Doug the dog and Cate the cat were best friends.

Doug the dog and Cate the cat were best friends.

One night, on a safe bed of warm leaves beneath the stars, Cate the Cat asked Doug the Dog how he felt about boxes. "Oh, yeah!" enthused Doug, "Like a refrigerator-box house!" The

Tortoiseshell cat replied she liked sniffing the boxes when her human opened them. Sometimes, when she was little, she slept in the boxes. Now, she didn't do that as often.

Having been rescued from a shelter for the abandoned and abused pets, she was a weird kitty who hated being touched. She walked with a limp. She had a burn mark near her left eye

and wasn't used to sleep in a bed. I started to train her and after a month or two, I was able to convince her to share the matress. I often awoken in the middle of the night with

urge to go walkies. I would jump on her head and lick her face until she got up at 2 am. I rewarded her response with a vigorous tail wagging. "Whose a good owner? You are!"

Of course she would look at the clock, groan something illegible and go right back to sleep.She's not really that good an owner but keeping up the illusion is also a part of my job

Being a clock maiden was tough work. Every hour on the hour, she had to shriek a bird call, according to the species depicted at that time. But, as usual, she overslept and missed

the red-throated loon call until it was nearly half past blue-footed booby. The old clockmaker from town came up the long wooden staircase and rapped her on the head for being so

laconic for a booby. Boobies were known for their distinctive verbosity which besides the finer details of various blueberries also included a refutation of The Herisiarch of Rome.