“Now, what’s wrong with that?” the cat protested. “It’s good to have a clean anus. Why, I lick mine at least five times a day.”
“And I admire you for it,” the baboon said, “but you’re not a dog.”
“Meaning?”
“On a cat it’s… classy,” the baboon said. “There’s a grace to it, but a dog, you know the way they hunker over, legs going every which way.”
“Well, yes,” the cat said. “I suppose you have a point.”
“Then they slobber and drool all over everything, and what they don’t get wet, they chew to pieces.”
“That they do.” The cat chuckled, and the baboon relaxed and searched her memory for a slanderous dog story. The collie, the German shepherd, the spaniel mix she claimed to have turned away: they were all good friends of hers, and faithful clients, but what would it hurt to pretend otherwise and cross that fine line between licking ass and simply kissing it?
The Migrating Warblers
The yellow warbler would often claim that she was fine until she hit Brownsville. “Then-wham!” she’d tell her friends. “I don’t know if it’s the air or what, but whenever we pass it on our migration, I have to stop and puke my guts out.”
“Indeed she does,” her husband would say, laughing.
“An hour or two’s rest is all I need, but isn’t it strange? Not Olmito or Bayview or Indian Lake, but Brownsville. Brownsville every time.”
The birds she was talking to would try to sound sympathetic or, at the very least, interested. “Hmmmm,” they’d say, or, “Brownsville, I think I have a cousin there.”
From the southern tip of Texas, the couple would fly over Mexico and then into Central America. “My family’s been wintering in Guatemala for as long as I can remember,” the warbler would explain. “Every year, like clockwork, here we come by the tens of thousands-but do you think any of those Spanish-speaking birds have bothered learning English? Not on your life!”