Mum says I am the sweetest cat ever. The cricket that walked by disagreed. He was a big striper, legs so long he could hop up onto the kitchen counter. These bigguns can also hop into the terlit, but unless you kill or flush, they climb out, once they come to. Flushing contradicts the Bermuda Rule: if it’s yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down. The cricket does have brown, but not the right smell.

As Cricket struts by my pie hole, figuring correctly that this old cat is too lazy to give chase, I stretch into a wide slow yawn. I catch Mum’s eye and she winks, not missing a beat of her game of BubbleShooter, even though she is supposed to be editing a work document.

VioLetta! The cricket is paralyzed, by my Stink Breath. He lays stunned long enough for mum to tap him into the cricket tube with a piece of junk mail.

This device (which I told Mum we should sell on ebay or maybe it could land us a seat on the Oprah show, but she said she does not need any more of the window treatment that came rolled up in it) is a long tube of clear plastic and once caught, the cricket can’t jump out. After a few days (or a brown moment), he is floating towards the Chesapeake Bay.

I do have seriously bad breath. Mum has taken me for dental treatments, but after a month the bad breath is back. At least I’m doing something useful with it, right?