CS writes:
Oh, and if you're getting me a cigar, please take all the tobacco out of it and replace it with weed. Thanks.
The old man tottered into his basement cave. His favorite cat, the gray one with the strong Abyssinian cast who spoke only in chirps and trills, looked up quizzically from the terrarium lid, warmed by the tri-spectrum LED lights below.
He glanced inside the glass enclosure approvingly, admiring both the latest pillar-like specimens there and the slow-growing, ground-hugging clusters. He made a mental note to water the morning glory seedlings and Mexican mint cuttings in the window boxes upstairs.
The cat watched him closely. From a small drawer in the battered desk he produced a compressed ball of catnip and sent it rolling across the room. The cat crowed, her pitch almost ultrasonic, nearly inaudible, and raced after it. She always moves like a killer, he thought--more a fellow hunter than a pet.
He sat, opened a browser window , peered at the list of replies and clicked the first. His eyebrows rose. He frowned.
"Young man," he typed, "I've been in this game for almost 50 years."
"None of my cigars contain tobacco."
The very idea.
"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."