Molly & Milty — A Love Story

By Ken Luber
Idyllwild author

Editor’s note: This is another of a series of installments of a short story local author Kenneth Luber has written. See prior week Town Criers for the other installments.

Fred stared at me and blinked. I didn’t wait for another word from his lips. I did one of my famous twirls, a kind of two-footed pirouette and streaked from the living room.

It was snowing when I called for an outside roof-meeting with Chester and Gabriella the Princess. Milty doesn’t like the snow and was snoozing in the house. I explained the situation to my two feline friends. I had been selected to show Floppy Ears the ways of the house. He had been in all of the rooms. That was easy to see because his brown and white hair was everywhere, but Chester quickly pointed out, “He doesn’t know what any of the rooms mean.” Gabriella jingled her jeweled bells and agreed. “Function,” she said. “He needs to know how the function of each room changes a hotel into a home.”

Hotel into a home…. I really liked that. Princess Gabriella always had a way with meows.

Three days later it was still snowing and I was ready to start. I watched Fred reverse the car to the street and drive away. He had already taken Milty out for his morning walk. As usual when it snowed, Milty was snoozing in his bed. I playfully rubbed my nose against him, something I’d never done before. He blinked his eyes, rose on his front legs and opened his big yap with a yawn. I thought his tongue was going to hit the floor. I pushed a smile across my sweet lips, doing everything to show him I was being friendly. I kind of jerked my head to the side, turned and trotted to the kitchen door. When I looked back, Milty was sniffing at a pail of sand the workers had left. I jerked my head again. This time I heard his paws tapping against the linoleum behind me. Honestly, just about any mutt in the Animal Kingdom would have followed my cute sway.

First stop, of course, was the family room off the kitchen. I pointed my nose toward the TV and pawed open a cabinet to show him board games and toys left over from years before, when Fred and Betty’s son Bruce was small. When I glanced back, Milty was staring out the window watching snowflakes fall. Even my “meow” didn’t change Milty’s focus.

He was only a step behind when I entered the dining room. I made a graceful leap onto the table and immediately went to the silver candlestick holders. I figured that by now, having seen Fred eat at the kitchen table a ton of times, Milty knew what a table was for. I wanted him to see that this table with silver candlesticks — from Mexico Miss Betty had told me — was for special occasions. Sadly, he couldn’t see my point because he was under the table, woofing and gnawing on his leather bone. I was losing patience. I didn’t see a reason for going into the den since Milty had just about made it his second sleeping chamber, sprawled on the sofa or an armchair or lapping up whatever crumbs he found on the coffee table. Instead, with a sweet purr and jerk of my head I started for the laundry room. Milty dropped the bone from his mouth, crawled out from under the dining room table and followed me.

This was going to be a slam-dunk. A basket of Fred’s dirty clothes was parked in one corner, a box of soap sat on top of the shiny white washer and a few rags hung from a rope over the big sink. When I looked over to Milty, he was pulling a flowery bed sheet with his teeth out of the room. That was it. He had paid absolutely no attention to the family room, the dining room and now the easiest mark of all, the laundry room. There was no point in taking him upstairs. I, frankly, was furious. I jumped off the dryer and streaked past him straight to the kitchen, barreled out the doggy door and tried too cool myself down in a big snow bank.

I was still ranting when Fred walked into the house, sneezing, coughing, and wiping his nose. “I tried!” I yelled, racing into the living room. “I tried to be a guide, I tried to be a friend, I tried to educate Milty to the functions of this fake Tudor house! He doesn’t learn, Fred. He just can’t stay on point!” Fred tossed his briefcase down on his chair and sneezed. “And look at you,” I said. “You’re sneezing, coughing, in the grips of walking pneumonia! Why?” I hurtled onto the couch to a more oratorical position. “Because you’re outside walking that hound in the middle of a winter storm! You don’t walk me. I don’t have a leash with a collar around my neck! I don’t even have a jeweled collar, let me remind you. No sir. I’ve got a box, a nice, perfumed box in the laundry room. I’ve got brains enough to do my toilet business indoors. You don’t have to get a sunburned nose walking me in the summer or risk death taking me outdoors in the middle of an ice storm!”

“You’re getting overly dramatic again, Molly. Milton just needs time. You know he was abused.”

“I don’t want to hear that word ‘abused’ again, Fred!”

I was through trying to be a good sport. When I told Chester and Gabriella the Princess, they couldn’t believe Milty’s indifference or Fred’s displeasure with me. I won’t say I sulked. Cats aren’t sulkers. I hate to say this, but, honestly, cats don’t have the attention span for sulking. But I stayed in the top compartment of my scratching tree for several days.

Molly & Milty return next week.