NASHVILLE. No! don’t cut my yard. Thank you. I mean, thank you, but don’t cut my yard! Not now. I’m going to do it tomorrow. See, I have an electric mower and…

[and there are six kittens under the bush over there, and if you cut the yard, with your insane yellow go-cart cutter and then the weed-whacker with its threatening whine and bang-banging against the rock every ten minutes and go-carting past the bush and yelling hi to the neighbors and all–the kittens are already bedraggled and discomfitted, they got a bit wet in that 20-minute rainstorm that ended right before you got here, and if you do this now I’m afraid I may never see them again! No, I know you won’t hit them, but they’ll think it’s an imminent massacre, and I had everything set up in the bathroom to bathe them and then you show up, and no, bathing these kittens is not my silly whim, they are so full of fleas they’re anemic and the edges of their tongues are white when they should be pink. What I’m trying to say is that when you only weigh four ounces you don’t have to lose a lot of blood to get in trouble! And here you come with your yellow lawn mower and your incomprehensible, incomprehensible insistence on using it…]

–OK, OK, go ahead, but you’re already going ahead whether I like it or not, aren’t you, I mean, I appreciate it, this one’s on you, and that is very nice of you, I won’t have to sweat through Saturday morning shoving my machine through the foot-high weeds, but why couldn’t you take no for an answer? What is WRONG with you? Damnit! Why can’t you just–just please calm down!