Lullaby’s fit for a Monkey

*Week 1:  The night of the contract reading*

The entire downstairs of Emerson’s clocktower had been ruined thanks to their chase throughout the home, and Arnold still had to report to Mumsy for 5 Am.  Another lamp broke on the floor as the monkey threw it at the cat and missed, then darted away in terror, as the large feline bounded after him with the intent to break it’s neck, or so the monkey thought.  

At the moment the feline wasn’t sure if the monkey happened to be right.

Arnold wondered if he would get any sleep tonight thanks to this ridiculous task that he’d been left with, but he had to do it or else Emerson could claim that the feline hadn’t fulfilled part of their contract, and if he had to sing a lullaby to the monkey every night then so be it!

Arnold cried out in cat for it to calm down and hold still, but the primate just picked up Emersons cushions and threw them at him.

The orderly caught and wore the terrified monkey out, though his clothes were ruined in the process.  Finally after the monkey was too tired to move he took it to the corner and placed him on one of the thrown pillows.  He ‘sang’ in cat for all of five seconds and then went about cleaning as much as he could before he needed to go to bed for the long day ahead of him.

***

*Three days later*

Things had not gotten much better at the clocktower, as every night the monkey would flee, and the cat would have to chase him down.  Between that, and cleaning the mess, Arnold was not able to get much sleep before he had to report to Mumsy at five AM.  But tonight he had a new approach to his primate problem.

The monkey was eating assorted nuts when Arnold entered the house carrying a case and his cat bed.  The monkey spit at him and then hissed as it ran to the safety of his corner, waiting to be attacked by the crazy cat again.  

Arnold carefully and calmly went to the desk, opened the case, and took out the equipment that he would need for the night.  He knew that he had to approach the task with the monkey better than he had been until now, and there were plenty of ways to calm down the monkey and limit the amount of time he had to ‘sing’.

Arnold had access to medications that would have easily done the job that he wanted, but what he took out wasn’t a cloth covered in chloroform or a shot, but a violin which he had purchased back in October.  He’d been trying to relax at the time and had thought that learning an instrument might help when he had first started as Emerson’s major domo.  He had only played it a few times to people who would actually hear it besides himself, a few times around Junie and once when they were working on the cow-ta-pults.

Arnold approached the monkey slowly and sat on the floor in front of the cat bed, and the monkey eyed him suspiciously as he began to play a soft tune during which he hummed and sang maybe one or two words.  

The monkey didn’t seem terribly impressed at first, but eventually it moved towards the bed and got comfortable.  As Arnold played it to sleep over the next few minutes the tiny creature was so comfortable that it relieved himself on the bed.

The cat had never intended to reclaim his bed, but this would have settled any doubt in his mind.  And considering who had given it to him this was no loss.