Raymond: Let the Games Begin
The cat throws down the gauntlet A FOUR-MINUTE tale
This is a favorite Raymond story from the archive of February, 2023. If you need a good laugh, (and who doesn’t?) have a look.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, over my usual bowl of bran flakes and a cup of coffee, mindlessly deleting my way through spam and texts, when I spied something odd under the table. I discovered it was a polishing pad – one of the white woolly buffing pads I use out in my workshop. How the hell did that get in here?
I keep a cardboard box of mixed buffing pads on my workbench out in the garage. I could only imagine that Raymond got into the box and helped himself — the usual mischief. I picked up the pad and took it out to the workbench and threw it back into the box.
About four this afternoon, I came into the house for another beer ( happy hour begins early on Marnell Avenue ), and there, next to the window was the fuzzy buffing pad again. Sitting next to it was Raymond.
He stared at me and said, “I found it. I like it. I’m keeping it.” Well, no, he didn’t exactly say that, but I can read Ray’s’ mind — it’s a very simple mind to read. I told him, “Oh yeah? Two can play this game, buddy.”
I picked up the pad, showed it to him and let him watch me walk out the door with it. He followed me to the workshop, tail in the air like a mobile antenna, and watched me put it back in the box. He saw me fold the box flaps and move the buffers to an upper shelf.
The next morning, I went out to the workshop and the box flaps had been torn open, and there were six buffing pads scattered about – on the floor, in a coffee mug, on the workbench, and next to the lathe. Raymond had apparently taken up the challenge. Let the games begin!
When I went back to the house, Ray was in his hotbox – a large cut-out cardboard box placed over the heater vent where he goes to worship. Heat is his god. Raymond had his head in the box, and was sleeping with his new acquisition, the buffing pad.
Over the next few days, it was flat-out GAME ON! I hid buffing pads all over the shop — on top of the car, behind the crates, in the pile of wood scraps, in a coffee can on the workbench, and in an old rubber boot. Ray found them and brought them into the house. I’d even thrown one up into the loft where it landed on a pile of canvas sails. He went up the ladder to look around and found it. Then he left it on the top rung of the ladder for me to find, and I knew something was up…
Ray changed the rules. The pads that I’d been hiding for him all disappeared! I looked everywhere for them and realized that Ray had skunked me. “You look for them, Dennis,” he said, “and lots of luck to you, man.” Game over.
Now, after his big buffing pad victory, we are playing “Find the Button”, a new game Raymond invented. He found a large yellow button somewhere in his world and brought it into the house and dropped it in his water bowl. I keep putting it out in the garden on a rock ( or under a leaf, or on top of the fountain) and he finds it and brings it back in.
So far, the score is Ray: 9, Dennis: 0. That animal is a gamer, and he plays to win.
Raymond is a proud winner of an Erica Drayton Top In Fiction Award for his series of Pawed Casts. He could not be prouder. See “Up All Night With Raymond HERE .
This is so funny! “Heat is his god” What a wonderful piece to wake up and read with my own coffee.
That is one wily animal there. Those Norweedgies are smart and love the devilment of yanking their staff's chains. Carry on!