Mr. December

Hello,

Welcome. Come in. I’ve been waiting for you. Come on, all of you. That’s another room. Just don’t stop at the door. Is everyone in? Good.

I don’t want to keep you, so I’ll be succinct. I know it’s early, but many of you have been thinking about me. Yes, I am Mr. December.

For some of you, I’m the last month of the year. Others consider me the holiday month, a holy month, or the start or winter, or summer, or some other season.

I took this time out to meet with you early because I know many of you have been thinking about me. I just want to reassure you that if you treat me like any other month, we’ll get along fine. There really is nothing to worry about.

Now. Go back to Ms November, and have a wonderful time. She’s a great month, if you just slow down and spend a little time with her.

See you next month.

Catlendar

Catlendar (catfinition) – a chart or series of pages by which cats track time. Catlendars have only one day – Caturday. Every day is Caturday for cats.

But you knew that.

His Name

His grey-green master came to see him in the morning.

The sun was up, and it was eight thirty by his clocks, which seemed accurate. He’d just completed showering, shaving, and his other personal matters when he turned and saw her. His house was at a level where she could comfortably look in on him without bending much.

The intrusion infuriated him. Shouting profanities at her tempted his tongue, but he held back, instead smiling at her. Still smiling, he gave a mock smile and bowed. He wondered how she would take that, and then turned his back on her to go down and make breakfast.

“Tolleaf,” she said.

She’d said that before, he remembered. Stopping, he turned and looked up at her.

“Tolleaf,” she said.

This is probably his name, he realized. What she’d decided to call him. He shook his head. “No. No.” Pointing at himself, he said, “Thomas.”

“Tolleaf,” she said.

“Thomas,” he said. He hit his chest with his fist. “Thomas. Thomas.” He hit his chest again. “Thomas.”

Bending closer to his house, she opened her yellow eyes wide. He watched her irises and pupils change. The capillaries and arteries in her eyes looked like a garden hose.

“Thomas?” she said.

Thomas nodded. “Yes.” He nodded again and pointed at himself. “Thomas.”

“Thomas,” she said.

He felt sick that this made him feel happy.

Monday’s Theme Song

Today’s song comes from yesterday’s movie.

We watched “Thor: Ragnorok” at the cinema yesterday. The movie features Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” twice. Led Zep III was one of those albums that I listened to repetitively when I was fourteen in nineteen seventy, and I came to know the album by heart. Once I heard “Immigrant Song,” I streamed the subsequent tracks into my head. Eventually, “Celebration Day” dominated more than the rest. Always like that beginning sound, and then the words, “Her face is cracked from smiling, all the fears that she’s been hiding, and it seems that pretty soon, everybody’s gonna know.”

Here, let me play it for you, and get it out of my head.

Floofnatic

Floofnatic (catfinition) – 1. A cat-crazy person; 2. any institute or organization obsessed with cats; 3. a crazy cat.

Tempting

Have you ever been walking, and smell something like grilled onions, and think, “Wow, what is that? I want it!”?

Yes, I have.

His House

Comfortably furnished, he was starting to like his house.

He was less certain that he liked his host. (Hostess?) He didn’t know her and little understood her, or even if it was a female, or if they had sexes. In his words, she was grey-green with yellow eyes. Unlike the invasion’s early day descriptions, though, he saw that they weren’t all the same color. One of his host’s frequent visitors was very light grey while another was forest green. Grey, green, and in between, that’s what they seemed to be. They all had yellow, parietal eyes, and were hairless, of the parts of them he saw. They liked watching him. In the early days, he’d sat motionless, glaring back at them. Once in a while, he shouted at them. He quit shouting at them because he thought they enjoyed that. Now he treated them with indifference and went about his day as if his captors weren’t present.

His house had running water and electricity. Located in a cage that presented him with a large yard all around it, his house was built for a family of five. About twenty-one hundred square feet, the split level featured three bedrooms and two and a half baths, along with a two car garage. There wasn’t a car. A full complement of appliances, dishes, and cookery was made available to him. They liked it when he cooked and ate.

The house’s front had been removed and replaced by a fine screen. He guessed that was so they could see in and watch him all of the time. Food was delivered in a shopping cart once a week. It was funny to see these creatures, twenty times larger than him, push a shopping cart his size into the little secure delivery area. They only opened the outer door on it when the inner door to his area was closed. It was a prison.

Besides frozen pizzas and dry cereals, they gave him cartons of milk and juice, bottles of wine and cases of beer, and fresh meats, snack foods, and produce. He didn’t know where these goods came from.

He didn’t have a phone, but he had two televisions, and a laptop, and he was connected to an Internet. Streaming shows were available, but nothing new. At times, ruminating about his existence, he mourned that he would never know how “Game of Thrones” ended. He posted on a blog every day, and others commented, and he shared emails. None of that helped them understand. All were in cages like him.

From the scenes and events described by others, he was beginning to picture entire human cities in cages.

 

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