Me and Noodles: a cat saga

 

 

The cat and I are both senior citizens.  So says the government, so it can decide what to do with me, health-wise.  Productivity- wise.  As an economic unit, like one errant ion in a beaker on a lab table behind where the Illuminati meet, fuckers, and it calculates the  liabilities I pose to the government.   The kittie cat is old.  I'm fifty five, which is geezerland in the Planet Youth.

Noodles is remonstrating the loss of her friend Ramon, the scarred and jovial alley cat that used to live down the street in an abandoned domicile.    The dump was demolished, and poor Ramon fell victim to Pest Control, thanks to a community better informed about the dangers of feral cats.  The furry dears spread rabies.  Bite babies.  Infect people.    It took all nine lives from some of the most colorful feline vagrants.  I miss Ramon as well.  He fathered many, many cats.   Some fine.  Some not so fine.  But he was prolific, and I shared in his pride.   Noodles was spayed. Taciturn about the family way of life.   She is a great lover, and not a humanitarian.   It is my problem to convince the world I am not a total prick.   Being soley a lover is a good philosophical position.  For its clarity.

"Fuckers whacked Ramon.  Caught his poor ass in a box trap, and Xed the poor old bastard.  I loved that guy," she grumbled, with a low growl to accompany her clear, refined English.   Noodles is a talking cat. We live alone together in the  urban third world.    I keep a baseball bat in reach.  Don't fuss.   Be sociable.  Be open to screwy alternaive life styles.  I don't fuck with yours. 

"Well, crap, Noodles," I said, "I think maybe you and I have been closer since the Cat Massacre of 2004."

Noodles called bullshit.  "That's becuase you quit letting me out of the house, Tonto."

"Well fucking Pest Control might get you if you go outside. It is for your own safety that I must be such a dick.  About letting you go outside.   There's cat rustlers on the prowl."

 I tried to de-escalate.  As was trained to do when I worked night shift at a god-forsaken half-way house for minimum wage.  It was people who flipped out at all hours of the day and night at the half way house.   My cat wasn't really fllipping out.   But she was surly.  I had to intercede.  Give her a Shiatsu.  Foot massage.  Anything she wants.  Anything she asks. for.  She closed the matter.  "Nice digs you keep here, Ranger," she said, and lay under the reading lamp.