what is . . .?

Black & White & Re[a]d All Over

collage

7 inches wide x 7 inches high

A newspaper, of course. But the riddle works only orally. Once written down, it gives itself away or it is ridiculous, with no real answer. Sort of like life when I have a cold. I can't hear well out of one ear, so I miss some things. Then the runny nose requires that I blow it, which in my case means making noise, over which I can't hear either, especially with only one ear. And the sneezes are sudden and frighten both the cat and the bird, who yelled all day because there were people working on the house next door. Yesterday, there were children there, too, and boy! he really didn't like that, so I moved him to the other side of the house, which didn't help all that much since he was now closer to the front street with all its traffic. He screamed. He also bounced and rattled the bell and generally behaved badly. The cat rolled his eyes and chewed his foot. I blew my nose. Again and again. Exhausted from all this, I took a nap which turned into a deep, deep snoring sleep. In the midst of a very complicated dream, I started to hear a noise that was confusing things even more than they already were; it was sort of squeeky, going "Eow, ow, eow," until finally, in the dream, I realized that this sound had nothing to do with what was going on in the dream, and I woke up a bit. It was the cat, sitting next to the bed, doing his Wake-Up-It's-Time-To-Feed-Me-And-The-Bird meowing. Annoying, especially because I was still so very tired. But it had been a two-hour nap, so yes, it was time to feed the animals. They got their regular food. I had popcorn, then ice cream. And then I realized that it was time to find a free newspaper because the bird's cage really needed cleaning.