Christmas In July Day 13: A Mr. Sugar Story Part 1

This post is part of Teagan Geneviene’s Christmas In July blog hop. https://teagansbooks.com/ #Christmastime

#ChristmasInJuly #MrSugar #PersianCats #writingprompt

Mr. Sugar v Ssssanta, Part One

My humans were preparing for that noisy, cluttery “Christmas Eve Party” thing they do every year, so I got under their feet until, late in the afternoon, they let me out of the house.

“At least it isn’t very cold today,” Darling said. “Poor kitty.”

Poor kitty, indeed. I’m a full-grown cat, I’ll have you know. Persian, pure white, of an absolutely ideal weight, neutered (so there’s none of that undignified chasing around after females even though females aren’t really to my taste).

It is, perhaps, unfortunate that my given name is Mr. Sugar, but that’s hardly my fault, is it?

I made a bee-line down the street to the first lower-value block and prowled to and fro in front of Mrs. DiMarco’s house. When she was in her cups, Mrs. DiMarco often gave me what she was pleased to call “scrippy-scraps”, and Mrs. DiMarco was usually in her cups.

Her front door opened, and she tossed something into the yard.

“Get it, Ragmop!” she bellowed, “Ragmop” having always been her name for me.

I sat and licked a paw, since it would be very poor form to seem excited about mere food, and the thing she had tossed took the opportunity to slither away from me. It was a small dark-green snake with a red ring around its neck.

“Jezuss,” the snake whispered, heading for the BVM-in-a-bathtub plastic grotto on Mrs. DiMarco’s lawn. “Jezuss, Mary, and Joseph!” It slithered behind the Blessed Virgin Mary and curled into a knot.

Let me just say here that every American-born snake I’ve ever met claims to be both Irish and Catholic. They all claim they were converted by St. Patrick as he drove them out of Ireland. I don’t argue.

“Awww,” Mrs. DiMarco crooned at me, “he got away from you. Poor Ragmop. C’mere, and I’ll give you some scrippy-scraps.”

Happily, it wasn’t another snake, it was cold leftover breaded fish and some tender gristle from a roast chicken. Delicious!

As I ate, Mrs. DiMarco talked to me as if I were another human. This is one of the things I like about Mrs. DiMarco.

“Where these damn snakes keep coming from, I don’t know. I’m not just seeing them – I mean, it isn’t just me. Hilda and Maxine were over the other day and like to had heart attacks when one showed up in the middle of the living room floor. I haven’t seen two fat old ladies climb onto chairs and dance since the last Policemen’s Widows Karaoke night.”

Mrs. DiMarco is convinced I understand everything she says. I do, naturally, but most humans don’t realize it. I can’t say that Mrs. DiMarco realizes it, but she does believe it.

“How good are you at detecting snakes, Ragmop? You and me have been through the wars together; think you can find where these damn snakes are getting into the house?”

By “the wars”, she means various and sundry incidents that … well, let’s just say that nobody but Mrs. DiMarco could have become embroiled in certain situations, and nobody but I, dragged unwilling into them, could have extricated both of us relatively unscathed.

When I had finished her food offering, she picked up the dish she had served it in and held the door open for me.

I really had no interest in where and how snakes were getting into her house, but there might be more food in it, so I entered.

Mrs. DiMarco is never one to do things by halves. I had been surprised that her front yard hadn’t been packed with Christmas lights and huge plastic inflatables, but now I saw that she had saved everything for inside. The petition the neighborhood had submitted to the zoning board about her Mardi Gras decorations may have had something to do with it.

Outdoors might have been bland, but indoors looked like Santa’s whorehouse. Strings of multicolored lights blinked from every possible location. An entire miniature village covered with dirty artificial snow populated the mantelpiece over a gas fireplace that hadn’t worked in all the time I’d known my hostess. Pride of place in the center of the display was given to a disproportionate manger scene made up of pieces from various mismatched sets.

In the corner stood an artificial tree that might well have been the first artificial tree ever made. Its “needles” were uncompromisingly plastic, and so many were missing there was more twisted metal visible than greenery. At least the metal was and looked real, which is more than could be said for the foliage. More multicolored blinking lights wound around the tree, crumpled tinsel appeared to have been tossed toward it by the handful, and the ornaments … well, the ornaments, like Mrs. DiMarco, had seen better days. The angel on top had been made out of a broken chopstick draped with a Barbie wedding dress, the pink powder-puff head cocked at an alarming angle, its pipe-cleaner halo tarnished and bent into more of a pentagon than a circle.

A commercially produced felt stocking, decorated with a felt-pieced reindeer, hung from the mantle. It had possibly once been Rudolph, but the nose had fallen off at some point in the past. I was touched to see that another stocking with “Ragmop” written on it in black felt-tip pen hung beside it.

“You just look around while I make supper,” she said, beginning her preparations by knocking back half a bottle of beer.

Hardly surprising she had snakes. She was lucky she didn’t have pink elephants.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A make-shift decoration.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “Christmas In July Day 13: A Mr. Sugar Story Part 1

  1. Dan Antion

    July 14, 2024 at 10:59am

    Did Tipper help you write this one? It’s a great story (despite the snakes).

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply

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