Review: Le Petit Lieutenant

They left early this morning, my food bowl pellets dutifully doused in tuna juice, heart medicine, and arthritis powder. Tony said if he didn't have time to eat dinner, then he would buy popcorn and pink lemonade. I followed them.

They opened the wrong door, the front, which won't help me go outside on the back porch. A goldfish flopped out the bathtub spigot. A delicate lump in the rug was a bag with catnip trapped inside. The door shut as they disappeared. I licked my right paw to polish my gleaming brow. I slept in the empty newspaper box underneath the bed.

Iran shot down a pilotless U.S. spy drone. The dogs upstairs were taken for one of their sudden menial walks. The milk-bottle-cap ring was silent and very afraid under the couch. Interviewed on Pravda, former Senator Rick Santorum said that the President of the War on Terror's war on Iraq has been "Lincolnesque," and he said that the White House already knows the U.S. is at war with Iran. It was dark -- I must have been sleeping again, for a long time -- and I heard the door of a taxi shut.

My god, they had been away for hours. All day. Then the slapstick clomp as Tony and Shelly chewed their way up the stairs.

"I didn't think he was going to die at the end," Tony said, opening the wrong door. They walked into the living room.

Shelly said, "Right before it happened, I had a feeling. He was just too happy. Too innocent. Something was going to happen to him in that scene."

Why are you just standing in front of the bookcases? The felt-wrapped carrot with catnip trapped inside -- and bell attached to it -- doesn't play unless you touch it. Christ, do something.