MUSING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF LITERATURE, SLEEPING DOGS & NAPPING CATS -- SORT OF

    Once upon a time a guy with a low-profit past and a murky future as an unbelievably wealthy writer flopped onto his bed with his handy notepad, a couple of pens and some inspiration that vanished.
    He was quickly accompanied by his loyal canine companion Porche Noel, a dog with more than 15 years of experience as both a writer’s inspiration and a well-paid advisor in key moments of literary stress.

    Porche Noel had won her job at Christmas in 2009 by agreeing that the Oxford comma was needless punctuation in American English. "Needless," she snarled. It is difficult for a dog to bark “Needless,” but she really wanted the job and she’s an achiever.
    Back to the photograph that opens this edition of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap.
    The picture, as you can see, has both a sleeping dog and some napping cats. And you see to the right the left foot of the guy shooting pictures with a phone in the 21st Century.
[LARRY NOTE: That phrasing “see to the right the left” is almost clever, isn’t it? Some readers will be right in the middle on judging the success of that wordy gimmick.]
   It is not often that this particular individual human gets sleepy in either the daytime or the nighttime. He'll stay awake nights wondering if he's an insomniac.
   Still, with faith in his Slumber Indicators, he stumbled from his office, careened down the hall to the bed in hopes of achieving what normal humans refer to as a “refreshing nap.”
  While desperately sleepy (until he crash-landed on the mattress), the would-be wealthiest writer in Texas quickly got un-sleepy. His eyes popped open like the hood on a fancy electric car. [Did you see the news this week? Headline read “Tesla recalls 1.8 million cars because their hoods can open while driving.” That’ll keep a driver awake, right?]
Back to the guy on the bed. His plotting-while-paragraphing brain had slapped shut like the open path to the goal-line for a Dallas Cowboys running back in the playoffs.
    Suddenly the hack writer was reduced to sports comparisons — it was like running for office without a 3-point shot. Or trying to hit a curve ball with a tight grip on a handful of spaghetti. [LARRY NOTE: You see now why my career as a sportswriter at The Shreveport Times didn’t last much longer than a 100-yard dash.]
    So, in summation, we have no plot, our characters are not well-formed and we have no agent.
[LARRY ASIDE; This stretch of weekend prose is what happens when we have photos of no other sleeping/napping animals than critters fully employed by readlarrypowell.com. They think I’m probably going to win Lotto Texas and bail ‘em out of this minimum-wage existence. For the sake of my dogs and cats, send photos of your sleeping dogs and napping cats to [email protected]. With your help, readlarrypowell.com will give ‘em a loving weekend spotlight.]
CONSIDERATIONS
IN A CLOSING SEGMENT
    It may be time to write a biography of former U.S. Congressman from Tennessee, the honorable David Crockett. We’ll call it “The Cowtown Coonskin Cap Caper.” Ol’ Davy didn’t go straight to San Antonio when he first came to Texas. In this story, he stopped in Texarkana to get photographed while standing with one foot in Texas and one in Arkansas. Then he rode a local mule to Dallas, swapped it for a higher-price-than-expected prairie pony from a guy named Ford (some say it was the first Mustang) and moseyed on to Fort Worth. Before he left Cowtown, he penned a note
for Robert LeRoy Parker and Henry Longabaugh reminding them "You boys behae yerselves." Who? Oh, come on. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid — two once-upon-a-time kings of Cowtown.
    Whatever turns up in the tale, credit for authorship will go to the girl with the faux flower collar, Porche Noel. She adores the collar her devoted companion, Larry “Madly Typing” Powell, bought her one afternoon when he went to a pet store looking for dog treats, cat food and inspiration for a novel. Two outta three, yep, two outta three.
   As you see, in addition to the “Afternoon Sprawl” photo, I’ve included mugshots of the two cats nodded off with Porche. Me? No picture, except of my well-socked foot and a layer of cat hair in that photo with Stevie Ray. I was in my socks because I’m careful with my soul. What? Oh. It’s “sole.” Good catch, Porche. The cat with the blue eyes -- that's Hastings, a kitten I rescued from Hastings Street in Duncanville.
    In summation: You'd think a person would be able to build a best-seller on the foundation of a free Dallas dog, a free Dallas kitten (Stevie Ray) and a free Duncanville kitten. We'll work on it. Senior Office Cat William Powell -- a very stern manager of the operation --says he'll schedule some time or us.
[SEND YOUR SLEEPING DOG, NAPPING CAT, SNOOZING IN-LAW photos to [email protected]. We’ve been posting these slumbering critters every weekend since May 14, 2005. That’s more than 19 years. Yes, unlike the last time the Dallas Cowboys won a Super Bowl (Jan. 28, 1996), Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap is from THIS century.]