This afternoon, after I apologized to Alex for my wee tantrum, she said, “Angus, what have you been eating?”
“How kind of you to ask,” I replied a bit tartly. “It’s a good thing I am nae a pet, which we have now established. If I were, I would long since have been stinking up your closet with my moldering corpse, gone from this world for lack of anyone bothering to feed me.”
She scowled. “Well, you’re clearly not fading away. So you do eat, right?”
“I do indeed.”
“Well, what? And where have you been getting it?”
This was a bit uncomfortable, as I was not sure how she would take the answer.
“Well?” she said again after a minute.
“I have been snitching things from the kitchen, as is my right for the work that I do! But my diet is rather limited. I can’t open your refrigerator, so the best I can manage is things in boxes and bags…cereal and chips mostly. No one can begrudge me that, for I eat but a small amount. But it’s too much salt and sugar, which is nae good for my heart. Oh, how I long for a bit o’ the blessed haggis.”
“What in the world is haggis?”
“Oh, ’tis a lovely savory pudding. You start with the stomach of a sheep, then stuff it with a mixture of the sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs (all chopped up, of course), along with some oatmeal, suet, spices—”
“Stop!” she shrieked.
Then she began to make very loud and disgusting fake vomiting sounds.
I had not realized Americans have such sensitive stomachs.
When she finally calmed down, she said, “I promise I’ll bring you food from now on, Angus. I’m sorry I didna ask you sooner.”
It was my turn to scowl. “Are you making fun o’ me?”
“No! Why?”
“You said ‘didna’ rather than ‘didn’t.’ I thought you were makin’ fun o’ my accent.”
She blushed a bit. “Mom says I’m a natural mimic. I tend to pick up on the way people around me are speaking. When we go on vacation to Canada, I come back speaking like a Canadian. And if I visit Mom at work and talk to the woman there who sounds like you, I come back sounding a little like her.” She made a face. “Bennett-the-Booger says I pick up accents so easily because I have a weak personality.”
“He’s a booger, all right,” I agreed.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that she will bring me food from now on. Which will make things a bit easier.
She remains a slob (this is a word I recently learned from listening to Bennett-the-Booger), but I am starting to see that she is a kindhearted one, and that counts for something.