In Which I Amuse the Population

Going through BJs today, when I stopped at the display of cat litter, an older Latino gentleman who had obviously lived a hard life, was smiling at me.

He watched me haul a 45 lb bag of cat litter to the cat. ("Mira! Una blanca trabaja!") I heard him say something that ended with "gato". I searched the data bank and came up with -

"Nueve."

"Nueve!"

"Si."

Then he laughed a tired "hee hee hee" and said "Nueve!" again. And said something like, "That's a lot of cats."

"Si. Ay muchos gatos."

And then I wanted to say in French, oui, c'est plus de chats. Trop. But I would have been showing off badly, no doubt, and embarrassed us both.

For the rest of the trip, whenver our carts past in the wide aisles, he said, "Hee! Nueve!"

I looked in his cart and saw some bananas and a loaf of bread. Projecting like crazy, I thought it was more of an outing than an expedition.

But he got to go home with a story about the crazy Norteamericana with nine cats.

I had to unload 180 pounds of cat litter from my car.

I think he got the better end of the deal.