A Present From Mousie

Day 322: I am embarrassed to admit it, but today's society has rendered most of us paranoid to some extent, and that includes me. When a parcel arrived unexpectedly, purportedly from Amazon and with no gift card or receipt inside to accompany the item, I immediately suspected a "brushing" scam and reported it as such to Amazon. "Brushing" refers to being sent unsolicited merchandise and sometimes generating false reviews for a dealer under the name of the recipient, but in this case, it could also have applied to the purpose of the object. It bore the trademark "Equigroomer" and a stylized image of a horse, and it appeared to be a spin-off of a curry comb. It was a simple piece of engineering: a length of hacksaw blade embedded in 3D-printed plastic. Okay, so I tentatively brushed Merry with it and collected a sizeable amount of stray cat hair. Once it started to smell like him, he accepted it readily, and particularly enjoyed having it used on his cheeks and under his ears. I thought to myself, "As scams go, at least this one was useful!" And then I opened my email. There was a note from sister-of-the-heart Mousie with a link to a YouTube video showing a cat (a Russian Blue, even!) being groomed with the same tool. "Teddy loves this groomer," Mousie said (Teddy being her cat). I had no choice but to own up to having reported receipt of the item to Amazon, and I said, "Next time, WARN ME!" Mousie replied, "It was supposed to be a surprise." That's what society has done to me, folks. I used to love surprises. Now I'm suspicious of them. In any event, Merry is so taken with his present that he even let me curry his tummy!