The children had been home from a visit to their grandparents for less than twenty-four hours. I was in the kitchen and Everett joined me, having just finished petting the cat.
Everett loves the cat.
“Mom, have you ever wanted to just collect all of Minnie’s fur?” he asks me.
No, I think. I, too, adore the cat, but I have never wanted to collect all her fur. Slight shudder.
“Why do you ask?” I say.
“You can get something that will collect all her fur,” he says.
And I am thinking: to what end would I do this? To make a pincushion? What?
“It gets the fur off all the furniture.”
Oh. Like a lint brush, maybe.
“And there’s another thing that comes with it. You brush the cat’s fur, and it makes the top coat brighter,” he says.
Oh. And he knows what a top coat is?
“It’s called the Shed-Ender,” he says.
Suddenly the commercial—unseen by my eyes—begins coalesce as images in my brain. I’ve seen advertisements like these aplenty in my day. You know the ones I mean: the ones filmed in some airless studio somewhere, the ones with the 1-800 number, the ones with the same eager and invisible host urging you to Act Quickly and Buy Now.
Funny how those of us who saw those ads absorbed some of that language—lines like: But wait! There’s more! For all their cheesy tactics, the advertisements made their impression.
Here in the kitchen, Everett is still considering the Shed-Ender.
“But you have to call a number to get it,” he says. “It’s not available in stores.”
