Fabulous Celebrity SpokesCreature
Cindy Crawford: the Lost Years
Yes, the minute Bro told me Cindy Crawford was rolling around on the ground in the alley just outside our home, I flew into action and onto the porch. Then I gasped, and was left speechless…for there really was no doubt. It was exactly as he had claimed! Only the blind could fail to see that Cindy Crawford was, indeed, rolling around on the ground in the alley just outside our home. And, as I marveled yet again at the power of both photoshop and pr, I also understood why Bro might think she was in the neighborhood searching for drugs. Hard drugs. Who would have guessed that, in person, Cindy Crawford looked like the proverbial “crack whore.” I had never been a fan nor user of the word “skank,” but it immediately sprang to mind. Astonishing!
Even more astonishing to this very day is the fact that Bro managed to pull the whole thing off, without a single hitch. He has less than no patience, and to keep me going for a period of days was quite the coup. I’d’ve expected him to fold in less than five minutes, anxious to have me discover “the untold story” behind Cindy Crawford’s [shocking] appearance.
On that particular day, however, I regained my composure, pointed to her ripe breastesses, and said, “see?! I told you she just had a baby…”
She was emaciated and filthy, and most definitely appeared ”feral.” We tried to slowly and gently approach her, but she fled. So we returned to work, quite happy in the knowledge that one of our new neighbors was Cindy Crawford [now “CC,” to us, thankyouverymuch].
The following day, she returned. We kept our distance, but placed a bowl of cat-tuna where she could reach it without having to come near us. She would have none of it, and though the tuna disappeared during the night, eaten by whom, we’ll never know. There was no sign of Cindy Crawford for the next couple of months [and we never saw hide nor hair of her kittens, though kept our eyes peeled], so we figured she’d checked into rehab before a big shoot, and sent her “good thoughts.”
Then she showed up, again. Pregnant! And skankier than ever, which broke our hearts.
Granted, we weren’t her parents, however this sort of thing simply could not continue. She still wouldn’t go near the food we immediately put out for her, and she stayed for only a moment, but we started knocking on doors and asking questions. Most could tell us no more than that they’d seen her [and all agreed she was Cindy Crawford, though it seemed a revelation when we spoke of her by name]. Then we caught “a regular” as he was walking through the alley, and he gave us the gory details.
“Oh, yeah! I know that cat. She kind of belongs to the people in that house over there,” and he pointed to the home directly behind ours.
“Kind of belongs?”
“Well, they feed her, sometimes, and they let her go in and out of that window if it gets cold. You can’t really get close to her, though.”
“She’s pregnant for the second time since we moved in here a few months ago. Do you know why they haven’t gotten her spayed if they’re going to let her run around, outside?”
“Well, technically, she’s not really theirs, and they need the kittens for their snakes…”
“Pardon?!?”
“They have a couple of big snakes in there, and I guess the snakes really like kittens.”
“Uhhhhh…okay. Thanks. We were just wondering where she belongs. Appreciate the information.”
I had stopped interpreting when he got to the part about the kittens and the snakes, because I knew Bro would go ballistic on the messenger, and this unpleasant news was no more his fault than it was the snakes’ fault they like the taste of kitten. What is, is, whether or not we “approve.” But I also knew, rightly or wrongly, that we’d be throwing our monkey wrench into the works.
After the bearer of these bad tidings was safely out of the alley, I explained the situation to Bro, then quickly shoved my fingers into my ears as he raged at [life through] me for a few minutes. When he was plumb tuckered out, we got down and devious.
We were on a mission, and it took priority over everything else. From the looks of her, we figured we had only a few weeks to get CC to trust us enough that we could get her safely indoors, before she had her kittens. She could take care of them until they were old enough for adoption, then we’d have her spayed before returning her to the streets. We’d deal with the consequences [and her ”owners”] when it was a fait accompli. Crossing our fingers and hoping the guy in the alley and the snake people didn’t know each other very well, we figured it should be easy enough to feign innocence, and pretend we’d thought she was ”just a stray.”
Relentless as any paparazzo, we began stalking her, day and night. We found her favorite haunts and hot spots, and discovered her secret for staying thin – the garbage and lizard diet! Soon, the streets ran with tuna, as we carried it with us, wherever we went. Slowly, we wore down her initial resistance, and, as long as we ”gave her her space” [you can take the girl out of California, but you can’t take the California out of the girl], she began to accept our offerings. Bit by bit and block by block, we moved the dish ever more close to home…
By this time, our landlords loved us. Work on the house was going beautifully, we cleared trash off the property and out of the neighborhood, we added to the landscaping, and if we could see something was broken, we fixed it. We ”policed the area,” kept an eye on things when the landlords couldn’t, and organized the storage units used by all of their tenants. They gave us the keys to the kingdom, which, fortuitously, also worked for vacant cottages. One would be just perfect for CC and her brood — if we could get her there in time.
It had taken us a couple of weeks just to get her to eat a meal in our yard, and she looked like she was about ready to pop. Afraid we might not have even another week [and knowing how those supermodels love their sushi], we bought fresh salmon, and lured her to the front steps of her soon-to-be abode. A couple more days of good eats, there, and she looked as though she could go into labor at any moment. We had to get her inside.
Pulling out all the stops and using every trick in the book [including our patented ”secret,” Herbis Non Compos Mentis], it took a couple of hours and several tries, but we finally got her to cross the threshhold, and slammed the door on her past. We expected a tantrum, if not a complete meltdown, but she just wanted more fish.
Wow! Okay. We offered all she could eat, and then some, but now there was a catch — she had to let us touch her. Didn’t seem to bother her…so we got down on the floor and we kissed her. She stopped eating, but rather than freak out, she nonchalantly began to wander the cottage, inspecting her new digs. Then she lay down on her belly, like Superman in full flight. We worried that might not be good for her babies, but. One doesn’t tell a cat how to sit, and we were already pushing our luck.
By nightfall, we’d stocked the kitchen with filets o’ fish, free-range chicken, cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil, butter, yogurt, KMR powder, and a very nice selection of cheeses, and we made several beds for her. One in a closet, one in the bathroom, and one in the bedroom. She had bowls of water and dry food, and litter boxes, and seemed to be settling in, nicely. We could now not only pet and kiss her, but she was purring and letting us give her massage. Best of all – we were going to have kittens! Oh, happy day…
The following morning, wondering if ”Santa” had come during the night, we surreptitiously headed for her bungalow. We didn’t want our landlords to discover their new tenant, and we lived in fear her ”rightful owners” would come looking for her. What would we say? ”Uh, sure! And you can have her back – over our dead bodies!” Not the best way to forge community. We were very careful not to be seen coming and going.
No kittens the first morning, but her belly was now so big we got stretch-marks just looking at her. Surely there would be kittens before another day had passed. Nope! One of us was with her from at least 7am until 2am, every day, plying her with delicacies and waiting with anticipation. She was enjoying the attention and herself, even though Bro [as is his anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive wont] gave her a bath! Glad I wasn’t there to see it, but thrilled Cindy Crawford was beginning to look like a wholesome and healthy midwestern babe, once again…
Finally, more than a week after ”taking her hostage,” we entered her apartment early one morning to find she’d lost an awful lot of weight, overnight. She met us at the front door and led us to the closet, where seven fat little kittens wriggled in her box. What a sight to behold! We couldn’t resist, and immediately began picking them up, kissing their Cover Girl faces and their little pussy foots. CC didn’t mind at all. She wanted food! So we sauteed some salmon in butter, cracked open the goat’s milk and poured on the KMR. What CC wanted, CC got. Her wish was our command.
Now that the little babes had made their entrance, we were glad they’d taken their time. CC was so horribly malnourished when the mission began, we weren’t sure what to expect [and had worried many of the kittens might be stillborn or sickly], but every one seemed healthy and happy, and…they. were. spec. tacular.
We’d been around baby animals all of our lives, and never seen anything like them. I swear by all that is holy, ’tis no exaggeration to say one managed to climb out of the box within a few hours — not days, nor even weeks, as one would expect — hours! And within minutes, the rest had followed. Their eyes were open by the second day [I crap thee not]! And there was no keepin’ ‘em down on the farm. By day three, we were proceeding with extreme and utmost caution from the moment we first put the key in the lock, because we never knew where we’d find them. We sometimes had to wonder if we’d find them. They put us through changes, while CC remained cool, calm, and collected. Ever the pro…
To Be Continued…
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