So this week I thought I would find something in the pile of my elementary school stuff that my folks have shipped out over the years, and I came up with a something which, at first glance, I thought might contain some kind of spooky story about ghosts or woodland spirits, but after actually flipping through it, I would have to call it a (very) early precursor to one of the ridiculous adventures that one might see over at the animals’ blog. That something is my five-page illustrated epic novella, “The Tree”.
What is “The Tree” about? Well … It’s not actually about a tree, even though it’s called the “The Tree” and it has a picture of a tree on the inside front cover.

“The Tree” is actually about—are you ready for it?—a rampaging cat with a tractor. Which is what makes it an obvious precursor to something Trouble would have gotten up to back in the day, when “The Oceanside Animals” was “Dennis’s Diary of Destruction” and Trouble the Kitty was a major antagonist of the dogs.

One by one, all trees were being flattened by a cat on a steam roller. Steam roller? How did he get that? He bought it. He bought it?!
Soon Fuzzy, the cat, had 1 more forest to mow over. Vroom! Crunch! Bang! Ploom!* “One more to go,” thought Fuzzy. Blam! Sputter! Kaboom! “Wha—” thought Fuzzy from a pile of scrap.
I’m going along, wrecking trees, when all of a sudden I’ve got a pile of junk. What happened?” he asked himself. “I’d better see the dentist. I thik I swallowed my teeth.”
Now of course Trouble the Kitty never got into a situation where she wrecked her cat cup tank or swallowed her own teeth or anything of that sort; she was much too competent of a supervillain for such things. Or maybe she just lacked quality opposition …
* Ploom???
** This is something I am still known to do to some extent.
How timely. I will be in a dentist’s chair in an hour to repair a broken tooth. I didn’t swallow it, tho, thank goodness.
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Whoot! What an imagination you had…it has just kept flourishing even to this day!
When I saw only the front cover I thought t was a canon…and I thought, maybe you had to blow up the tree…and at the end when kitty had a pile of junk, I thought maybe he tried to knock down. a petrified wood tree…that would cause trouble for any machine!
Yup, my imagination is off the wall too, LOL!
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