ONCE UPON A TIME, A GUY PAINTING A HOUSE ACQUIRED A GREAT PERSONAITY IN A CAT SUIT

[DEAR READERS: You can interpret that headline in a few ways, but I'll confess right now that I've never acquired a personality in a cat suit. I don't own a cat suit. Now, read on about William Powell.]
Here we are, my fellow Americans, celebrating Labor Day 2024, a Monday federal holiday created in honor of Americans who work!
As my Senior Office Cat William Powell points out, “You are, after all, the son of a union man.”

So true. And we have workers in our own home office. Now, let’s ease our way into this edition of our long-running weekend feature titled “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap.”
That is one of the our earliest photos of Senior Office Cat William Powell. I’d been outside, one foot on a ladder and the other on the “brick-walled” front-of-the-house flower bed. Why? Because in that Summer 2018 it was time to paint the wood trim on our home in a nice neighborhood in southern Oak Cliff. And that brings us to William Powell’s arrival.
There I was — only an aluminum ladder to keep my fat backside delicately balanced — and I was scraping some inexplicably untidy white paint off the wood.
[DEAR READERS: Keep in mind that at that point in life I’d spent from Summer 1965 through Summer of 2018 without ever having learned to do anything profitable except type while simultaneously remembering the alphabet and the rules for spelling and grammar, some of which I followed flawlessly for decades. I never learned how to really "work."]
I looked down from my uncertain perch and sitting on the sidewalk between the flowerbed and the grassy yard, was a young cat. I got down off the wall by deftly descending via ladder and sat down on the flowerbed wall while feeling safe for the first time in hours. That’s my blue shirt — the rest of it had white
specks and accidental smears. And that cat that ventured up to sit next to me is the wandering —- nearly
grown-up — kitten who would become known as “William Powell.”
In the following hours he quickly adapted to his position of leadership in the household. [That's William snoozing in his personal rocking chair in the bedroom. He might share it with Junior Office Cat Stevie Ray if pressed.]
Nowadays, the first thing every morning is William shows the other cats and the dogs that it’s time to have breakfast at their assigned AODs — Areas of Dining. Then, when I go to my office to begin typing on some piece of great fiction or entertaining nonfiction or letters and emails to my dear friends, William races to beat me to the office. [On the left, that's Dudley the Angel, William at the door to Martha's office and, on Martha's office floor, Hastings, the kitten rescued off a Duncanville Street.
Back to William: He leaps onto his Office Observation Platform Site (OOPS) to make sure all is OK from the house to the street [photo right]. If it isn’t he may sound an alarm — kind of a guttural snarl. Amplified, it would sound like a giant dinosaur threatening a city in a movie.

William, as the Senior Office Cat, is also responsible for educating Stevie Ray Treeboy, the Junior Office Cat I rescued when I found him yowling to the world while intently gripping a flimsy mimosa branch early one morning in 2018 — that mimosa was about 25 feet from the flowerbed but, a few years later, the new owners had the tree removed and took out all the precious flowers (My rose bush! My rose bush!, bawled the typer) I’d dripped paint on when William and I gave that side of the house a new coat of tough, cheap white paint.
Back to the day I met William. That’s my blue painting shirt in the corner of the photo as William — such green eyes — explains the principles of paint-brushing on wooden surfaces to me. He held up his front paws and all I could see was fur nearly covering the pads. He said to me, “Follow this rule: If you’re painting, keep these babies covered!” he yowled as he whipped out his claws. He added, “The rule is ‘Cover the surface, don’t carve it!’ That’s the Law of the Cats.” [LARRY ASIDE: I speak Cat semi-fluently.]
Such a smart cat. In fact, that  day I met him, I walked over to our front door, opened it, asked, “Would you like to come in?” He responded by walking in, looking around and staying— He has never again volunteered to help me paint anything in or out of the house.
“I’m a housecat,” he once told me. “It is my elevated position in life and I’m keeping it.”
William’s “do-no-actual labor — advise only” attitude is why he’s in top management at readlarrypowell.com.
He raised Stevie Ray — taught him how to nap quietly, how to show up for meals, how to flop in the office and be ready for assignments. How to charm, then lecture dogs — the dogs learned behavior rules from William, too.
Yes, Dear Readers and dog and cat fans, the guy who types all this stuff is crazy about cats and dogs. And William Powell is the guiding light for mannerly behavior in its, dogs or children in any office situation.
The feline napper William Powell is a cool cat — awake, asleep or monitoring the work in the office.
The final photo? There’s William and Stevie Ray in a counseling session on that Office Observation Platform Site. (OOPS). [LARRY CONFESSION; William refuses to refer to it as “The OOPS.” He’s too clever a cat to stoop to my level. — LARRY]
[DEAR READERS: Send photos of your slumbering critters to [email protected] and tell us why you love ‘em and how you got ‘em. We’ll spotlight them in our long-running weekend feature Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap. It’s a joy to see why people love their critters — and readlarrypowell.com believes it helps people decide to make room in their lives for a dog, a cat or any other critter in need of a loving life.]