Gwen Cooper - Fanny Trouble: A Short Story

Fanny Trouble

Gwen Cooper

BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, TX

Copyright 2018 by Gwen Cooper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

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e-ISBN: 978-1-948836-09-8

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Fanny Trouble

Everybody serves someone, and in my house theres no question who our master is: Were all in thrall to Fanny.

Never is my serfdom more obvious than at times like this. Its five thirty on a Saturday morning, and Ive had the temerity to sleep a full half hour past my usual rising timeas if, I will later to remark to Laurence in my best (although admittedly still bad) Cockney accent, I wuz the queen o England. The cats breakfast is therefore officially late. Although maybe I should put late in ironic quote marks, since it hardly seems accurate to describe anything that takes place at five thirty on a Saturday morningother than coming home from Friday night revelriesthat way. Maybe tardy or off schedule.

In any case, Fanny is about to let me know definitively that its long past time I got up.

Laurence is sound asleep beside me, flat on his back and snoring lightly. Generally he prefers to sleep curled up on his side. But thats an inconvenient position for Fanny when shes of a mind to perch on Laurences belly and demand an ultra-intensive round of deep petting, something she insists on receiving no fewer than three or four times each night between the hours of one and four a.m. Her solution is to butt her head repeatedly into Laurences shoulderbracing herself and digging in hard with all the force her seven-pound body can musteruntil he obligingly rolls over. As she climbs onto his now-accessible stomach, his hands will rise semi-automatically to sink into the fur of Fannys neck and flanks for a thorough scratching session, while Fanny utters a kind of prolonged, guttural gurgle of triumph that sounds like an aliens cry from some old-time creature feature. (Perhaps this is why Laurence, from among all the various nicknames hes bestowed on Fanny over the yearsincluding Fanny Kittanee, Fan Girl, and Fandemoniumis most apt to refer to her simply as the Creature.)

Laurence is a better sleeper than I am and can usually accommodate Fanny without either waking up fully or having trouble falling back asleep once shes sated. But sometimesif its the fifth or sixth time in the same night that Fanny has required tributeIll hear him stir and protest weakly, Fanny! Im only a man!

Its lucky for me that Laurence is capable of satisfying Fanny in this way, because if Im up anytime past three thirty a.m., like it or not Im up for the day. Life would be very difficult (and exhausting), in other words, if the responsibility for Fannys late-night rubdowns were to fall to me.

As it is, I get off relatively easy. While its true that I have to provide Fanny with my own round of thorough, aggressive scratching once Ive gotten into bed for the night, after a mere fifteen to twenty minutes of these ministrations, Im permitted to fall asleep and remain undisturbed until her breakfast time, which is five a.m. al punto.

It wasnt always this way. There was a time, in the not very distant past, when I was allowed to sleep as late as seven oclock. And before the Reign of Fanny began, the one who came to wake me for the cats morning meal (along with an early round of fetch) was Clayton. A three-legged, mushy black marshmallow of a cat, Clayton has always been, perhaps, a bit too fond of his food. Were I to try sleeping so much as a minute or two past the customary time, it was Clayton who was certain to let me know that I was trespassing too far on the cats benevolent good graces.

(The first two weeks after daylight saving time ends every yearwhen the clocks go back an hour, but the cats stubbornly insist that their internal clock doesnt change for anything as irrelevant as a mere humans varying conception of timeis always a particularly trying period.)

But while Clayton may have been our designated chowhound, for years it seemed that the sleek and slender Fanny could take her mealtimes or leave them. Half the time, to get Fanny to even bother waking from an afternoon nap and come downstairs for lunch, I had to walk through the house chanting, Faaaaaa-neeeeee! Pssss-psss-psss! Faaaaaa-neeeeee! Pssss-psss-psss! until either Fanny materialized or Laurence finally cried in exasperation, Leave her alone already! Shell come down when shes hungry! Even at the risk of missing a meal entirelyClayton always being happy to eat whatever Fanny left behindshe could rarely be roused from the languor of a really excellent nap to bother with something as inessential as food.

Those were the good old daysbut, alas, those days are gone. Meals are now the nexus around which Fannys day revolves. And ever since her food obsession started, the cats feeding schedule has slipped inexorably backward. Their seven oclock breakfast was moved up to six oclock, and then six oclock became five thirty, and now we seem to have landed on five. (I would try harder to negotiate a later time, but given how dismal my success has been thus far at holding the line, Im afraid well end up compromising with four thirtyand then my life will truly be miserable.) Lunch used to be at two, but Fanny takes up such an anxious (not to mention loud) vigil in the kitchen every day beginning at noon that I feel positively heartlesslike Im running a Dickensian orphanage full of half-starved childrenif I dont break down and pop open a can at one oclock. Her will is too strong! is always my defense to Laurence, when I catch him shaking his head at seeing me knuckle under this way.

And while Fanny knows (she knows!) perfectly well that dinner isnt until tenthe entire logic of this late-night bonus feeding having once been that it would keep the cats from waking me for food at the crack of dawnshe comes down to the living room to commence walking all over the book Im reading, or climbing all over the TV screen Im watching, or loudly interrupting Laurences and my conversations with a series of piercing, plaintive cries, at precisely eight thirty.

Im not sure, on this particular morning, how Ive managed to get away with sleeping a full half-hour late. Fannys sense of time is accurate to within five minutes, and shes strict as a schoolmarm when it comes to keeping on schedule. Deviations from our daily timetable are rarelyif evertolerated. But as my eyes open to a bedroom thats slightly brighter than it usually is when I awaken, a quick glance at my bedside clock confirms that I have, indeed, been allotted a luxurious extra half hour under the covers. Perhaps Fanny has decided that even the most abject of servants requires the occasional indulgence, if one is to maintain that servants loyalty.

As I awaken more fully, I see Clayton waiting on the ground beside the bed, the toy mouse he likes to play fetch with clutched in his mouth as he readies himself to climb up the side of the box spring and mattress. But when he moves forward, Fanny pats his face a few times with a gently restraining paw. Wait, she seems to be saying. Dont bother her yet. Fannys authority is the only one that Clayton consistently recognizes and, while clearly impatient, he sinks back onto his one haunch without protest.

Once she notes that my eyes are fully open, however, the jig is up. Fanny becomes relentless, leaping nimbly onto my chest from the floor and, using that same disciplinary pawa bit more firmly, I note, than she did on Claytonto bat my left ear and the left side of my face several times in rapid succession, as if I were a fainting victim who might black out again without someone to smack me into alertness. I consider closing my eyes and feigning sleep, just to prove... what, exactly? That