We started with four cats, and they’d eat whatever canned food we put out.
When there was just one of those four left, he had the can all to himself.
But then we found a kitten… and got another kitten, and they’d all eat their canned supper together.
When the last of the original four cats died, the two grown kittens got picky about canned food.
I’ve tried to chart what they like… sliced… flaked… chunks… chicken… liver… beef… fish…
Sometimes, they ate it. Sometimes, they stuck to dry food.
I leave it out on the patio for the strays.
Tag: personal
I don’t have a cat!
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my lawn.
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my porch.
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my chair.
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my kitchen floor.
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my bed.
“I don’t have a cat!” I said to the cat on my lap.
The cat didn’t say anything back.
Except for a gentle, dismissive purr.
Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Outage
“My website is down!” shouts the voice on the phone. “I’m losing hundreds of dollars a minute in business!”
“What is your website?” the technician asks.
“Hold on. Lemme look it up.”
The customer spells the website wrong twice, and yells some more.
The technician types it in, and it comes up.
So, he has the customer try to bring it up.
“I can’t!” he shouts.
“Can you go to CNN?”
“Sure, hold on… and… nope! Can’t get Fox either. None of the channels. My cable’s out.”
The technician mutes his phone, mutters “fuck you” softly, and sips his coffee.
The Kite
I can’t remember the last time I flew a kite.
In fact, I can’t remember the first time I flew a kite.
Or even flying a kite.
I know I’ve gotten kites as gifts, and I remember putting them together.
And I live somewhere near a spot with large fields and far from power lines.
It gets windy here, too… perfect kite-flying weather.
But not today. It’s not windy. And it’s raining.
So, that’s why I have this kite-making kit with me.
In case it’s nice out.
And windy.
And I’m near a wide open field.
So I’ll be ready.
Z Pack
The doctor called it a Z Pack.
Two antibiotic pills the first day, and then a pill for each of the next four days.
The first day, my sinuses cleared up, and my cough eased.
The second day, I was hearing strange bubbling and squishing noises from my guts.
The third day was spent on the toilet, expelling my gastrointestinal tract’s contents and its helpful bacterial flora.
The fourth day, I could have swallowed golf balls and launched them further than Jack Nicklaus at a driving range.
The rest, I don’t want to remember.
Pass the antibacterial hand wipes, please.
A Whiff Of Accomplishment
James made the best-smelling paintings.
No, not selling. Smelling.
He’d go to the beach and paint abstract waves and moonlit skies with tempera and plaster.
The mixture would capture the scent of the sand and the salty air, and if you closed your eyes and breathed in deep, you’d feel that spring Corpus Christi day.
His dream was to open his own restaurant, his paintings on the wall.
And he did. The opening was last month.
He made it.
And died last night of a heart attack.
A whiff, a touch of accomplishment, and your dreams is all you get.
The great heaving gust
I like to flavor my iced tea with freshly-squeezed lemon.
Usually, I squeeze the lemons with a tool that catches the seeds, but sometimes I’m in a rush and squeeze them by hand, dropping the seeds into my tea.
This usually isn’t a problem. But when I drink my tea with a straw, sometimes the seeds get caught in the straw, and I have to work them out from the straw with a series of squeezes.
Or, with a great gust of breath, I can shoot the seed across the room and out the sliding glass door to the patio.
A Series Of Dogs
George Carlin once said that life is a series of dogs.
The dogs you owned, one after another.
For me, life has been a series of cats.
One, two… One time, four of them at once. Now just two.
They were all unique. Different. Special.
How they went, sudden or slow, each its own unique sadness.
Laying in bed, almost asleep, I hear the familiar sound of him leaping to the bed, walking along the blanket, laying down against my side.
Nothing. He is gone. And my mind thinks I still need him there.
Haunting myself for comfort’s sake.
The Alarm
What? Huh?
I wake up to a cat leaping up to the bed, walking along the blanket, and curling up on top of my butt.
I turn to look at the alarm clock.
It’s 5:29. The alarm will go off at 5:30.
I turn to look at the cat.
“That butt’s going away soon,” I say.
Eyes closed, the cat flicks an ear.
The alarm goes off.
The cat, eyes still closed, takes a firm grip with his claws.
I reach for the clock and hit the snooze bar.
We’ll deal with it later.
And I go back to sleep.
Only So Much
There’s only so much red laser pointer games or ribbon on a stick teasing you can do with your cat.
Sometimes, when I’m really bored, I’ll slip my cell phone under a sleeping cat and then call it with another phone.
Most cats jump up startled, but we had this one cat who would just twitch his ear once and ignore the thing.
It didn’t matter what ringtone was set up, or if I’d set it on vibrate mode. He’d just twitch his ear and ignore it.
We figured he was smart enough to realize the call wasn’t for him.