A few days after talking to Wolverine, mike, Fielding, and the boys came to visit.  Quine, acting like total peckerwood, ran about the houses like a lunatic. He has a gift for getting on my last nerve.  Even worse, mike started to interrogate me.  He had seen Wolverine on base in a LTC uniform with an 82^nd Airborne patch, a CIB, paratrooper badge, and a few other medals and badges.   As mike saw it, he should have had Wolverine picked up by the MPs.  Wolverine’s fraudulent presentation offended mike. 

He asked me what I knew about Wolverine’s “scam.”  I feigned a headache, but mike still didn’t shut up.  I tried walking away.  Alas, mike pursued me.  For a while, I stayed as silent as Mr Ed when in the presence of Wilbur’s wife.  That got me nowhere.  With no good lies at hand, I simply professed my ignorance.   Why can’t mike get it into his skull that my brain is not a holding tank for Wolverine’s secrets?  Once he wearied of interrogating me, he went off to bother Roberta and the other cats.  He and Bart got along famously.  Fielding adored him too, believing that in the role of a conductor, he had got her a ride to Missouri. 

Bart ratted on me immediately.  She ratted to mike that I had Skyped with Wolverine and she could tell from his sinister cackles that he was up to no good.  If I weren’t so afraid of her, I might have killed her that day.  Sooner or later, mike would turn that fink info against me. 

So, I decided to keep a low profile with mike, doing my best to suck up to him at every opportunity.  Sometimes, you must pump up a servant’s ego. 

I then recognized an opportunity.  If you may recall, Don Trump had started an onanistic campaign to be the Big Cheese of the USA.   Chaucer, of course, knew Trump. Chaucer shared DT’s love of others.  Oh, how they loved swapping revenge stories.  Mind you, Trump has never been my kind of guy.

First off, he doesn’t eat enough tuna.  If you have money, you should eat tuna, lox, and pork tenderloin.  Second, he was giving loud talks on illegal aliens in the south.  I cry, “Bravo Sierra!”  I knew from my experience at the Battle of Martinez Creek that the menace to our country is coming from the north.  We need to do something to keep the furry, snow-back killers from the north out.  Who cares about a bunch of people coming from the south whose idea of a good job is a Hormel Plant?   

Let’s admit, if only in hindsight, that DT had the wrong illegals in his sights.    I grant that it is easier, given US History, to get Americans terrified of short meso-Americans than cute, sharped-toothed, furry killers.  And don’t even get me started on our country’s coyote infestation.  Who’s doing anything about that?

Nevertheless, DT’s fantasies of life in the White House put me at an advantage.  I decided I had to get to know Melania better.  She looked lonely and bored.  “Perfect,” I thought.  I look great in a tux.  I need more rich female friends.  Trump Towers here I come.

I want to mention that one of the glories of the US is the kindness of almost all Americans to a well-dressed cat.  As always, there are wicked exceptions.  Who can watch a Tweety Bird cartoon without noticing that the premiss of this sad effort at humour could only have come from a diseased mind?  Do you not feel for Sylvester as he struggles to put that sassy, scheming bird in its place?  Of course, we all knew the cat-hater that controlled the cartoon would never let that happen.  Almost all Americans are better than that.  Hence I knew that once I got to Trump Towers, Melania would be mere putty in my paws.