I’m not certain what the question was. I feel like I’m on the television quiz show, Jeopardy!
Saturday’s Bumper Sticker
Saturday’s Theme Music
From late in that magical decade referred to as the nineteen seventies comes this song.
But wait, was the nineteen seventies magical? I suppose it depends on how old you were, and where, right? If you’re a fortunate person, you experience one decade as magical in your life. The seventies are it for me. Moved to Ohio, met my wife, moved to West Virginia, graduated high school, joined the military, relocated to Ohio, bought a Camaro, married, served in the Philippines, sold the Camaro, bought a Porsche and drove across most of America, lived in Texas, quit the military, went back to West Virginia, bought a restaurant, quit the restaurant, lost the Porsche to fire, re-enlisted in the military, went back to Texas and bought a Firebird. It was action backed, and fun.
This song, “Don’t Bring Me Down,” by E.L.O. was part of the musical atmosphere. I find it fun to sing as I walk around, especially all those no, no, no, no passages, and “Grooss,” which I sing as Bruce, as most people do.
Here it is, from nineteen seventy-nine. Things weren’t simpler, just different.
Decided
Anger and anxiety paraded through him. He’d heard a noise. The noise caused him to think, the fucking raccoons are back. But the sound seemed to come from the front coat closet, which harpooned that raccoon idea and punted him back to, now what the fuck? He didn’t need any more shit in his life.
With that coursing through mind and simmering in blood, he marched to the closet and yanked open the door. It wasn’t a large space. The coats and shoes crowded it. But it was an irregular shape, so he dropped down on his hands and knees to explore the left back corner.
One, it was darker than he’d expected.
Two, it was warmer.
Three, the closet was larger that he’d thought.
The door behind him closed.
“Hey,” he said. Fury amped his motion. Someone was fucking with him. He’d kick their fucking ass. Rising into a tangle of coats, he shoved them aside and grabbed the closet handle.
The door pulled him forward.
“You son of a…,” he said, not knowing who he addressed. Ready to see some idiot friend on the other side, he wasn’t prepared for what he found.
“Where the fuck is my house?” he said. Where it was supposed to be, he saw a gray shaft and wooden ladder.
He looked up the shaft. Probably a hundred feet above, he could see a faint white patch. So what the fuck was that? What, was he supposed to climb out of here? No fucking way. Screw that noise.
Firmly decided, he stepped back in and closed the closet door. It’d changed once; it would again.
That’s where one of his idiot friends found his desiccated body days later.
It looked like he’d been there for years.
Tabby-grip
Tabby-grip (catfinition) – a strong hold cats use to cling. The tabby-grip typically utilizes both front paws as cats wrap their front legs around the object of their attention. The object varies. Without their claws extended, cats (especially kittens) will use the tabby-grip to hug one another as they sleep. With claws extended, the tabby-grip is employed in fighting and wrestling. It’s also used, with claws extended, to grab human’s arms, legs, or ankles to get their people’s attention. This last action is not infrequently associated with wanted treats or food.
What Else?
He was surprised. She had never spoken of her ex in kind terms. “Why?” he said.
She considered her words. “What else could I do? He was dying. He’d had cancer. I loved him once. We had two children together.”
It had been the third marriage for both, he knew. Each had children from a previous marriage. Lasting ten years, personal sturm and drang struck every day.
Her tired face softened. “He’d asked his children for help. They turned him down. He came to me. He said, “I don’t want to die in a little room alone.” So I took him in, put a bed in the living room, and cared for him until he died.
“What else could I do?”
To Do
You ever get up with a full list of things to do, and rush around completing the standard morning stuff, and then sit down and ask yourself, “Now what?”, even though you know you have a list?
Yeah, me neither.
Monsters and Food
They’re different, how they eat, these four felines that found our home and demanded sanctuary.
Tucker and Boo are big, upwards of sixteen pounds, with the frame to support them. They remind me of football fullbacks. Tucker also has large, white front paws.
Papi and Quinn are both small. Papi is ginger and lithe as a lion. Quinn, weighing in at under eight pounds in his entire life with us, can be mistaken for a miniature raccoon.
It’s a male group. My other insists that if we had a female among them, we’d have more order, and a tidier house. These four seem like the messiest beasts we’ve ever had. They also fight and anger more than any of the others did. None, save Quinn, can walk around the others without threats, warnings, or chases ensuing. It’s wearying.
Commonalities are limited. Besides being male, Tucker and Boo are cats with unknown pasts while Papi and Quinn both ran away from their homes and started living at our place. Three of the four have lost one of their canines. Years ago, Quinn showed up here at home with one missing one day, while Tucker had one removed. Boo has had one missing since he joined the household. Papi is the only one with all his canines. He’s the odd cat out.
Their eating highlights how different they are from one another. Papi, the newest, is a licker. He’ll lick his pate from one side of the bowl and up the other. Then, since it’s going up the side, he’ll quit and turn to the kibble. This is what caused me to notice their eating habits. Pepper, the neighbor’s cat who we feed on the front porch, is a licker, too. I’ve watched her. But when the food goes up the side of the bowl, Pepper walks around the bowl to where it’s moved, and begin eating from there, licking it into the other direction. My wife says, yes, Pepper is a female, and she’s smarter.
Tucker is a chomper. He grabs a piece of pate and chomps it down, no problem. Boo likes to relocate his food from the bowl to the floor and eat it from there. Quinn is a licker like Papi, but as he licks and moves the food forward, he leans forward to get ahead of it. Sometimes that means he gets food on his ruff.
Where do they learn these things? Their other commonality are their shadow styles. Like many cats, they like to follow along, to see what you’re doing. They act as if they’ve never seen these things before. “You’re on the toilet? Well, let me watch and see if you’re doing anything different.” Maybe they’re monitoring our health, or we’re part of a science experiment.
The toilet is just one place of fascination. Doors are others. “You’re opening that door? Quick, let me take a look.” Never mind that it’s the closet door, and we went through this yesterday. Perhaps I should learn from that, and adapt their stance, that you should never assume that it’s a closet today, just because it was a closet yesterday. Even if it is a closet, how do we know there aren’t monsters inside? We must check.
All of them also shed fur. My wife swears that our other cats never used to shed fur the way these four do. It’s her ritual to go around in the morning, picking up fur and muttering to herself about how much more she could get done, if she wasn’t picking up fur all the time.
They’re an interesting and exasperating quartet. Each manages to endear themselves, too. I guess that’s why they’ve chosen to live here and put up with us.
Michael Seidel, writer 