As I scribble out my thoughts in my mind’s eye, I have had a distraction.  A gentle reader has asked, Given Bart and Fielding’s prowess as neo-Amazons, why have they not gone to fight with Ukrainians to beat back the Russian hordes?  In fact, it is I, Crockett the Love Machine, who proposed to end this war with a Love Campaign.  I would bombard the Russians until my Rose Barrages had buried them in the sweet smell of Love. The young Russian would develop a mad desire to find fellow Russians to rut with, especially since raping Ukrainian has turned out to be too damn dangerous.  Neither Bart nor Fielding wants to fight with the Ukrainians and their namby-pamby refusal to take the War to Moscow.  Bart has made it plain that if she ran the War, she’d leave a blood trail to the Kremlin and settle with Putin once she got there if that weasel had not sneaked away.  But the Ukrainians have refused her covert recommendations.  Accordingly, she has opted for the EU strategy of sanctions.  She has stopped eating blini, Beluga caviar, pickled herring, and other Russian treats.  Fielding, perhaps because she has German blood, has joined Bart, but allowed herself exemptions if (a) somebody else gifts her the caviar or (b) she’s at a gastronomica and is really hungry.   Neither Fielding nor Bart buys Russian natural gas because they make their own.  So now, gentle reader, you know why I, Bart, and Fielding are sitting out the war.  Our advice ignored, we settled for a program of sanctions.  It may take time to see their effect.

Now, let’s get back to Chaucer.  My petitionary prayers that the Kitty Goddess put an end to Chaucey’s reign got no immediate response.  Instead, I faced a new crisis.  Knocked-up Bart gave birth to her bastards.  My nurse made a big deal of it.  Even though I was still recovering from my war wounds.  A kitty ophthalmologist had operated on my mutilated eye.  The eye still was running and my body still ached but Roberta ignored me to care for Bart’s bastard kitties.  What a fiasco!  All of a sudden, she and Bart banished me from my own bedroom.  Bart and the kittens had barred me from the one room where I had no need to fear Chaucer.  It was an outrage.  If I did try to sneak a visit, Bart promptly beat me down.  I don’t think she could have succeeded if Roberta, despite being a Catholic, had hired a castratrix.  I barely survived the experience.  Her Castratrix-ness sent me home before I could pee.  Once Roberta noticed that I got rushed to a proper vet.  I had to pee or die.  He drugged me, pressed on my bladder and I suffered the indignity of peeing all over myself.  I got forced to bathe to boot.  If I hadn’t been debilitated by it all, I might have taught Bart a thing or two. When I mentioned that to her, she snorted and smiled.  It is a bit embarrassing that in all the years I’ve known her, she has yet to lose a fight with me.  Instead, I must live with a spouse-basher. 

But what to do about the kitten.  When I talked to mike, he assured me that the kitties would be moving out once weaned.  It was Bart’s idea.  She didn’t oppose spreading her DNA around but wasn’t about to let her Tom sons become moochers.  “I can’t abide a Tom without resources.  You’re not going to be a mama’s Man living at home on the dole in Cocke county, Tennessee. No son of mine is going to sponge on me!  Chins up!  The breast milk was free.”  Lickety-split, mike and Roberta did find homes for the kitties.  Whisky got placed with a rich family in Philadelphia.   Rumor has it that with rich servants Whisky got a good education and now teaches veterinary science at Penn.  Sarge landed less well.  A weepy, disabled vet took him.  He wasn’t much of a servant.  In fact, he wanted Sarge to be his “service animal.”  Can you imagine?  What self-respecting cat wants to serve his servants?  I never heard if this disgraceful on-the-dole servant forced Sarge to wear one of those ridiculous “service animal” coats.  If so, I’m guessing he died of shame.   Meanwhile, the growth of Chaucer’s cancer failed to sweeten his temper, though he did insist that I lie close to him on command to keep him warm.