Atonement: The Sequel

My humans attempt to make me as comfortable as they can in the short time I have left.

The British One took me outside yesterday, and I greatly enjoyed sniffing the warm breeze. When we came back indoors, he enticed me to eat a little bit by serving up a helping of delicious turkey baby food. I plowed into it with great gusto, and even licked the spoon, but all that eating made me very tired and I had to have a nap on the sofa.

He seemed to sense that I wanted a nice lap, and sat on the sofa with me for a long time. When Softie got home she prepared for me a lovely feast of sumptuous buttered cod, and it smelled heavenly. I am just so tired though, and only managed to eat a few small nibbles. It made Softie cry to know I no longer pine for my favorite foods. The pull of the Summerland continues to grow stronger, and it has taken away my hunger.

I continue to atone for my past.

I am sorry that I scratched a hole in the Oriental rug. I had to scratch it surreptitiously because Softie had put it on my list of no-no’s, and I was scolded whenever she caught me ripping into it. So I simply waited until she had left the house for the day, and then I tore into it to my heart’s delight. She thought she was being clever when she moved it into a room with a closed door, but I was able to get most doors open if I worked at them long enough. And so she would come home at night to discover the door ajar, and I would be sitting on the kitchen table, wearing my innocent face.

I am sorry for all those times I got lonely and decided to ring up people at random. I discovered early on that if I knocked the receiver off the cradle, I would hear a lady's voice on the phone, telling me “If you'd like to place a call, please hang up and try again.” After a short time, a loud noise beeped through the phone, and then it would go silent. I never mastered putting the phone back on the hook, but it was a cinch to knock it off. And I did—every single day.

Softie would come home every evening to a dead phone. After several weeks of this, she tried to thwart me by putting large rubber bands around the phone to keep me from knocking off the receiver. But I’m a very brainy boy, and I quickly figured out that the phone was equipped with a “speakerphone” button that, if pushed, would give me the same result as knocking the receiver from the cradle. So I continued to listen to the nice phone lady tell me to hang up and try my call again.

But after awhile that got boring, so I sat on the back of the sofa and watched Softie closely whenever she placed a call, and soon I had learned how to place calls too. I just pushed something called "the speed dial button!" Sometimes I would ring the old lady, and sometimes it was Softie’s friend Leigh Ann. One time I even phoned up The British One, all the way in England! Softie certainly was surprised to see that phone bill. And for that, I’m sorry.

I have to admit that I am also sorry my humans invested in a cordless phone, because I never learned how to use it.

I am also sorry for all those nights I woke up my humans by sitting in a pool of moonlight, singing songs of woe to my stuffed sheep-pig. I am especially sorry for the nights I couldn’t locate the sheep-pig, and howled and cried until Softie stumbled out of bed to find it for me, so that I would be able to sing my songs again.

I’m sorry I ripped the innards out of countless sheep-pigs and left the stuffing strewn all over the house. Each time I would gut one of them, it would disappear for a few days, then reappear looking and smelling brand new. It was my arch nemesis for a very long time. I’m pleased to say that I finally won the war, because I haven’t seen the sheep-pig in many a year.

I’m sorry, too, that I can’t make this old body stick around a little longer. I don’t know who will keep a watchful eye on my humans after I am gone. And goodness knows, they need constant supervision.