Some people like chili with beans, and others like it without.
Sure, you can make a pot of each, but there’s a more elegant one-pot solution.
When he wasn’t in the lab working on quantum physics, Erwin Schrödinger was in the kitchen, cooking for friends, family, and coworkers.
When he made chili, he ran into the same bean problem. Fussy eaters whining about beans or no beans.
So, just for them, he made a special pot of chili.
They didn’t know if it had beans until they got agonizing cramps.
“Serves you right!” he’d shout. “You’re fussier than my cat!”
Tag: cats
Best Friends
I like to watch online movies where two vastly different animals have close bonds and friendships.
The cutest I’ve seen is a black cat that plays with an owl. The owl swoops while the cat leaps up at it, or the owl hops on the ground while the cat turns circles.
As for the weirdest, I suppose it’s not easy having a giant squid as your best friend.
Especially if you’re a sperm whale.
Watching these two play and wrestle makes my heart swoon with joy.
And terror.
(Because our boat’s right above them, and they’re heading to the surface.)
Baby Panthers
On the way to work, I walk through the park next to the courthouse.
Down the steps, into a maintenance area under a bridge where a small cat colony lives.
There’s a calico, a tortie, an orange and white.
And two black cats.
I call them the wild baby panthers.
I carry cat treats in my work bag, and I leave a pile or two when I walk by on the way to work.
And the way home.
I know they’ll never trust me, or rub against my leg, purring or meowing.
That’s fine by me. To give is enough.
Curiosity
Curiosity killed the cat.
Then, Curiosity killed the dog.
Next came the goldfish. Curiosity put those in a blender and hit the big red button.
After that mess was flushed, Curiosity went outside with an air rifle and started shooting birds off the telephone wires.
She ran out of ammo right around the time we got home.
“Check on the babysitter,” I told my wife.
She went inside, found her tied up in a chair, and checked for a pulse.
“Weak, but it’s there,” she said.
Still alive?
Strange. Usually, Curiosity kills them.
I scolded her: “You’re getting sloppy, kid.”
A Rainbow At The End
I take the stuffed catnip rainbow from the shelf, turning it over in my hands.
Of all the catnip toys, this was his favorite.
The memorial candles, the collars, the others’ favorite toys.
The boxes of ashes.
And a note: Their tenth lives are our memory of them.
The kittens run around, chasing each other.
Two years old, but I call them the kittens.
The older one, much older… naps in the bedroom, with his uneasy stomach.
Will he be fine tonight? Yes? No?
I reach down, his head rises to meet my hand.
Not yet, my friend. Not yet.
When The Ghost
See this chair?
Yeah, it’s a pretty nice chair.
I still think of this chair as being her chair.
Even though she’s no longer here, it’s still her chair.
And, I suppose, it’s a whole new chair.
The old chair broke a while back. But it’s still hers.
And, I guess, the new chair didn’t look so good where the old chair used to be.
But it looked good somewhere else.
So I moved it there.
But despite her being gone…
The chair getting replaced…
And the new one moved somewhere else…
I still think of this as her chair.
How Cats Defeated Hitler
In an underground cafe in Berlin, sitting at a table with a bottle of something dark and crisp, an old man hobbles up to me and hands me a fluffy grey cat.
“Cats defeated Hitler,” he said, smiling.
And he walked back into the shadows.
I looked at the cat.
The cat looked at me.
And purred.
I wanted to get up and follow the old man and ask him what he meant, but the cat was so soft and furry, and the purring was so nice.
So, I just sat, drank my beer, and surrendered to the grey cat.
Gertie and Eustus
My rich Great Aunt Gertie lays in bed, eyes closed, arm around her beloved cat, Eustus.
He’s not the original Eustus.
Gertie tried cloning. Cloning is hit-or-miss with personalities, though.
Luckily, the last came out nice and docile.
Now, she’s trying out the latest in hologram fields.
Before, they just rendered dusty, translucent ghosts.
These days, they’re quite lifelike with tactile presence.
Eustus wakes up, stretches, and curls back up, purring contentedly.
Gertie flickers for a moment, smiles in her electronic sleep.
She left everything in her will to Eustus.
(Even though he’s just a cloned copy, my lawyers say.)
Waiting
Bruwyn didn’t come home last night.
Usually, he’s the first to come home, but Myst came home first.
Finding a black cat at night is impossible, of course, but you can’t just sit down and wait.
Walking around, I hear what I think is his collar, but it’s just crickets and frogs.
So, I come back home, Myst and Nardo wait up with me.
If he can’t come home for whatever reason, I hope he knows he’s loved and missed.
And if he doesn’t want to come home, well, cats are cats, and I hope he’s happy wherever he is.
Oops
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My kindergarten teacher had a cat named Oops, solid black with a white O on his chest.
She lived next to a maple tree farm, and every year she took classes there to see how syrup was made.
Oops wandered around the woods, but the moment he spotted a class coming through, he’d run off and hide.
That was over thirty years ago, and the teacher is long gone.
The maple syrup farm is gone too, but the trees remain.
A black shadow crosses my path.
After all these years, how can…
I see two glowing red eyes. And…
Oops!