Miss Scarlet, A Short Amusement
On a particularly beautiful, sunny afternoon, on the 4th floor apartment of a modern 7 story apartment building located adjacent to University Avenue in the picaresque town of Hillcrest, California, Miss Scarlet was awoken from her well deserved nap by an unwanted disturbance making itself known to her on the busy street below.
“What are those idiots doing?” Miss Scarlet asked herself while her oval eyes opened slowly so that she could ascertain the cause of her unfortunate awakening. Her next thought was, “How stupid can they be?”
But before we explore the reasons why Miss Scarlet asked herself these things, it might be beneficial to get to know Miss Scarlet first.
Let it be known to all auditors of this account that Miss Scarlet had built a good life for herself. She had trained her human slave properly. Her human fed her exactly the food that pleased her very particular palette, at the exact time she was supposed to, and her human kept Miss Scarlet’s litter box spic and span. For this, Miss Scarlet allowed her slave to pet her for a few minutes each evening, and every once in a while Miss Scarlet granted her human the happiness of hearing her purr.
But what had really made Miss Scarlet happy was when her human installed a very comfortable cushion on the small balcony overlooking the street four stories below her human’s apartment. And it was on that very cushion that Miss Scarlet now rested. “Resting from what,” you might ask? Miss Scarlet’s reply, if she deigned to give one, would be, “Because I can.”
In truth, Miss Scarlet could do whatever she wished to do with her time. And yes, most of that time Miss Scarlet spent reclining luxuriantly on her cushion on her balcony overlooking the neighborhood. Miss Scarlet may ask you, “Do you have a problem with that?” If you do have a problem with that, rest assured, Miss Scarlet could care less.
Miss Scarlet slowly pushed her considerable bulk into a standing position, arched her back, stuck her butt in the air, stretched her tail, and yawned. And then, she was back resting on the cushion, her activity for the day taken care of in that thirty second stretch.
She resumed her tireless scrutiny of the goings on that occurred down on the street and sidewalks below her. And that was when we entered her story, when she had asked herself in a tone thick with irritation, “What are those idiots doing?”
The “idiots” she referred to turned out to be two dogs, unleashed and without their owners to supervise them. The fact that she decided to pay attention to the dogs below at all should not be used in any way to gauge Miss Scarlet’s appreciation or affection of the noisy beasts her human slave called “dogs.”
The fact of the matter is that Miss Scarlet absolutely abhorred dogs of any type, sex or age. In an ideal world, there simply would not be any dogs at all. But, much to her eternal chagrin, dogs did indeed exist. Miss Scarlet felt that the dog species was an aberration of all that was decent, proper, and tranquil in this life. Miss Scarlet made no bones that she thought they were ugly, smelly, obnoxious creatures who submitted to their masters without a shred of decency or self respect. In short, Miss Scarlet hated dogs as much as it was possible for her to hate anything. And in Miss Scarlet’s case, that was a lot.
Miss Scarlet noticed that the two dogs below seemed to be in the early stages of a physical confrontation. Miss Scarlet also thought to herself that the two dogs were completely mismatched physically. One was very large, muscular and had the jaws of a shark. The other dog was tiny like a lap dog, it had no fur and looked like a little brown rat turd compared to its opponent.
“This should be good,” Miss Scarlet smiled in anticipation. “It will be fun to watch this rat dog torn to shreds. Those little dogs are the worst. Yippy, nippy, yapping little beasts.” Miss Scarlet licked a paw and bathed her cheeks with it and told herself, “Plus, there isn’t much else to look at this present moment.”
She watched as the small dog walked up to the big dog who was blocking his way forward on the sidewalk. The big dog didn’t seem to care who or what he was blocking. The big dog didn’t seem to notice the rat dog at all. This upset the rat dog. The rat dog was determined to make his presence known to the big dog. The rat dog had made up his mind that this time, he would be given the dignity of right of way. This time, he would be treated with respect.
Miss Scarlet, watching from her perch, blinked her eyes at how stupid and presumptuous the rat dog was being. The big dog could eat the rat dog as a snack. “Stupid dogs,” Miss Scarlet thought happily. “Such stupid, stupid animals.”
By this time the rat dog had decided that the most effective action he could take to get noticed was to start biting the large dog’s front legs. As soon as he started to dart forward and nip at the big dog’s legs and paws, the big dog looked down with a mixture of annoyance and a strange sense of admiration at the little dog’s guts. He wondered if madness had gripped the little dog’s mind. But if it had, the mental disorder soon made the rat dog do something even more idiotic. He started to push his snout into the big dog’s underbelly and crotch area. He was trying to bite down there.
Miss Scarlet sensibly judged this strategy being employed by the small dog as “suicidal, pure and simple.” She too wondered at the rat dog’s sanity. “That rat dog has a screw loose, or something. He’s going to get himself killed down there.” But Miss Scarlet’s ears were perked up and she was now sitting on the cushion, not reclining as before. She was interested. This could be one of the more exciting events she had witnessed from her perch in recent memory.
The rat dog had gone all in at this point and his attacks had become noisier, if not any more effective. And the big dog’s feelings had changed from annoyed amusement to a darkening sense of anger, restrained only by his knowledge that if he were to fight the small dog, the small dog might not walk away from that place. On the other hand, the big dog thought dimly, if I moved aside all trouble could be avoided. But then the big dog’s pride made itself known and let the big dog know that the big dog wasn’t moving anywhere, anytime soon for some rat dog half its size.
It should come as no surprise that Miss Scarlet considered herself to be both beautiful and wise. “I’ve lived for over nine human years honey, and believe me, I’ve seen a thing or two,” she’d like to remind you. Yet in all of Miss Scarlet’s depth of experience, she had never seen an act of suicidal valour before. And believe it or not, Miss Scarlet had indeed “seen some things.”
“My life hasn’t always been peaches and cream darling, I’ll have you know I was adopted!” Miss Scarlet found the mere thought of her adoption repugnant. “Who in their right mind would willingly give me up?” She indignantly wanted to know.
Now, in the spirit of full transparency, Miss Scarlet was indeed adopted, but she had been adopted not from a miserable shelter, or off the street like some starving mutt cat, but instead from her human’s sister, who had spoiled Miss Scarlet from birth, and who had only very reluctantly given the cute little full breed fur ball to her sister on her 50th birthday as a present.
And yet even with all that wealth of life experience behind her, which could potentially breed a cynical way of looking at things, Miss Scarlet was yet still shaken somewhat by the courageous and ultimately hopeless stand the rat dog was making. “That rat dog’s had enough. He’s fed up. I know a thing or two about that!” Miss Scarlet growled deep inside. “The big always get what they want, and it’s just not fair!” Miss Scarlet was so worked up that she had risen from the cushion and was now standing on her hindlegs, her forepaws holding onto the metal railing of the balcony. In doing this, she also procured for herself a better view of the combat below, clear of obstruction.
The big dog’s irritation had grown, and was now threatening to boil over into both anger and a desire to harm the annoying thing bothering him. All the big dog had wanted to do that afternoon was to take a slow leisurely walk and to take in some sun. This new development had begun to erode his enjoyment factor. The big dog made the decision to rid himself of the irritant.
He patiently waited for the little dog to withdraw his head from his belly area where it was ineffectually trying to hurt him and at the right moment the big dog lifted one of his big round paws and sideswiped the little dog whose body flew from the blow across the sidewalk and onto the streetside curb. The little dog reacted to this new and surprising situation by laying on his back with his legs raised and his mouth whimpering as he waited for the big dog to deliver the final, lethal blow. But to his amazement, no such blow was forthcoming.
Witnessing this, Miss Scarlet thought, “the big dog is showing his restraint and also his nobleness, as befits a true gentleman. He is a good one, although he is still a despicable piece of animal trash. For no matter what he does that may seem admirable, he is still nonetheless a dog.”
The little dog shook off the recent attack and saw that fortune was smiling upon him and had given him a chance to redeem himself. He leapt up on all fours and charged the big dog, barking ferociously, or so he thought. To everybody else his yaps were high pitched and female sounding. His charge, which was both as courageous as it was foolhardy, was alas completely wasted on the big dog, who timed his next hit perfectly to send the little dog scooting down the sidewalk on his back, yapping all the while.
Miss Scarlet sat back down on her cushion. Her excitement had begun to fade. “The little dog’s goose is cooked,” is how she put it, shaking her head. She still peered down, just in case something dramatic might yet transpire to entertain her.
But her expectation of any more excitement occurring down on the sidewalk was almost immediately quelled by the next actions of the big dog who had simply walked over the little dog who was lying supine on the sidewalk, still reeling from the last blow bestowed on him by the big dog. As the big dog stepped over the little dog, he bent his neck down toward the little dog and rubbed snouts with him and then happily continued on down the sidewalk to enjoy the rest of his walk.
The little dog snapped to his feet and looked towards the disappearing big dog. He yapped once or twice, but friendly this time, as if in gratitude, and his tail wagged enthusiastically. The big dog, this one time at least, had acknowledged him and accepted his right to exist and that he too had the right to use the sidewalk. The little dog was happy about that.
Scarlet yawned and rolled over onto her side as she felt a nap coming on. A nice nap would fortify her for later, when she would need to be alert back on her perch as her slave human slept. Sometimes at night the slaves moving in their chunks of metal below on the street rammed into each other. That was always fun.
As she laid there on her nice, warm cushion, waiting for golden sleep to envelope her, Scarlet closed her eyes and thought to herself, “well, sometimes, just sometimes, everybody wins.” And her eyes slowly closed and soon she could be heard softly snoring and all was well in Miss Scarlet’s Universe, “which is the only Universe that at all matters,” or so says Miss Scarlet.