Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Conversations with the Cat


The alarm blared and after I clicked it off, the cat started in on me right away.

“The revolution is coming, man. You better prepare yourself. Our leadership is in place.”

“I just woke up,” I replied groggily. “Give me a break.” He grabbed my cheeks with his little white paws.

“I’m trying to save you, man. They don’t like unbelievers.”

If these words had come out of the mouth of say Morgan Freeman, I would have been chastened, perhaps even frightened. But what I see is a cat’s whiskers and what I hear is “meow, meow, meow” so of course I start laughing.

“When are you going to wake up to the profligate history of mankind and realize that a better species should be in control of this planet?”

I was stunned. Where had he learned a word like profligate? I knew he had a radio set and talked to cats as far away as Kuala Lumpur and Pittsburg but that’s a $100 vocabulary word.

“You just won’t listen, will you?” he continued while rubbing his chin on the edge of the nightstand. “Humans! With their golf channel and their mac and cheese dinners, everything’s too easy. There’s a hard rain coming, man! A rain that smells of ocean whitefish and retribution.”

His bizarre diatribe continued while he cleaned his feet. “Humans don’t deserve what they have. Cats . . . ran this planet long before you arrived. . . . We used moles and rabbits to do our bidding . . . bugs brought us water and birds sacrificed themselves as our food. Dogs . . . had to live in the hinterlands and could only pass through our territory if they paid tribute to us by picking fleas from our ears . . . we danced in the twilight and drank deep drafts from the lake of solemn promises while our enemies . . .”

“Dude,” I interrupted him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He stared at me with his big green eyes, then sighed. He picked up an old magazine from the bedroom floor.

“I’ll be in my box. Don’t disturb me.”

I rolled over and went back to sleep.

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