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Feeding Fluffy
The cats don't read Proust, but Gide they really dig, and they recite favorite passages to each other when the sun drops behind the dance hall. Lolling on broken slabs of concrete with the Pentecostal weeds growing all around them, you can hear them.
Spinks says--"But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness."
BigHead responds, that's a good one baby, but check this out--"You're never satisfied until you've made them reveal some vice. Don't you realize that our own eyes magnify and exaggerate whatever they happen to see--that we make anyone become what we claim he is?"
Sure Poppy, that's cool, Notyetded says, but listen here--"One thing admirable about the Arabs: they live their art, they sing and scatter it from day to day; they don't cling to it, they don't embalm it in works. Which is the cause and effect of the absence of great artists. I have always believed the great artists are the ones who dare entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?..."
The cats all check in: Kitten, K2, BigHead, Spinks, Notyetded (and his new stepbrother), and several unnamed. The Heinz 57 Calico (who resembles cats of that prodigious Dumaine Point Blank clan) is pregnant, which is weird because I just saw her nursing a little yellow tabby a few weeks ago. Yellow Tabby Senior is the new swinging dick who challenges BigHead for harem privileges. I tried to scare him away with near miss BB gun shooting several months ago while he was trying to poke Spinks, but I felt wrong for it so let nature take its course. Spinks had her usual two kittens by him but like last time, with BigHead's babies, chose only one to nurse. I'm not going to suggest she ate the other one but, well, you know. Its been known to happen.
In the neighboring suburb of Kenner, the feral cat problem is being dealt with thusly: new laws have been passed making it illegal to feed stray cats. "What you in for, buddy?"
"Awww sheeit mane, I was feeding Fluffy and this member of the local law enforcement came along and threw me down like Ima Dillinger. What about you, whaju do?"
"Nothing, I just turned myself in."
"Awww mane, whyja?"
"For the sex."
"Awww sheeit mane."
Yesterday I read in the paper about this Uptown woman who was organizing a meeting at a local coffee shop with area residents to discuss the feral dog problem after one of her cats got ripped apart by a large pack. The article had a picture with it and the woman looked pretty all right, in her forties like myself, or close to it. I thought, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have ulterior motives and I think I have a lot to share on the subject of cats being ripped apart by dogs. If I didn't get too weepy I think I could even be eloquent on the subject. I mean I still have some unresolved issues concerning the attack on my Neon and the subsequent gaping whole in her neck writhing with maggots. I think I may be more culpable for the extension of her suffering than I would ideally like to be, but hell, you know, pain and suffering, suffering and pain. I could share it as well as anybody on Oprah and disregarding no more than one or two major character flaws I'm an OK guy so why shouldn't I inflict myself on this gathering of chicks. The use of the word "chicks" might suggest that one of my flaws is an emotional immaturity concerning the fairer sex and this may be a point of fact, or may be me blowing smoke. It doesn't matter which because I'm not going to PJ's coffeehouse, on Magazine, or anywhere else. I mean sure, eventually, down the road I may see the point of spending what I spend monthly at Rocheblave for coffee, on a single cup or two from a coffeehouse.
I mean eventually Maureen Dowd will get back to me. It may take awhile, I realize, and I wouldn't think of trying to speed the process by making direct inquiry. Hell, she's probably inundated with kook mail since the syndicated posting of her sultry new picture. No Maureen, I'm not one those wacko's, just a working class guy in New Orleans thinking about coffee with Maureen Dowd. It would probably be just as suspect to chum these html waters with salacious references for the googlebot. It probably wouldn't work anyway--fishing for hits to increase the likelihood that one of them might be Maureen Dowd her ownself. You know what I'm saying? Like Nude Pictures of Maureen Dowd (I don't have any, and think it would be improper to show them). I'm sure any number of her co-workers has typed that inquiry. Maybe one of them could pass this address on to her.
Hold on, I can hear those cats. Who that is? BigHead again, hold on, let me go out and hear this properly.
Okay, this is what I think I heard.
"Our happiness, during this last part of the trip, was so untroubled, so calm, that I have nothing to tell about it. The loveliest creations of men are persistently painful. What would be the description of happiness? Nothing, except what prepares and then what destroys it, can be told."