Week 7 Story: Why the Dog and Cat are Enemies
Once upon a time, there were two roommates and they had a platinum laptop. It was a special laptop, with immense power and can operate without Wifi anywhere in the world. But this they did not know, and sold it for a decent price to buy tickets to Lollapalooza. No sooner was the laptop gone than they began to grow dumber and dumber, and at last failed all of their classes that semester. They became stressed out and financially low since they had to pay for another extremely expensive semester to retake classes and ultimately miss Lollapalooza.
They had a cat and a dog who suffered from this as well. Their owners were paying them less attention and food started running scarce. They two animals brainstormed ways to fix the problem. Finally, the dog hatched a plan.
"They must get their laptop back" he said to the cat.
"The laptop is in a safe guarded by the government, how will we manage that?", asked the cat.
"We must disguise ourselves as the president," said the dog, "and the security guards must follow our orders or he's fired and forever unemployable."
A wide smile spread across the cat's face and fetched a suit thrown out by a nearby Edward's Menswear, some hay from the barn across the road, and some orange face paint. Then the cat got on the dog's shoulders before they put on the suit, arranged the hay as a terrible comb-over, and painted the cat's face orange.
They started their journey to the Washington DC until they came to the Mississippi River. The dog allowed the cat to ride the river on his shoulders since the cat could not swim. They finally reached the White House and went down the many levels beneath the ground to one of the most heavily-guarded safes in which the laptop was. The guard surprisingly did not question the "president's" odd appearance and voice and handed him the laptop.
The cat and dog raced home. However, because of the cat's quick and light reflexes, she was able to hop from fence to fence, rooftop to rooftop, ultimately beating the dog home.
When the owners saw the laptop strapped to the cat's back, they rewarded her with appreciation and affection. When the dog came home, the owners scolded him and threw him out of the house for not helping the cat.
Since then, the dog has been chasing the cat out of anguish.
Author's Note:
This is a spin on the original story in the Chinese Fairy Tales unit. The original "lucky item" was a golden ring that brought the owners wealth. The cat and dog retrieved it for them by catching a mouse and forcing it to gnaw through the chest box and retrieve the ring for them. The ending is fairly the same.
Bibliography:
The Chinese Fairy Book by R. Wilhelm
http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/china-why-dog-and-cat-are-enemies.html
Hi Hannah!
ReplyDeleteThis story had me laughing from beginning to end. I liked the idea of going with the cat and the dog as your characters, and I loved the shenanigans that would ensue. In the beginning, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. When the dog said, "We must disguise ourselves as the president," it was over me. I laughed so hard my parents looked at me funny. Great job! (Also wonderful political reference.)
Hi Hannah! I love the picture you chose! That’s so much fun. This was such a funny interpretation of the source material. I liked that you kept the original intent but were able to add a nice modern touch to it. I enjoyed getting to see the dog and cat as characters. Their antics were quite entertaining to read about. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteHi Hanna! I enjoyed this story because of its satirical references to politics, however, I was a bit confused by some of it. I understand that the laptop was quite powerful, but how did the government find out about it? Also, the US government is powerful enough that I'm sure they would have better and fancier computers, so maybe there is something else in the computer that was important? I also did not understand why the roommates became "dummer" if the computer's skill was its power and wifi. I guess my feedback would be to go over this story and see whether the individual bits make sense in the great scheme of the plot, it feels to me that maybe this story was a bit rushed and therefore not as cohesive as your other stories. In any case, it is still a fun and light-hearted story that stayed loyal to the original.
ReplyDelete