The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies by David Lubar

Author:David Lubar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2009-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

THE CAT ALMOST GETS A BATH

The Sanderson family was allergic to cats. Dad Sanderson was a little bit allergic. Mom Sanderson was very allergic. The kids, Albert and Grace Sanderson, were fairly allergic.

For some reason, the Sanderson family owned a cat. When people asked why they would own something they were allergic to, the best answer they could come up with was, “We don’t know.”

The Sandersons went through boxes of tissues the way most families went through quarts of milk. At any particular time, there was a good chance that some Sanderson was sneezing, sniffling, or dripping.

One morning, when Dad Sanderson was reading the magazine that came with the Sunday paper, he jumped up and said, “By golly, here’s the answer to our problems!” He paused to glance over at Pussums Sanderson, the orange tabby who caused the family to sneeze and sniffle and drip so much.

“What is it, dear?” Mom Sanderson asked.

“It says here that a cat doesn’t cause allergies if you give it a bath once a week.”

“Give the cat a bath?” Grace asked.

“That’s what it said,” Dad told her. “And that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Pussums, with that amazing radar that cats possess, had already snuck from the room. It took a half hour for the rest of the Sandersons to find her and carry her to the bathroom.

“There, there, Pussums,” Mom Sanderson said as she started to lower the cat into a sink that was filled with lukewarm water.

Pussums scratched Mom Sanderson about five hundred times in five hundred places.

“Here, dear, let me try,” Dad Sanderson said, reaching for the cat.

Mom Sanderson gladly handed Pussums over.

Dad Sanderson quickly received scratches in about seven hundred places.

“Let us try,” Albert and Grace said as they reached for Pussums.

Between them, they probably got about thirteen hundred scratches. Pussums leaped from their arms and escaped—high, dry, and unbathed.

Mom Sanderson got out the Band-Aids. Dad Sanderson got out the antiseptic ointment. Mom and Dad and Albert and Grace all started swelling and puffing up like birthday balloons. They might have been allergic to the cat, but they were really allergic to cat scratches.

“You know,” Dad Sanderson said as he finished unwrapping Band-Aid number two thousand, “I really don’t mind suffering through a bit of the sniffles now and then.”

“Yes,” Mom Sanderson agreed, “there are certainly worse things than a little bitty allergy.”

“We can live with it,” Grace and Albert said.

Off in a corner of the living room, Pussums sneezed. She was a little allergic, too, but as long as the humans took a bath every day, it wasn’t a big problem. As far as Pussums was concerned, she could live with it.

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