Many thanks to my sister Laura, lifelong advocate and servant to the feline tribe, for providing the raw material and the photograph for this story.

I may have already written about Dollop’s general attitude towards life. His full name (A Little Slice of Pumpkin Pie with a Dollop of Whipped Cream) makes him sound all cute and cuddly, but don’t be fooled. He is the type who will wait in a corner for an unsuspecting ankle or shin, and silently attack with claws and fangs.

He and his people, as we all know, are also death on birds. So, each spring, my sister sets about attaching a bell to the collar of each cat as a means of leveling the playing field. Until this year, Dollop had managed to escape this indignity. However, this year Laura managed to catch Dollop and install a bell, much to his poorly muted rage. Following this rough treatment, Dollop disappeared for two days. Laura, being who she is, climbed a tall ladder leading up to the attic, which is Dollop’s favorite sleeping place and is accessible only from outside the house. There she found him, glowering in a corner, with the bell still around his neck. He savagely repelled her attempts to remove the bell and glared at her with glowing eyes while she humbly placed a special offering of food and water at his feet, albeit from a safe distance.

The next day, Laura went out to repeat the previous evening’s ministrations, and was able to snap this picture, which she captioned “Dollop deigns to emerge—because he is hungry.” You may notice that the bell is gone.

Laura says that she has learned her lesson and hopes that she can soon put the whole unfortunate incident behind her.