Author: Raud Kennedy
Raud Kennedy is a writer and an artist.
Negotiating with Cookies #7 – Om
In the backyard, I sit down cross-legged on the grass, close my eyes and begin to meditate. I count my breaths and try to clear my mind, and just when mental silence dawns, a wet nose bumps me in the back of my neck.
“Whatcha doin?” Fleegle asks, circling around to my front.
“Meditating.”
“What’s that?”
“A way to make contact with my higher self.” The words are no sooner out of my mouth before my curiosity prods me to open my eyes to see if he’s staring up at the sky. He is.
“How high up did you say he was?” he asks.
I look into the sky where he’s looking. “At this rate, very high up, maybe even beyond the stratosphere.”
“Stratosphere?” he ponders the word. “Does he look like you?”
“My higher self? In a sense, yes.”
Not seeing anything, he raises his nose high and sniffs the breeze, his snout twitching back and forth. “Well, I don’t think he’s anywhere nearby unless he smells like what the cat next door just left in little Jimmy’s sandbox. Maybe your meditation remote needs new batteries.”
“Meditation doesn’t require a remote.”
“Are you sure? Everything else you do does.”
Next: Negotiating with Cookies #8 – Ducks and Geese
Previous: Negotiating with Cookies #6 – Flies and Opossums
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Negotiating with Cookies #6 – Flies and Opossums
Still unable to sleep, I listen to Fleegle snore. He sounds like a train struggling up a steep grade with a freight load of fat Labradors. I nudge him with my foot under the covers. “Straighten out your neck and maybe that freight you’re pulling won’t be so heavy.”
“The circadian rhythm of my snores not lulling you to sleep? I’m out like a light when you snore,” Fleegle says sleepily. “I love pizza, but I love it even more because it makes you snore and I know exactly where you are without even looking.”
“And it gives me far out dreams,” I say.
he rolls onto his back, paws pointing toward the ceiling. “When I can’t sleep I don’t bother trying.”
“I know, you go outside and hunt opossums.”
“That’s not me, that’s Buck from across the street. No one knows yet about the hole he dug under his fence. He’s a little obsessed with opossums. Did you know he takes his kills inside his house through his dog door?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I prefer chasing flies to chasing rodents.”
“What about squirrels? They’re part of the rodent family and you chase them.”
“They don’t count. They’re too cute to be rodents.”
“That’s not what you say when you make them mad by chasing them up trees and they try to poop on your head from the branches above.”
I feel the bed move as he gets up. “Now I can’t sleep,” he says. “I wish flies flew at night. Will you turn the light on and wake them up?”
I shrug. “Might as well.”
The bamboo outside the bedroom window rustles even though there isn’t any wind.
“There goes Buck, hunting,” Fleegle says. “Poor opossums.”
I snap on the light, waking a fly on the shade. Fleegle is after it in an instant
“Poor flies,” I say.
Next: Negotiating with Cookies #7 – Om
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Dog Candle Sconce Finished
Negotiating with Cookies #5 – Furbabies
I’m tossing and turning, struggling to get to sleep, when Fleegle asks, “Where do babies come from?”
I look through the murky darkness in the bedroom at his black silhouette on my bed. “The stork flies them in and delivers them to houses of families who want them.”
“What’s a stork?”
“A bird that’s big enough to carry a baby in it’s beak and still get off the ground. Why are you asking about babies?”
“The neighbors behind us just got one.”
“Uh huh.”
“So if I stop chasing the birds out of the yard, a big one will bring me a baby?”
I worry where this is going. “Yes, that is correct. But why do you want a baby?”
“Not a baby, a baby brother.”
“Hmm. I’m confused,” I say.
He tilts his head. “You? Never.”
“Do you mean one who looks like me or one who looks like you?”
“There’s a difference? I thought you looked like me.”
Next: Negotiating with Cookies #6 – Flies and Opossums
Previous: Negotiating with Cookies #4 – The Garage Sale
Start at the beginning: Negotiating with Cookies #1 – Stinky Butt
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Ceramic Anthropomorphism
If dogs did smoke, I bet they would be terrible chain smokers and leave their butts everywhere.
Gnawing the Bone 