When I took in the cats I should have understood that there is some sort of "female bond" between the female cats and their female human, my 18-year-old bride who isn't 18 anymore after almost 39 years of marriage. 'Twas the wife who took in the momcat Mister Mittens and had her on her lap in the living room when the cat was deep into labor and began to give birth early in July of 2010.

Anyway this is the scene tonight at my wife's bed. The tomcat Trouble is downstairs with 1/8 Pole perched at the window that overlooks the driveway with dreams of getting out to prowl and maybe fight like his castrated genes still tell him to do but the girls are laid up in the bride's bed with that "female love thing" while awaiting the bride to roll under the covers so they can go "snootch" up against her for extra warmth and happiness.

The wife does not hit the cats with sticks and bats. The wife buys them premium food, toys, comforters, treats and never lets one walk by without a pet or a rub. She was the one who laid out the decision that the spaying and neutering were going to be done at an animal hospital with a skilled team instead of a quickie job at the shelter for 75 bucks.

Mister Mittens is in the foreground while her daughter Sweet Babycakes is in the background. You can tell by this photo that both girls are scared to death to be in my wife's bed like I could be.

C-A-T-S have the "life of Riley" with the 1/4p's...snoozing the night away all comfy until the
5am "mess-hall" call

Mess call?

Out of boot camp in Parris Island I was thrown into a mob for infantry training before being assigned to a regular outfit but before anything could happen we were going to work a mess hall with bad duty in North Carolina at Camp LeJeune for a few weeks until the next mob of clowns came along. Scrubbing huge pots or peeling a 50-pound bag of onions at 4 a.m. is not a thrill.

Except for four.

Gunny needed 4 Marines for the armory and to be fair caught them out of the middle of the roster. The letter "M" is the 13th letter of the alphabet and I was one of the four called.

I had just turned 18 and caught a job that went from 8 to 4. My job was to break down weapons and clean them, put them back together and lay them back into inventory. The weapons were out of WWI, WWII and Korea and had no chance to go to Vietnam in the early months of 1966 but I learned the Springfield and Remington '03, the BAR, the Thompson, and the both the Browning heavy and light machine guns. The sergeant in charge was a Korean combat vet and came to work every day with a lot of beer and an attitude. Nobody &%$#ed with his armory - he had all the weapons and was nuts and had 20 years in.

Just a flashback.