In honor of the opening of the 2023 Major League Baseball season and the arrival of the hallowed holiday April 1, your April Fool dedicates this edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap to cats who understand baseball.
And we also will give tips for humans who want to learn how to read the mind of a cat.
You will need no special clothing, no unusual hats...This is between your brain and a cat's brain. Simply apply all of your powers of concentrated imagination or imaginated concentration. (Perhaps I made up a word....)
For this exercise in telepathic communication, we call upon our friend, Stevie Ray, a former mascot for the Kiest Park Quickpaws, a now defunct team that played in the Metro Taxpayer League. You may recall the year the Quickpaws won the pennant in a 4-out-of-7 series with the Washington D'DuckShuns with famed hurler Mallard Whiffmore on the mound.
All that aside, in order to qualify for an appearance in this feature, there must be a sleeping animal. In this case, that is Stevie Ray in the top photo -- I snapped the shot while he was on the mound -- his sleeping mound -- and dreaming of going from first to home on a single to left field -- something once accomplished only by the legendary Willie Mays. You can look it up.
That next shot shows Stevie Ray in the same position, but his eyes are open and his message is "Never go to sleep on the mound during the game." Good defensive advice. If you've got four paws and someone hits one right up the middle, you'd better be awake,
We caught this game of "Call The Pitch" being played by Stevie Ray as a lefty and his older mentor, Esme, who has made this call on the pitch: "Low and inside!"
Finally, Stevie Ray took this position as a symbol of the goal a pitcher will have when he gets two strikes on a batter. "Fan him." Or her. It's not just boys who play baseball. And we mention the possibility of "her" to honor Brown University freshman Olivia Pichardo who, on March 17 became, according to news reports, "the first woman to appear in a Division I baseball game."
She pinch-hit in the bottom of the 9th.
Her Brown University Bears lost to the Bryant U Bulldogs, 10-1. When you lose by 9 runs, that's a team sport, not the fault of just one batter off the bench in the bottom of the 9th, right boys?
[LARRY ASIDE: When I was a kid, two of the best players in our neighborhood were Ruthie and Serena, the older sisters of one of our pals, their little brother. I'm a believer in baseball for everybody... it's part of my Theology of the Diamond.]
No, about Stevie Ray's elevated demonstration. I walked into my elaborately cluttered home office and found him balancing on the back of my desk chair while trying to swat the chains on the fan and the light. I could read his mind: "Too windy and too bright to cat nap," he transmitted.
Where's the light fixture?
I was changing the light bulb and broke the glass cover and, searching in store after store, I haven't been able to find the right replacement. After all, it's not like I'm working in the dark -- I'm clearly working in the bright.
Is Stevie Ray a righty or lefty or ambipawstrus? In this final photo, he's giving us the "go to the left, down and away" sign. We're pretty sure.
[DEAR READERS: Send photos and the stories of your slumbering critters to [email protected] and we'll post them in our long-running feature, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cat Nap. You'll be helping people understand the joy of having a happy critter around the house.]
-- Office light fixture tips or techniques for brighting the future of Earthlings by clicking on 'comment' below or by emailing [email protected] and put "SWING FOR THE FENCES" in the subject line. Go Rangers. --