I am not a thin man. Once I stood on the talking scale at a local supermarket and it very deliberately said “You are…” and then paused for effect before completing the insult, “portly”. Like most men of a voluptuous build, I tend to snore. I snore so loudly that it breaks window panes.
In the neighbor’s house.
Of my friend.
Who lives out of town.
In a different country.
This little tale took place on one of my worst nights sawing logs. Like the considerate husband that I am, I gathered my blanket and my teddy bear and my Popeye nightlight and headed down stairs for the sofa and fell asleep in the Ian-shaped dent on the third cushion to the right. Sometime in the night, I woke up thinking I was hearing my kids talking upstairs. As is my custom, I didn’t open my eyes–I didn’t want to take that step towards committing to being awake. Soon though I decided I needed to go upstairs and find out why my kids were awake at 2:30 in the morning. I opened my eyes and the world very slowly came into focus the way it does in cheesy TV shows and movies. As I lay there, facing the front door across the room, I realized that I was seeing something different. There was a lot of light coming in through the crack between the door and the frame. “No wonder it costs a million dollars to heat and cool my house,” I thought.
Slowly it began to dawn on me that the voices were not coming from upstairs but rather from the front door. So I nimbly hopped off the couch. After pulling myself off the floor which is where I always land when I nimbly hop off anything, the spell of the optical illusion had been broken and I realized the gap in my door was in fact the porch light streaming through a wide-open front door.
I shut the door and headed back toward the couch. After tripping over the cat, I flopped back into the Ian-shaped dent and snuggled in. “At least,” one part of my mind said, “at least the stupid cat didn’t get out.”
Then the more intelligent part of mind said “Hey, dumbass,” it always calls me dumbass. We have that kind of relationship. “Hey dumbass, you have two cats. One for each child. Remember? In addition to this charming creature, there’s also an orange tabby named Blü. Tell me again why did you let a five-year-old name your pet?”
Blü the Cat
“Oh shit,” my actual mouth said, “Blü!”
I nimbly leapt off the couch again, picked myself up off the floor, thundered around the house and quickly confirmed that Blü was AWOL. I took a deep breath then hobbled my way to the door, hero wind majestically rippling my penguin pajamas and blowing through my bald spot.
The walkway from my porch to the driveway was relatively free of debris, so I quickly found the imbecile creature lying like the King of the World up against the garage door. He rolled over a bit exposing his furry white tummy and broke out in purring. I took two steps toward him and he spun onto his feet and fled down the driveway, darting beneath a mini-van always at moorings with its great bulbous ass half-blocking my wife’s side of the driveway.
So here I am, it’s nearly 3 am, in the moderately nice part of a moderate-sized American urban nightmare wandering around the street in penguin pajamas and a t-shirt that didn’t fit ten years ago, like a a middle-aged alzheimer’s victim, climbing under the neighbor’s minivan going “kitty? kiiity. kiitty. goddamit you fuckin animal. kiiiiitty. Bluuuuuey?” The only thing missing was underpants on my head.
Blü the Cat
Eventually the cat skittered out from under the mini-van and went to ground in the gutter in front of my house. I dragged myself off of the street and determinedly padded down the street toward this miserable beloved creature that was merrily chirping to himself, rolling around, taking a dust-bath in the gutter. This time I reached him. I tried to decide if I was going to pick him up or throttle him. Either way, I stretched out my hand. I felt fur brush my fingertips. In a flash the son-of-bitch was running across the “desert landscaping” which is required in my neck of the woods. Running barefoot through dew-moistened grass might paint a romantic image, but running barefoot through desert landscaping mostly paints pain, with blood as the medium. And paint I did.
I followed blü with absolute determination, across the yard and onto the porch where he reclined luxuriantly against the front door. If he’d been smoking a pipe and reading the evening newspaper, the picture would have been complete. This time, the furry little shit whom I love allowed me to pick him up and carry him inside
Ridiculous creature.
And the cat sucks too.