The Ruby Rose Report: Trouble with the Uninvited DownstaIirs Neighbors

 

I had been doing well with my road work. My parents said they could see my hips again. I wanted to snap at them that I wasn’t a piece of meat, but doing so would mean I would never get a piece of meat.

            On Tuesday, I had to stop training as a terrible storm rampaged up the coast. The talking heads on the TV said we could get three Snow-pockets. Since Mommy didn’t want me walking on the snow and ice, I was resigned to the fact I would not see the outside until spring.

            I am still getting used to winter in the Northeast, where the weather forecasters exaggerate snow like a middle school student talking about his little man. After experiencing them, we are left cold and wet and have a big mess to clean up.

            But, this storm had an effect no teenage boy can cause.

            I got downstairs neighbors.

            Pablo, he ferrel sought shelter from the storm, and worse than that, he brought his wife Guinevere and two children.

            I have superior hearing and smell, so while my parents were ignorant of the infiltration, I was all too aware and quite bothered. I went to the floor vent and barked at them to leave. “Miss Ruby,” Pablo said, “there is  terrible storm coming, you don’t want us and the young ones to die in the snow.”

            I wouldn’t say I wanted it. I was more ambivalent than anything else, but letting kitties freeze is the kind of thing that spreads around and ruins reputations. Also, I didn’t want my parents to uncover them while shoveling, frozen together like the scientist bodies on True Detective.

            (If you don’t get the reference, don’t worry, no one is watching or missing True Detective.)

            So, I let them stay. Several times, before bed, I had to bark at the floor to get them to keep it down. I could barely ignore my parents with all the noise they were making.

            The problem with having cats living downstairs is that they are nocturnal neighbors. At 2:00, I heard music from below and barked at them to quiet down. “It’s a mouse mariachi band,” they purred. Two other later, I smelled a terrible stench coming from under the house. I barked down, asking what they were doing. “Cooking the band for breakfast,” they said. Cruel, but they were off-tune, and some cats like eat the show for dinner.

            At dawn, I told them it was time to go, but they said it was still snowing. Two hours later, I did it again. “The National Weather Service said a foot of snow, it’s barely been two inches.” I told them they had the forecast wrong.

            “Who knows more about snow? A New England meteorologist or a Daytona Griffon?”

            They had a point.

            So it looks like I have noisy downstairs neighbors until at least March,

            It will be a long, dark, cold, smelly, and noisy winter in these parts.

            I can’t wait until spring.