Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

Well, it’s Tuesday, although really it’s Wednesday morning.

I just got back from Jacki’s and I have to say that it was one of our more interesting nights. Lately, we’ve been having problems trying to find stuff to do. Most of the time, we wind up driving somewhere to get coffee and driving home. Last night we decided to start watching Shawshank Redemption; also, we decided to start it right before Jacki went to work so we wouldn’t finish it and would then have something to do the next day. As you can see, our planning is starting to get a bit out of hand.

Today, was different though. We had a plan; it was to finish watching Shawshank Redemption. I think there was something about American Idol in there too. Anyway, we finished the movie and put in another one: Forrest Gump. Then, we followed that up with yet ANOTHER movie, Down With Love. I left towards the end of that last movie because it was getting late and Jacki was beside me, hardcore asleep.

The best part of the night was not the movies, American Idol, Jacki’s drowsiness, or our collage-making (yes—this was actually part of the evening). No. The best part of the night occured DURING American Idol.

You see, Jacki is a person who doesn’t like it hot inside a house; I too am the same way. Because it was such a wonderful day today (65 degrees outside—so nice), Jacki decided just to leave the doors to the house open. I was perfectly fine with this because normally her house is an inferno. Actually, I would say I loved the idea. The temperature was just right.

So, there the two of us were, sitting on the couch watching American Idol with the front and back door wide open, when I see something out of the corner of my right eye; it was near Jacki’s back door. I glanced towards it and realized, “Oh, it’s just Jacki’s cat.” Wait a minute—Jacki doesn’t have a cat. The only thing I could reason was that a stray cat wandered into Jacki’s kitchen because it smelled our delicious Mexican cuisine, which we (Jacki) had prepared. My concern was apparent in the way I handled the situation. I leaned over to Jacki and said, “Hey… there’s a cat in your house.”

Jacki, being the calm person she is, started screaming at it—not in a bad way, mind you, but in a I-love-you-and-want-to-pet-you kind of way. Still, most animals cannot discern the difference between the two, and the cat got scared and ran away: end of story, right? Wrong. About 10 minutes later, 2 black kittens wander into Jacki’s house. I alerted Jacki to the matter again and she looked their way. One of them was fluffy and that was all Jacki needed to be set off. She leaped from the couch and went chasing after it, confused about why it was running away. “Maybe because you were yelling and charging towards it?” I offered as a reason.
“Shaun, you have to catch it for me!” Jacki said.
“Jacki…” I groaned.
“Shaun! Come on! I want to pet it like a like a lit-tle ba-by.”
“I can’t catch it. It’ll run away,” I said trying once again to get out of hunting something for sport in order to appease Jacki.
“We’ll give it some milk. Just put it by the door and then GRAB IT when it comes to eat!”
“Geez. Fine. Whatever.”

To make a long story short, I did just that and Jacki’s plan worked perfectly. She got to hold one of the kittens, albeit the non-fluffy one. The other cat was just too scared to be coerced inside the house. Throughout the whole ordeal, I felt like a kidnapper to draw a child close so that I might snatch it. I think the fluffy cat caught onto this vibe and that’s why I could not get close enough to grab itl. In fact, once we gave up on the fluffy one, he would still sneak into the house every so often, but if you so much as glanced his way, that cat would run away like one of us was shooting at his feet.

Really, the whole escapade added a lot to American Idol.

I think the funniest part of the story was not so much that we tried to lure one of the cat’s inside like a child molestor, but it was the whole situation itself. Wild animals were literally wandering into Jacki’s kitchen to scavenge for food.

Unfortunately, one of the cats probably had some sort of disease like that monkey in Outbreak. In 48 hours, I’ll probably die of the Ebola virus or something like that. Whatever, I guess. At least I’ll have a reason for not going to class.