It’s that time of night again when BlackBeary’s human stands at the kitchen sink, her old, under-exercised body jiggling vigorously as she shakes the ugly brown bottle. Of medicine. If she’s feeling kind, BlackBeary admits that at least her human doesn’t try to be sneaky, doesn’t try to trick her about it. But that’s where her human is not so smart.

As soon as her human starts brandishing the bottle, BlackBeary leaps from wherever she happens to be so beautifully perched and runs toward the safety of the under-mattress. But halfway down the hall, she stops, turns, and waits to make sure her human is watching. Unable to resist taunting her human, BlackBeary gives her the scary eyes, and says, “You’ll never take me alive, bitch.” For a long moment, she holds her pose of defiance and then sprints into the bedroom and under the bed.

Obviously knowing she’s been bested, BlackBeary imagines her human slinking back to the stinky-new-smelling chair and reading until it’s time for bed.

But by the time her human’s ready for bed, BlackBeary has napped and has long since forgotten about the nasty little syringe of liquid medicine.

So, feeling in need of a good chin scratch, BlackBeary leaps up onto the bed and settles down just within arm’s reach of her human. She doesn’t like to make it too easy for her human, even when it means getting petted. She doesn’t want her human to think that BlackBeary needs her or wants to be around her. It’s just convenient to allow her human to pet her on the bed.

And just as BlackBeary is drifting off toward her seventeenth nap of the day, her human grabs her by the scruff of the neck.

“Not the medicine,” BlackBeary says, struggling to get away. “Please. Not the medicine.” She gives her human the sad round eyes, but it apparently isn’t effective enough.

“I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“Not the medicine, Momma.”

Despite her pleas, her human grabs the syringe and quickly squishes the nasty concoction into BlackBeary’s mouth.

The awful junk coats the inside of BlackBeary’s mouth making her want to gag. “Blakkkkkk.” And she does gag, drooling all over the quilt. That’ll teach her human to squish vile stuff into her mouth. “Ick. Ick. Ick.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” her human says. “I know you don’t like it.”

Her human takes BlackBeary into her arms and gives her a loving scratch behind the ears and a kiss on the head as if that will grant forgiveness.  She then gently sets BlackBeary on the bed and for a good long time, scratches her all over, knowing all the right spots. Especially the belly spots.

For the night, all is forgiven. But as BlackBeary once again drifts toward that seventeenth nap of the day, she sighs. “Sneaky bitch.”