We just passed a milestone in the TBM household. Lady Grey has been living here for six months, and while I prepped a celebratory meal, she sat me down for my review.

To be honest, I didn’t have a clue she’d been keeping track of my pluses and minuses, so I started to sweat bullets when she whipped out the report.

Here goes nothing.

The first category was food, and I had a good feeling about this. Admittedly, the first two weeks were rough since she didn’t like any of the wet food I’d purchased. But, when it comes to her dry food, she’s hammered down the kibble from day one. I braced for a six out of ten, knowing she was a tough customer.

Imagine my surprise when she gave me a three.

“Now, hold on,” I said. “When you moved in, you weren’t happy about anything. I went to the nearest pet store and bought one can of ten different foods. Ten!”

Lady Grey licked her claw and then scratched some markings onto the tablet, and my heart sunk when I realized my outburst had gone in my permanent record.

The next category was sleep. Uh, she sleeps the majority of the day, and I let her, so I had no idea what was about to be said.

While she appreciates that I go to bed early (bedtime is her favorite event, right after eating, and she curls up in a ball and immediately starts snoring), I lost a lot of marks for tossing and turning. She likes to sleep on the puffy comforter but can’t because she learned early on when I roll over, I take all the covers with me, flinging her off the bed.

Apparently, the Better Half also hates this habit of mine.

I received a two out of ten.

I bit down onto my bottom lip to prevent another outburst, still peeved my counterpoint on the food score had been added to my permanent file.

Up next: Sun puddles.

This had to be where I’d shine, so to speak. Our apartment has a lot of windows. Even the bathroom. Not only that, but I’ve added cushions to her favorite window perches, and I put a cozy chair in the bathroom because it gets loads of sun, and I didn’t want LG to have to curl up on the floor. Did she know how hard it is to find an apartment in Massachusetts that had nice windows?

None of that mattered. Lady Grey doesn’t appreciate dull, gray days (we’ve had a lot of those over the past six months), and she blamed me entirely for the subpar weather.

“That’s not fair! I can’t control the weather!” I flicked my hands in the air.

Once again, she licked her claw, and my eruption was added to the file.

I sulked in my chair, tucking my hands into my armpits, but luckily for me, we moved to the last category, which was vacuuming.

Surely, this would work in my favor, because while I hate dusting and doing dishes, I enjoy vacuuming, and LG has long hair. Meaning, to ease my allergies, there’s been a huge uptick in this activity since she moved in.

That was where my reasons for high marks went off the rails. Clearly, this review wasn’t about what I enjoyed, but Lady Grey. And, do you know what she hates more than me stealing all the covers? The vacuum, which she called the Demonic Beast on Wheels.

It took everything I had not to mention how much I despised it when Lady Grey plopped herself down right in front of the television to clean her butt. That, to me, was much worse than vacuuming.

No matter. She marked me down for a zero.

I sucked in a breath but didn’t argue.

We booked the date for my next six-month review with her saying, “This has been unacceptable. Do better.”

Folks, I don’t think things are going to improve to her majesty’s standards. Especially on the food front, since the only wet food she likes to eat has encountered supply-chain delays due to COVID, and it’s out of stock in every store. I have twenty-four cans left and then…

Now, it’s time for me to vacuum. And, yes, I’m fully aware this is going to go down in my progress report, but my allergies are acting up, and I can barely breathe. Something tells me Lady Grey won’t go easy on me if I die, and she’d probably find a way to follow me to the great beyond for all eternity simply to remind me of the many ways I’ve let her down.