A-Hole

It’s early morning and we’re lazing in bed before we have to start the day, discussing the declining state of our elderly kitty.

Said kitty is no longer even remotely kitten-like; he is scrawny and disheveled (no matter that he was just recently groomed — all he has to do is take a nap and he’s a perpetual bedhead) and half-incontinent and wholly incompetent but we are trying our best to deal with his elderly-ness with humor and heart.

“He’s just…”

I pause for a moment, looking for the right descriptor for the bedraggled feline cuddling between us.

“…OLD.”

My husband nods.

“He’s an old man kitty.”

Which…

I told you we’re studying Spanish, right? So whenever my spouse hears a short phrase he thinks is easily translate-able, he types it into his Google Translate function on his phone to find out how to say it in Spanish.

Which is what he does with ‘old man kitty’.

“Be-A-ho Gah-tee-toe,” he says, reading (or attempting to read, while slaughtering the pronunciations) what it says on his screen.

:: rapid blinking ::

“A-hole?” I ask. “Did you just say ‘Be A-hole’?”

“Be.A.Ho,” he enunciates.

This is not getting any better. It sounds as though he’s either calling our old man kitty an a-hole or a ho.

“Let me see,” I say.

Reading the screen, I understand.

Viejo.

“Viejo gatito.”

“Right,” he responds. “That’s what I said.”

“Well what it sounded like was you were calling kitty an a-hole.”

He thinks about that for a moment. Nods. And with a conspiratory look my way, says:

“Yes. That works too.”