Of Cats and Gerbils

Having totally knitted myself out last evening (Is't possible?), today I bring you the tale of the gerbil and the cat. Tim's and my first pet (other than the two dead fish, which we will not discuss here) is a gerbil named "Bernard." No, not after Bernard in the Rescuers, but after General Sir Bernard Montgomery, who bested Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, in Egypt at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Gerbils are desert animals, you see. And I'm a history teacher. Please don't laugh. They say I can live a quite normal life if I drink lots of tea and stay away from PBS specials on the English Civil War.

Anyway...the gerbil is our first, though least beloved pet. It's hard to love a Gerbil more than...well, anything, really. It's just that he's so paranoid. He will never trust us, despite the fact that we have never harmed one hair on his small body, he always assumes we thirst for gerbil blood. Bernie lives in a cage, equipped with all the necessities of gerbil life, atop a bookcase in the office. Here he is, in all his nervous glory:

Little does he know that though we bear him no malice, there is one who does. There is a watcher in the night, who indeed thirsts for his blood. I give you...Lily...viscious huntress.

And at her customary perch atop the monitor, plotting the gerbil's demise.

Lily's favorite, though unsuccessful, method, is to hurl herself bodily at the side of the cage, feet frantically searching for purchase. Finding none, she tumbles downward onto the printer two feet below, causing it to emit an angry beep and shoot out a blank sheet of paper. This scares Lily enough that she rockets off the desk and out of the room, ashamed of her lack of hunting prowess.

But behind that innocent facade she is again hatching gerbilly plots, awaiting the precise psychological moment at which her dreams will come true. Someday...oh, yes...someday...MWAHAHAHAHA!