l-o-v-e-r...

During graduate school, while I was working part-time at Starbucks, I spent about three months house-sitting for one of my professors at her amazing house up in Golden. The house was literally right up against the mountains. It was super righteous, but there were lots of snakes and other scary creatures that you had to be careful to avoid.
And her and her husband had a waterbed. Gross. How one would efficiently have sex on one of those, I'll never know.

One day I was packing up my stuff to head back to Denver when I heard a pathetic little meowing sound coming from the back yard. I looked out and saw a teeny little kitty looking up at me standing on the balcony. I went down and grabbed her and brought her inside to give her some water. Sam, the professor's dog, went absolutely nuts at the sight of the kitty, and I realized that I would have to take her back to my apartment in Denver until someone claimed her. After all, if I had put her back outside she would have undoubtedly been ripped apart and eaten by some beastie or another.

So I took her home, bought her a little litterbox and some cat chow and a cute little blue collar with a bell and called the Golden animal shelter to report a missing kitten.
Long story short, no one ever called me back.
Being allergic to cats and basically just hating them in general, I didn't know what to do. But day by day the little freak started growing on me. She was CRAZY. One day I was in the bathroom and she came streaking down the hallway, all helter-skelter with paws sliding all over the floor, took a flying leap, and landed right in the open toilet. Classic.

Once I decided to keep her I figured I'd better get her to the vet to make sure she didn't have worms or rabies or distemper or whatever the hell strays can pick up. I had decided to name her Molly. My little tabby Molly. She seemed to take to the name.

I sat her down in front of the vet, he took one quick look and feel, turned to me and said, "You know, this isn't a she. It's a he."

"What?? But I don't see…you know, anything down THERE. And she's got nipples!"

"Well, you're not going to see any visible genitalia on a kitten. Besides, you're a guy and you have nipples, right?"

"Uh…yeah, but I don't have six!"

So Molly became Ernie. And despite his early sexual identity issues I do believe he's grown up O.K. He can be a bit of a bitch some days, but so can I, so we get along well.

The next week I was working at Starbucks and telling a coworker all about my new pet. "Ernie is pretty good most of the time. I think he's getting used to living with me. He even likes the taste of beer! I'm not comfortable with him sleeping with me, so I shut my bedroom door at night. He usually wakes me up every morning making a bunch of noise out in the kitchen. I'll get up and let him in and he'll hop into bed and start licking my face and making weird little purring sounds. He's a cutie."

A man sitting at a nearby table had started listening to the conversation, turned and looked at me with a lecherous grin and said, "Are you talking about your lover?"
My coworker and I stared at each other with our mouths hanging open for a few seconds and then burst out laughing hysterically.

This memory popped into my head after reading hotbabe's comments at http://nooneshome.blogspot.com/ about using the word "lover." It is a little hard to pull off, to say the least.

By god madam, I am your lover! Do not ever forget that.

I'm going to start using this expression after having sex. That oughta scare away the freaky one-night stands!