. Smee!”

Cracque Heure

      At a sidewalk café along the Seine, on the ile de la C(m)ite, patrons sip their petits cafes and sketch the Smee.
      These cafes, clearly fronts for “kitty crack” (catnip), are perpetually h(a)unted by the Smee in search of his proverbial dragon, his Uncle Charlie, his fix.
      Upon a routine (read “next-to-never”) cleaning of the Smee’s food delivery system, the aforementioned Smee jumped up onto his food’s shelf.
     “Mister, he wants to plumb the mysterious recesses of his food-horde, his cache, his walk-in pantry.”
     “Mister, The Smee is doing inventory.”
      “He’s helping us look for the kitty crack!”

Fair unbalanced

Gen’lemans,

      I am all disturbated by you folks’s continual portrayal of me an’ my peeps as fly boys workin’ our hood and sich.

     Please present (in da future) a mo’ “fair unbalanced” portrayal of me an’ my peeps’s actual doings!

Yaw(n)s,
      Mr. Smee T. Tee

Les Reins Feconds

     All atwitter about The Smitty’s switch to drinking water in the shower, The Misters quizzed their resident feline expert, Ms. Fabulous.
     “Why does The Smee – “ [see above, passim – ed.]
     “Is he drinking more water or the same amount in a different location?”
     “Same.”
     “Good. Cause if he’s drinking more quantity, it’s a kidney thing.”
     (Startled faces, nervous glances, quick denials of The Smitty’s mortality, etc.)
     “I’m pretty sure it’s the same amount.”
     We’ll leave The Misters here as the echo of their self-assuring reverberates throughout the universe.

Science Experiment

      Like many of the out-of-the-way nooks, undersides, behinds, etc. of The Misters’ abode, now, too, The Smitty’s water dish has been deemed a “science experiment.”
      “He drinkin’ plenty water!”
     “It’s half what I put in there this morning.”
     “We should be scientifical and always fill to the line.”
      [the “line” is the bottom of the blue band of chinoiserie that rings the rim of the water dish –ed.]
      “Then we can keep track.”
      “Get The Smitty’s chart!”

Foreplay

     The Smee’s main objective may be his foods, but first he flirts: rubbing against legs as The Misters prepare their dinner (thinking (falsely) that The Smee is being friendly).
     Nope: it’s the smell of the foods! 
     And, sadly, it’s not even foreplay.
      For when those dim Mister still don’t get that all he wants is food, he marches over to his dish, sits his wee bum down, twists his head back over his shoulder and seems to say,
    “Enough foreplay, human. Give me my foods!”

   

   

Le Chat C’est Moi

Like a guest from an exotic land who seems blithely unaware of your cherished cultural mores, The Smee lays himself down whenever – and wherever – he deems it fit.

“Noblesse oblige, yo.”

“Mo’ or Lese Majeste, no’m sayin’?”

Faux Paws, Part II: The Icebag Numbeth

After a recent storm – which necessitated the purchase of bags-o-ice, one such bag had to be unceremoniously jettisoned from the freezer in order to make room for artisanally crafted vodkas and the like –

“ANY-way!”

Yes, anyway, the Exiled Ice Bag did, in certain slants of light, look, on the porch, like The Smee.

“Hello, Mr. Sm---. Oops!”

“Mister, that’s a tricky bag of ice. I thought it was The Smee!”

“Mister, he want us to think that!

Faux Paws, Part I: Quit Abstractin’ Me!

The Misters’ recent consumer industrial complex purchase of a porch heater left large unsightly molded styrofoam halves

-- one which was carted off by the county, the other, storm-strewn, had to be retrieved from a ditch and currently inflates The Misters’ (otherwise shrinking) carbon footprint –

“ANY-way…”!

Anyway, the whiteness of the styrofoam whale, lodged at some 20 yards from the house, can, in dim light, be taken for The Smee.

[coherence, finally! – ed.]

“Mister Smitty… Oh shoots! That’s not The Smee. It’s the styrofoam sculpture … of The Smee.”

“But wildly abstractified: The Smee has no right angles like that.”

“Except when he folds his front leg back.”

“Tru dat.”

A Sustainable Smee

Mister Smitty is a green smitty!

He likes to climb into the truck and help with the recycling by smelling all the outgoing bottles and sich.

(“Where you taking all those smells, yo?” Those are my smells!”)

“Mister Smitty, are you reducing your carbon footprint?”

(“Have you taken a look at my paws? I’ve already got about the smallest footprint…”)
Solar? The Smee soaks up sunlight as soon as it peeks through that crack o’the mountain!
Water? The Smee has cut out showers completely, replacing them with lavish tongue-baths.
.

A Tipping Point

Like a bathroom attendant in Grand Central’s Oyster Bar, ready to provide towels, soap, etc., The Smee had positioned himself plop in the middle of the bathroom, ready to serve The Misters’ every need.

“Mister, do you think we should tip him?”

“Mister, with what?”

“We could pet him gently and thank him. The great colonizers did that – and it worked for a good long…”

The Smitty interrupts to speak for himself, his generation, his people, nation, kind:

“A Thank you and a handshake? A pat on the head? Tip? You call that a tip? Here’s a tip for you: I sneeze on you! Ker-choo! You got that? Ker-choo you!”

A Hungry Smee

Mister Smitty is not a well-mannered smitty when he’s hungry!

Table manners? Atrocious!

Those whose duty it is to feed The Smee were overheard kvetching ‘back of the loading dock here at the Mister Smitty World Headquarters complex:

“Mister, he stuck his head into his dish so fast, he knocked the scoop out of my hand!”

“Mister, hilarious -- I mean, shocking!”

“Then, when I come back and he’s eaten it all – even the old dead wet food stuck to the side.”

“Fascinating!”

[oh yeah. – ed.]

Lunar Clips

Just as The Smitty needs the sun for his dose of Vitamin Smee, so, too, does he drink delicious moonlight. Check it:

“Mr. Smitty, why did you run out of the bedroom? The snoring?”

“No, you-all’s snoring’s about as loud as the moon’s – and that’s loud, let me tell you!”

The moon is a-buzz and The Smitty loves to hear it jam:

“Yo, when the moon rises, it’s like, ‘bring in da funk!’”

Vitamin Smee

Have you had your Vitamin Smee?

Doctors (3 out of 4) -- as well as philosophers, sages, crackpots, and your dear ol’ mum -- recommend a daily value of Smee (or the equivalent in kisses, light (or heavy) petting, random acts of kindness, or small, individually wrapped candies) to balance chi, “freshen the luck,” and in a twisted, syllogistical way, to keep the doctor away.

That The Misters might reap remunerative rewards as a result, is – as our blogsite’s adcounter clicker-thingy clearly indicates – statistically insignificant!

Mgniao!

Mister Smitty likes to munch his foods!

Mgniao-mgniao-mgniao (munch-munch-munch)!

“Mister, ‘Somebody’ likes his foods!”

(The Misters bestill themselves to listen to the plaintive munch-munch-munching.)

“Mister, ‘Somebody’ does!”

“Mgniao-mgniao-mgniao,” say The Misters in unison.

[oh, C’mon! – ed.]

Micro-managed Misters

Mister Smitty must micro-manage his Misters!

Once The Misters are led back to the house (which they apparently lose track of on a daily basis), The Smee lays himself out in front of the sink (or any high-traffic area) to be petted. This is The Smee’s sneaky strategy for calming his lost and discombobulated Misters, focusing them so they will once again be of use when foods, water, or laps are needed.

Once The Smitty decides that his Misters are calm and safe – he is outta there! (to attend to pressing cat business).

Fresh (water) Prince

Mister Smitty like his water fresh, yo!

“Mister, Mister Smitty is dissing his water.”

“You mean pee?”

“No, yo, I mean to the “D” as in “diss.”

“Mister, that makes sense because when Mister was in the shower, the Smee left his foods and ran over to try ‘n get inside where the fresh water was happenin’ (but was thwarted by the close-ification of the door).”

Cut to the dissed and abandoned water dish, now but a pale, watered-down version of itself.

Not Enough Womb

Limp-wristed Tales Part II: The curiousness of The Smee’s well-documented practice of bending his front leg back under he-self certainly flummoxes and perplexifies!
As far as we know, he is the only smitty in history (or maybe just his story) to do so!

Yearning for meaning (or maybe just yawning), experts posit that this wrist-limpification is perhaps a practice he developed in utero because there wasn’t enough womb.

[ ! – ed.]

A Prayerful Smee

Mister Smitty likes to pray!

Laying on his side, The Smee rolls a bit onto his back and drops his wee front paws over at the wrist –

“Mister, do cats have wrists?”

“Mister, I don’t know. But if so, then in this position they are limp-wristed.”

While this genuine reflection of devotion happens regularly, it’s not like going to matinees on a Vespa or anything.

“Mister, what’s he praying about?”

“He’s probably saying, ‘please deliver me from the idiocy of my Misters.’”

Mooning

Mister Smitty communes with the moon!

As a moon worshipper, or “Moonie,” Mister Smitty gets hisself a front row seat when the moon gets all waxy and full. There, he can bathe -- completely luned – in its smitty-white beams!

The Smee’s moon ministrations (secret, Wiccan) cannot be discussed here, but as photos of his practices (already, sadly, leaked to the conventional press) indicate, most of his secret practices are internal; only a few odd postures and quirky jumps can be construed as… lunar tics.