Uncle Fun and Sparky Land

Hello again, everybody. It’s the girl they call “Moose” for reasons they never bother telling me. Uncle Fun really should be writing this, instead of me. However, he’s begged off, saying that he’s far too busy with his duties as the honorary mayor of Funsville. Today (supposedly), he has to oversee the distribution of the annual Lou Grant land grants, in honour of Ed Asner’s birthday. I highly doubt that such an occasion even exists—but stranger things have come to pass in that weird burg.

I think Uncle Fun is just using any excuse he can get for ducking out of explaining his part in the story I’m about to tell you. It all started (as they say in the storytelling business) when I went to take my cat Dom to the vet for his annual check-up. (Dom, by the way, is short for “Dominant Life Form in the Household”, which, as any of you who’ve ever had a cat will know, is just another way of saying “cat”.) Ever the soul of generosity, good old Uncle B. Fun offered to save my family a costly vet bill by doing the exam himself.  When I quizzed him about his credentials, he boasted of his extensive experience volunteering on weekends with the Ladies’ Auxiliary Veterinary Corps at the Funsville Park Petting Zoo. I let the matter rest there, not wishing to hear what kind of experience this actually involved. Sparky also offered to assist, claiming to be familiar with the details of a standard veterinary check-up. I didn’t really want a clarification on that one, either.

Dom’s check-up didn’t get off to the kind of start we all might have hoped for. In fact, it got off to this kind of start:

 

Things might have gotten a little better from there…if only Sparky’s aim had been a little better.

 

 

The next thing I knew, I was on the receiving end of some decidedly second-rate first aid.

 

 

I’d like to say it all ended well. I’d like to say a lot of things, but that one isn’t any more true than the rest of them. Between Dom wielding his claws like spokeshaves and Sparky doing his David vs. Goliath act on me with that hypodermic, I have enough stitches in me that I could change my name to Raggedy Ann. Not that I’m likely to. I have enough trouble with the name everybody here’s hung on me—even if they never tell me why.

Moose