AN ALBINO HIPPO STAYING WITH ME FOR A WHILE

Have you heard the news?

There’s an albino hippo staying in my house.

My feelings are still a little hurt, because I made a joke earlier (if you’re hippo and you know it clap your hands), but no one laughed.

Except me.

Then, twenty minutes later, my cat makes some pun about catnip, and the whole house erupts.

My joke book even catches on fire.

When the hippo is busy constructing a birdhouse in the basement, Captain Hitherto says it’s a shame how fat the hippo’s become since his last visit.

My cat says some of the healthiest people in the world are fat and some of the unhealthiest people are skinny, and he says fat doesn’t cause disease, and it’s poison like hydrogenated oil that causes disease.

The warthog says he likes the cut of my cat’s jib.

My cat chortles, the best a cat can chortle, anyway.

After everyone else has gone to bed or hammock, I ask the warthog if he thinks I’m funny.

He says when I’m funny I’m funny, and when I’m not I’m not.

I tell him I can live with that.

He says if I can live with an imaginary warthog like him, who eats socks and HBO DVDs for breakfast, I can live with anything.