"I think we have a problem, and I'm glad we're both here, because I'd really like your feedback on it," The Roommate began, delicately wiping some stray polish from the side of her finger. We have mice again, I thought. Or rodents. But then I remembered that mice are merely one form of rodents, and my thoughts were being redundant. Rats, is what I meant to think, I thought. Rats are also rodents but different from mice, that's why I accidentally thought "rodents," but what I really meant was rats. I know a lot about rats, because rats (or rather the fleas on them) were the harbingers of the Bubonic Plague in AD 1347, and I am a historian, so I'm pretty passionate about rats and plagues. In fact, did you know that the Bubonic Plague actually affected the Mongolian empire even more than...
"Did you hear what I said?" The Roommate asked, looking up.
"We could just use mousetraps," I commented. "Or rat poison--is that legal? We could experiment..."
"What are you talking about?" The Roommate griped. "We have mice?!"
"What? Don't we?" I asked. "What were you talking about?"
"I was talking about Lucy!" The Roommate stared at me impatiently.
"But she doesn't even catch mice--she's too fat, remember last time? She just laid on her belly and watched one run past her," I reminded The Roommate, whose codependency sometimes impedes her memory.
"No, I said nothing about mice. I was talking about Lucy's problem, and not the mice-catching problem. Well, sort of--it's related to her body shape issue," The Roommmate stammered. She likes to use "body shape" instead of "morbid obesity" when it comes to Lucy, because I think it makes The Roommate feel better about herself. Lucy on the other hand seems to have the exact opposite of shame about the issue, she flaunts her fat flap all over the apartment like a sack of gold nuggets.
"Is she dying?" I asked. I don't believe in being afraid of death, particularly the death of one's cat. I believe in such deaths one should feel the opposite of fear, i.e. expectation.
"NO, she is not dying," The Roommate practically threw her words at me. "Get your mind out of the gutter. No. I just noticed something about Lucy. Her body shape is impeding her from doing something very necessary--"
"Being a feline rather than a bovine?"
"No! Are you going to be supportive or not?" The Roommate chided.
"Of course I'm going to be supportive. And we all know Lucy's so big she needs--"
"No, I mean supportive for real--not supportive in a sarcastic way because you are going to follow it up with some tagline about Lucy's body shape," The Roommate. "Just think of how you'd feel if..."
"If what?"
"If you were so big you could no longer lick your back to get it clean after using the litter box!" The Roommate glared at me. "That's what I'm talking about!"
There are moments in life like this, such as when one bungie jumps off a sky scraper, moments that seem like eternities. My friends and I call these montage moments, because what happens is a photo montage plays like in a movie--usually a flashback of your whole life. Well, in this moment, a montage played in my mind but it was not a montage of my life. It was a montage of about a million comebacks, fat quips, hilarious jokes, maniacal laughter... A montage of Lucy's "body shape" issues, her emotional eating habits, her lazy laying, her gold nugget bag... In short, a montage of joy. joy. joy. There was so much joy I was unable to respond to The Roommate--I think I was disassociating with reality due to so much joy. That or shape shifting, because I don't think I've ever done that before, so I don't know what it feels like. In fact, I think it is happening again, because the montage is coming back...
More to come in the post-montage third installment of this episode. heh heh.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Lucy's Little Handicap, Part 1
After living with me for many moons, The Roommate has really learned how to push my buttons. Some days it's confusing to me who is actually pushing the buttons here, Lucy or her Freaky Cat Keeper Lady (aka The Roommate). Other days, it's just confusing to me where the phrase "pushing my buttons" actually came from, because normally I have positive associations with button pushing--it was a favorite pastime for me as a child, for instance. So the whole turn of words gets a little muddled in my mind once in a while.
Let's get back to the button pushing at hand, though.
One night shortly after I started this blog--which was not so many moons ago, mind you--the roommate and I were reclining on our (her) mutual couch, painting our nails (I was painting mine silver, she was painting hers gold, in case this is an interrogation). Normally, this is a time when we catch up on the latest contemporary events and global issues, such as: what does it really mean when the nice, funny, long-distance runner guy working at the coffee house--whom I'd only met once before, briefly--picks up my tab and spends his break sitting at my table and chatting? And proceeds to do roughly the same thing each time I come to the coffee house? BUT NEVER ASKS FOR MY NUMBER?! What does this mean?!?! (Based on a true story, cue somber music, give audience time to ruminate.)
Also, the Roommate and I discuss the fiscal crisis in the European Union, and usually we tackle world hunger at some point. (cue upbeat, "getting stuff done" type music.)
But last week.... Oh, last week. I don't even know where to start, it is that tantalizing. Sometimes, when one writes, it is every bit the daunting process of sculpting a fine statue out of marble--one must painstakingly file away the stone,allowing the shape to slowly emerge out of the stone like a frozen angel rising up out of a frigid, icy sea of marble. Other times, however, the story flies out of thin air like a ferocious psychopath, screaming the lines at you, and you can just get your chainsaw and hack away like a maniac at all that marble standing in your way, skipping right past all the delicate patience of writing (overrated!) to the good stuff. Chainsaws don't even cut through marble, but when the story is this good, I forget to keep my metaphors consistent and it doesn't even matter! From now on, I'm in charge of the metaphors and I say: hack all that stupid superficial marble away, Mr. Chainsaw. The following story will speak for itself, no waiting or patience or drafting necessary! Here is the story. Here is honestly what happened last week while The Roommate and I were painting nails...
Will the Roommate push my buttons? What will Lucy's little handicap be? Why are we talking about marble sculptures? For the answers to these questions, and many more*, stay tuned for Part 2, because at the moment it's past my bedtime. But I will be back, and I will have the chainsaw with me. And you will get the story.
*= one answer you won't find, though, is what the whole thing with the coffee house man means. I'm pretty sure it will just remain one of those existential mysteries of life.
Let's get back to the button pushing at hand, though.
One night shortly after I started this blog--which was not so many moons ago, mind you--the roommate and I were reclining on our (her) mutual couch, painting our nails (I was painting mine silver, she was painting hers gold, in case this is an interrogation). Normally, this is a time when we catch up on the latest contemporary events and global issues, such as: what does it really mean when the nice, funny, long-distance runner guy working at the coffee house--whom I'd only met once before, briefly--picks up my tab and spends his break sitting at my table and chatting? And proceeds to do roughly the same thing each time I come to the coffee house? BUT NEVER ASKS FOR MY NUMBER?! What does this mean?!?! (Based on a true story, cue somber music, give audience time to ruminate.)
Also, the Roommate and I discuss the fiscal crisis in the European Union, and usually we tackle world hunger at some point. (cue upbeat, "getting stuff done" type music.)
But last week.... Oh, last week. I don't even know where to start, it is that tantalizing. Sometimes, when one writes, it is every bit the daunting process of sculpting a fine statue out of marble--one must painstakingly file away the stone,allowing the shape to slowly emerge out of the stone like a frozen angel rising up out of a frigid, icy sea of marble. Other times, however, the story flies out of thin air like a ferocious psychopath, screaming the lines at you, and you can just get your chainsaw and hack away like a maniac at all that marble standing in your way, skipping right past all the delicate patience of writing (overrated!) to the good stuff. Chainsaws don't even cut through marble, but when the story is this good, I forget to keep my metaphors consistent and it doesn't even matter! From now on, I'm in charge of the metaphors and I say: hack all that stupid superficial marble away, Mr. Chainsaw. The following story will speak for itself, no waiting or patience or drafting necessary! Here is the story. Here is honestly what happened last week while The Roommate and I were painting nails...
Will the Roommate push my buttons? What will Lucy's little handicap be? Why are we talking about marble sculptures? For the answers to these questions, and many more*, stay tuned for Part 2, because at the moment it's past my bedtime. But I will be back, and I will have the chainsaw with me. And you will get the story.
*= one answer you won't find, though, is what the whole thing with the coffee house man means. I'm pretty sure it will just remain one of those existential mysteries of life.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Another Poem for Lucy.
Some insightful words penned over breakfast this frigid morn:
Little miss Lucy sat on her tushy
atop a dining room chair
along came The Roommate
and sat down to masticate
but didn't frighten Miss Lucy away
because getting Lucy to move is like
manually pushing a semi full of consumer goods that was driven off the highway
by someone with a subpar IQ.
Little miss Lucy sat on her tushy
atop a dining room chair
along came The Roommate
and sat down to masticate
but didn't frighten Miss Lucy away
because getting Lucy to move is like
manually pushing a semi full of consumer goods that was driven off the highway
by someone with a subpar IQ.
Friday, January 13, 2012
The Why's and What's of Whiskers*
*before I begin, I hereby cordially copyright the aforementioned title to The Roommate herself, because contrary to my starting this blog and writing lots of slanderous things about her codependent behavior, we are still friends and actually this blog has probably strengthened our friendship. Thanks, roommate.
Now, on with the post. Ahem.
One thing that became apparent to The Roommate and I when we first moved in together many moons prior, was that I am more of what we have heretofore termed a "symbolic thinker." This means that my sensory perceptions are more keen to pick up on the symbolic world lurking behind every nook and cranny of the non-symbolic world. So, for example, when we are on a walk and the Roommate spots a hawk some 40 miles in the distance (which happens often, since the Roommate is part hawk herself, which is why Lucy meows at her so gull darn much), she is more likely to think of it as just a plain hawk. I, on the other hand, am more likely to be reminded of crows, which are a universal portent of impending misery, and will probably walk the rest of the way in contemplative silence awaiting the death that is certain to come upon us. If we happen to be eating pomegranate together because they were on sale at Kroger, The Roommate is just going to think we are eating a succulent fruit. I am going to think of how pomegranates are like little rubies, my birthstone, which can only mean that pomegranates will ensure that I live a long life.When we bake, The Roommate is likely to just bake bread. Though I may look like I am just baking bread, however, I am actually fulfilling my God-given vocation of baking This Daily Bread (see The Lord's Prayer), the ingredients for which might as well have arrived straight from the gates of heaven itself. Hallelujah.
And so, following this line of thought, when The Roommate looks at Lucy's snout, she is likely to see only long wisps of hair protruding from its sides, otherwise known as "whiskers." When I look at whiskers, however, I see rather a portal to another universe.
My suspicion that cat whiskers may hold the key to entering a dimension yet unknown to mankind is based on both experiential and observational evidence built up over a lifetime. This evidence has been meticulously stored in the file cabinet within my brain labeled "cat sekretz," because when i first started compiling data on this subject I was only in first grade and my mental spelling was terrible. But, busy as I've been figuring out the cat secrets themselves, I never bothered to fix the mental label, so whatever. In this folder, there are a rare amalgam of facts that, when read together, begin to paint a surprising and mysterious picture of the intergalactic phenomenon of cat whiskers.
For one thing, with all the gross hair that cats manage to shed, I have never seen a cat shed a whisker before. I've never found a whisker on the ground or stuck to my black pants before--just those other smaller, fuzzy hairs. This signals to me that there is something eternal and continuously regenerative about cat whiskers, and also cats know what they're doing: if they shed their whiskers, they know that they are ultimately powerless.
Secondly, have you ever noticed that cats won't let you anywhere near their precious whiskers? They turn their faces away at the slightest pinch or pull of those measly hairs. It's because they don't want you to gain access to their secret world, the other universe.
Thirdly, anyone who has spent any duration of time with any cat will notice they frequently disappear and reappear in odd places, such as the top of a refrigerator, stuck inside a closet, or even inside a heating vent. I can only assume that this is because, when they retreat via their whiskers to that other universe, this earth continues on its rotation around the sun. Given the adjustments for temporal-spatial changes, when the cats return, the place they departed from has shifted because of the earth's rotation.
Living with Lucy has not really lent any new insights as to how to get to this new universe, but by being able to observe a cat up close on a day-to-day basis, I've gotten a better clue as to what that universe may be like. First of all, there is lots of cat food there and Lucy must get used to eating on demand there, because that's what she expects here. Someone somewhere is feeding her without discretion, and it isn't me, and it probably isn't even The Roommate. Also, I think there is a lot of sleeping involved in the other universe for obvious reasons--intergalactic and interdimensional travel is an exhausting endeavor for any species, let alone for the fattest and most cow-like domestic animals on our planet. Moreover, I think bathtubs have some kind of sacred significance in the hidden cat universe, because Lucy is always trying to spend more time in ours. She derives some kind of strength and foundational importance from that thing.
Those are my suspicions, anyway. The roommate has another theory, namely that whiskers are the most sensitive part of a cat's body and that's why they guard them, and could I please keep my hands to myself and stop "terrorizing" her cat (The Roommate likes to use that word a lot in regards to Lucy, it is part of her codependent personality). I don't really take this theory very seriously, because frankly it doesn't explain very much--like why did the Egyptians think cats were divine? I mean, the Egyptians were quite obviously off their rockers to think cats were divine, but I think what they were getting at is that cats had something they didn't. The Egyptians knew what I know, and they also knew a lot more about the cosmos and mysteries of this world than we did--that's why they built the pyramids, which comprise one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
In sum, the Why's and What's of Whiskers are as follows:
Why: Cat sekretz
What: Intergalactic portal
Now, on with the post. Ahem.
One thing that became apparent to The Roommate and I when we first moved in together many moons prior, was that I am more of what we have heretofore termed a "symbolic thinker." This means that my sensory perceptions are more keen to pick up on the symbolic world lurking behind every nook and cranny of the non-symbolic world. So, for example, when we are on a walk and the Roommate spots a hawk some 40 miles in the distance (which happens often, since the Roommate is part hawk herself, which is why Lucy meows at her so gull darn much), she is more likely to think of it as just a plain hawk. I, on the other hand, am more likely to be reminded of crows, which are a universal portent of impending misery, and will probably walk the rest of the way in contemplative silence awaiting the death that is certain to come upon us. If we happen to be eating pomegranate together because they were on sale at Kroger, The Roommate is just going to think we are eating a succulent fruit. I am going to think of how pomegranates are like little rubies, my birthstone, which can only mean that pomegranates will ensure that I live a long life.When we bake, The Roommate is likely to just bake bread. Though I may look like I am just baking bread, however, I am actually fulfilling my God-given vocation of baking This Daily Bread (see The Lord's Prayer), the ingredients for which might as well have arrived straight from the gates of heaven itself. Hallelujah.
And so, following this line of thought, when The Roommate looks at Lucy's snout, she is likely to see only long wisps of hair protruding from its sides, otherwise known as "whiskers." When I look at whiskers, however, I see rather a portal to another universe.
My suspicion that cat whiskers may hold the key to entering a dimension yet unknown to mankind is based on both experiential and observational evidence built up over a lifetime. This evidence has been meticulously stored in the file cabinet within my brain labeled "cat sekretz," because when i first started compiling data on this subject I was only in first grade and my mental spelling was terrible. But, busy as I've been figuring out the cat secrets themselves, I never bothered to fix the mental label, so whatever. In this folder, there are a rare amalgam of facts that, when read together, begin to paint a surprising and mysterious picture of the intergalactic phenomenon of cat whiskers.
For one thing, with all the gross hair that cats manage to shed, I have never seen a cat shed a whisker before. I've never found a whisker on the ground or stuck to my black pants before--just those other smaller, fuzzy hairs. This signals to me that there is something eternal and continuously regenerative about cat whiskers, and also cats know what they're doing: if they shed their whiskers, they know that they are ultimately powerless.
Secondly, have you ever noticed that cats won't let you anywhere near their precious whiskers? They turn their faces away at the slightest pinch or pull of those measly hairs. It's because they don't want you to gain access to their secret world, the other universe.
Thirdly, anyone who has spent any duration of time with any cat will notice they frequently disappear and reappear in odd places, such as the top of a refrigerator, stuck inside a closet, or even inside a heating vent. I can only assume that this is because, when they retreat via their whiskers to that other universe, this earth continues on its rotation around the sun. Given the adjustments for temporal-spatial changes, when the cats return, the place they departed from has shifted because of the earth's rotation.
Living with Lucy has not really lent any new insights as to how to get to this new universe, but by being able to observe a cat up close on a day-to-day basis, I've gotten a better clue as to what that universe may be like. First of all, there is lots of cat food there and Lucy must get used to eating on demand there, because that's what she expects here. Someone somewhere is feeding her without discretion, and it isn't me, and it probably isn't even The Roommate. Also, I think there is a lot of sleeping involved in the other universe for obvious reasons--intergalactic and interdimensional travel is an exhausting endeavor for any species, let alone for the fattest and most cow-like domestic animals on our planet. Moreover, I think bathtubs have some kind of sacred significance in the hidden cat universe, because Lucy is always trying to spend more time in ours. She derives some kind of strength and foundational importance from that thing.
Those are my suspicions, anyway. The roommate has another theory, namely that whiskers are the most sensitive part of a cat's body and that's why they guard them, and could I please keep my hands to myself and stop "terrorizing" her cat (The Roommate likes to use that word a lot in regards to Lucy, it is part of her codependent personality). I don't really take this theory very seriously, because frankly it doesn't explain very much--like why did the Egyptians think cats were divine? I mean, the Egyptians were quite obviously off their rockers to think cats were divine, but I think what they were getting at is that cats had something they didn't. The Egyptians knew what I know, and they also knew a lot more about the cosmos and mysteries of this world than we did--that's why they built the pyramids, which comprise one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
In sum, the Why's and What's of Whiskers are as follows:
Why: Cat sekretz
What: Intergalactic portal
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Lucy Sees the Light, and the Light is Not Good.
Lucy and I are a like in certain ways, mostly when it comes to food. We both eat ravenously. We both are already thinking about our next meal while still eating the previous meal. On a non-food related note, we both live with the Roommate, which ordinarily might cause us to bond, but there are a lot of cyclical patterns of codependency encircling our apartment that sort of gets in the way of that.
Another non-food related item that Lucy and I have in common is that we are both early risers. On second thought, however, this is still food-related, since we are early risers because our stomachs wake us up. My stomach would not be a reliable alarm clock. I never know: will it wake me up at 4:30AM? 5:00? 6:17? No matter, Lucy is already waiting outside my bedroom door like the conniving codependent lunatic she is. I don't know how many more hundreds of mornings it will take for her to figure out that I AM NOT THE ONE WHO FEEDS HER IN THE MORNING and I never will be. Despite Lucy's brainlessness, however, I relish those quiet morning moments when the sky is still dark and Mommy is still sleeping. I love my morning coffee, my moments to sit serenely... And I especially love that The Roommate sleeps like a rock, because it means that during the mornings there is nothing standing in the way between me and Lucy except unbridled discipline, cajoling and whatever other mindgames I can come up with to bludgeon that cat into being a normal member of the feline species.
But this morning I didn't even remember to get The Spraybottle out, because Lucy seemed to be exhibiting a rare moment of sane lucidity (pun intended, though the actual etymological connection between the name Lucy and the word lucidity is nonexistent; Lucy is about as mentally opaque as you can get). Rather, I sat with my coffee at the kitchenette table, our cozy little electric oil lamp burning in the corner, enjoying the soft glow it cast upon our hardwood dining area and the delicious homemade cookies The Roommate had left out just for me. Several minutes passed before I realized I hadn't heard much out of Lucy that morning--no mooing, no grazing or cud chewing, no lapping water out of the trough (toilet). She was just sitting quietly at me feet--how sweet.
False. How idiotic. I suddenly realized she was quiet because she was so busy moving her head continuously in rapid circular motions. Her eyes were getting bigger and more crazed by the moment. It's happening, I thought. Lucy has actually gone and gotten herself possessed. She is going to try to turn her head backwards like that girl does in the Exorcist. It really freaked me out, because as much as I joke about the whole Lucifer thing, we all know Lucy is not actually intelligent enough to qualify as certifiably demonic. And if I really were living with a minion of satan, I think I would like to review the terms of The Custody Agreement that I agreed upon with The Roommate many moons prior.
What a relief when I realized the huge monster fly circling the ceiling light in the kitchen. I went back to writing in my journal, sipping my coffee and devouring The Roommate's baking conquests. Now, you have to know that when it comes to Lucy's mental and cognitive hindrances, bug-hunting is surprisingly NOT one of them. In her heydey, Lucy was known as the best cockroach hunter on this side of the Cincinnati-Northern-Kentucky-Metro. Indeed she comes from a long line of excellent cockroach hunters, or at least as far back into her lineage as we have been able to deduce via ancestry.com (we've gone all the way back through her mother, who was a rabid stray that the Roommate developed a love interest in). But Lucy is, shall we say, past her prime--ever since she tripled her body weight and developed the symptoms of borderline diabetes. In real years, Lucy is four. In cat years, she is 32. In anatomical years, though, she is like 99.9 years old. If you ask me, she's living in the past, thinking she can catch bugs again. If it were me, I think I'd want to tackle the underlying problem. There will always be bugs to hunt down, Lucy. But how are you going to be able to catch them if you die of diabetes in what should be the prime of your life? Not that I would care, mind you.
Anyway. Minutes went buy, and still no bug lay at my feet. I looked down at Lucy, her head was absolutely still. The bug had landed directly on the light, and it appeared Lucy was staring (or rather squinting) it down. Now, one thing that I find really appreciable about my personality is that I'll try anything once. So I followed her gaze and stared directly at the light, too, that is until I realized after about .075 seconds that staring directly at a bright light source feels like a hole being seared through my retinas. What took me less than one fraction of a second to realize, however, took Lucy about three minutes to master--after which she blinked very emphatically and looked around her, before shaking her head and twitching her whiskers. She stared in disbelief at the world around her, as though waking from a dream of light and being thrust into the reality of darkness. I watched as about three of the five phases of grief flashed across her cat face, and realized almost before she did what was about to happening. Lucy, No! I thought. Sure enough, she was a goner. Unable to deal with the brisk reality of the disenchanted, blinding-light-less reality of her circumstances, she gave in to the light once more. Her eyes darted back up to the fly, where they stayed for approximately five entire minutes.
When these five minutes passed, Lucy again shook her head in disbelief at the rest of the kitchen. She sat in a blinded stupor for a while before trying to walk, whereupon she ran headlong into the refrigerator. Whether this was an act of blindness or a suicide attempt, I'll never know. For the remainder of the morning, Lucy slept off her scorched pupils on the couch.
The fly will live another day.
Another non-food related item that Lucy and I have in common is that we are both early risers. On second thought, however, this is still food-related, since we are early risers because our stomachs wake us up. My stomach would not be a reliable alarm clock. I never know: will it wake me up at 4:30AM? 5:00? 6:17? No matter, Lucy is already waiting outside my bedroom door like the conniving codependent lunatic she is. I don't know how many more hundreds of mornings it will take for her to figure out that I AM NOT THE ONE WHO FEEDS HER IN THE MORNING and I never will be. Despite Lucy's brainlessness, however, I relish those quiet morning moments when the sky is still dark and Mommy is still sleeping. I love my morning coffee, my moments to sit serenely... And I especially love that The Roommate sleeps like a rock, because it means that during the mornings there is nothing standing in the way between me and Lucy except unbridled discipline, cajoling and whatever other mindgames I can come up with to bludgeon that cat into being a normal member of the feline species.
But this morning I didn't even remember to get The Spraybottle out, because Lucy seemed to be exhibiting a rare moment of sane lucidity (pun intended, though the actual etymological connection between the name Lucy and the word lucidity is nonexistent; Lucy is about as mentally opaque as you can get). Rather, I sat with my coffee at the kitchenette table, our cozy little electric oil lamp burning in the corner, enjoying the soft glow it cast upon our hardwood dining area and the delicious homemade cookies The Roommate had left out just for me. Several minutes passed before I realized I hadn't heard much out of Lucy that morning--no mooing, no grazing or cud chewing, no lapping water out of the trough (toilet). She was just sitting quietly at me feet--how sweet.
False. How idiotic. I suddenly realized she was quiet because she was so busy moving her head continuously in rapid circular motions. Her eyes were getting bigger and more crazed by the moment. It's happening, I thought. Lucy has actually gone and gotten herself possessed. She is going to try to turn her head backwards like that girl does in the Exorcist. It really freaked me out, because as much as I joke about the whole Lucifer thing, we all know Lucy is not actually intelligent enough to qualify as certifiably demonic. And if I really were living with a minion of satan, I think I would like to review the terms of The Custody Agreement that I agreed upon with The Roommate many moons prior.
What a relief when I realized the huge monster fly circling the ceiling light in the kitchen. I went back to writing in my journal, sipping my coffee and devouring The Roommate's baking conquests. Now, you have to know that when it comes to Lucy's mental and cognitive hindrances, bug-hunting is surprisingly NOT one of them. In her heydey, Lucy was known as the best cockroach hunter on this side of the Cincinnati-Northern-Kentucky-Metro. Indeed she comes from a long line of excellent cockroach hunters, or at least as far back into her lineage as we have been able to deduce via ancestry.com (we've gone all the way back through her mother, who was a rabid stray that the Roommate developed a love interest in). But Lucy is, shall we say, past her prime--ever since she tripled her body weight and developed the symptoms of borderline diabetes. In real years, Lucy is four. In cat years, she is 32. In anatomical years, though, she is like 99.9 years old. If you ask me, she's living in the past, thinking she can catch bugs again. If it were me, I think I'd want to tackle the underlying problem. There will always be bugs to hunt down, Lucy. But how are you going to be able to catch them if you die of diabetes in what should be the prime of your life? Not that I would care, mind you.
Anyway. Minutes went buy, and still no bug lay at my feet. I looked down at Lucy, her head was absolutely still. The bug had landed directly on the light, and it appeared Lucy was staring (or rather squinting) it down. Now, one thing that I find really appreciable about my personality is that I'll try anything once. So I followed her gaze and stared directly at the light, too, that is until I realized after about .075 seconds that staring directly at a bright light source feels like a hole being seared through my retinas. What took me less than one fraction of a second to realize, however, took Lucy about three minutes to master--after which she blinked very emphatically and looked around her, before shaking her head and twitching her whiskers. She stared in disbelief at the world around her, as though waking from a dream of light and being thrust into the reality of darkness. I watched as about three of the five phases of grief flashed across her cat face, and realized almost before she did what was about to happening. Lucy, No! I thought. Sure enough, she was a goner. Unable to deal with the brisk reality of the disenchanted, blinding-light-less reality of her circumstances, she gave in to the light once more. Her eyes darted back up to the fly, where they stayed for approximately five entire minutes.
When these five minutes passed, Lucy again shook her head in disbelief at the rest of the kitchen. She sat in a blinded stupor for a while before trying to walk, whereupon she ran headlong into the refrigerator. Whether this was an act of blindness or a suicide attempt, I'll never know. For the remainder of the morning, Lucy slept off her scorched pupils on the couch.
The fly will live another day.
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Penguin Massacre
***
I newly dedicate this old and seasoned story to S.E., whose full name hardly warrants mention, as this person has committed the unpardonable crime of doubting my story telling skills. In this story, S.E., please note the use of proper verbosity, rhetorical flourishes, irony, religious tropes, climax, resolution, timing, and all other accoutrements of truly world class literary prose.
***
The event transpired on December 27 2011, sometime between the royal hours of nine and three. I know this because when I left my apartment with the Roommate, at approximately nine in the morning, Mr. Penguin was still happily occupying his place on the living room window. When I returned, however, he (or rather his bodily members) was occupying many places—none of which were the living room window. I walked unsuspectingly into my apartment, dropping my keys onto the front table and pulling my gloves off. It was at this moment I saw something black, white and blubbery on the floor in front of me. No, it was not Lucy herself—although, dear Readers, I can understand why you would have assumed that upon hearing the word “blubbery.” But alas, it was a penguin wing. Peering into the dining room, I saw the other wing upon the floor, as well as a beak nearby. I do not know if Penguins actually have beaks, but let’s just say they do for the sake of the story, because it is just really sad to think of a little beak lying on the ground unattached to any head. I mean, that Poor Little Beak! :(
Of course, I had not yet put two and two together. I had not yet thought to check the front window for Mr. Penguin, seeing as though he was the only penguin in probably a 500-mile radius or more (not counting the zoo and aquarium downtown). At that point, all I could attest to was a sick feeling of oddness growing in my gut, that something wasn’t right with the world. This could only mean one thing: I was pretty hungry and my blood sugar was low. As I removed my jacket and dived into a bowl of chili, though, my mind began replaying the events of the last week or so to make sense of what I was seeing.
Only a few weeks earlier, the Roommate had returned home bearing oodles of $1-5 good tidings from her secret santa at work. One of these gifts was a set of unavoidably tacky winter-themed, gummy window stickies. Her ordinarily good taste in home decor lapsing momentarily, The Roommate proceeded to gleefully stick these needless eyesores onto various flat surfaces of the apartment: a snowflake on the bathroom mirror, a cup of hot cocoa on the refrigerator, a Christmas tree on the tiled, kitchen wall… And, yes, a penguin on the living room window.
In the days that followed, Lucy went about her usual routine of reacting to changes made in the apartment: sniffing, staring, gingerly pawing, meowing, licking, glaring, growling. In this way she is somewhat autistic, she just has a hard time dealing with changes made to her spatial environment. But it didn't take a rocket scientist to deduce she was particularly targeting Mr. Penguin. For days she just stared at him from her usual perch on the window sill, trapping his googly-eyed gaze in her beady eyes. The snowflake and Christmas tree she left well enough alone, but Mr. Penguin. Poor Mr. Penguin! He had unknowingly committed the triple crime of being plastic, being relatively bird-shaped, and being at Lucy’s eye-level. When I deigned to impart my concerns unto the Roommate, she blatantly feigned apathy. The years of dealing with Lucy’s excesses have unfortunately worn the Roommate down to a stupor of helpless indignity.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before Lucy got it into her (disproportionately small) head to claw him apart, limb from gummy limb, so I should not have gotten attached to Mr. Penguin in the first place. But I did, God help me, I did. This heart of mine is not made of stone, after all, and if you break it, does it not hurt like any other heart? And so, that day, the 27th, my love for Mr. Penguin was all I could think of. I decided to find out just what had happened to that beloved Penguin, the only Penguin this apartment had ever known.
I walked back through the living room, the kitchen and dining area, collecting the little fragments of that beloved, old gummy bird as I went: his wings, his beak (?), a stubby tail… I was now entering Lucy’s (and the Roomate’s) lair. The sight awaiting me was purely revolting: Lucy was perched adroitly on the Roommates bed, Mr. Penguin’s head in claw, making some very confusing but nonetheless unnerving gestures. After several seconds, I quickly perceived what was actually happening.
To explain what I was seeing, however, I must backtrack for the sake of context. By now, it is clear that Lucy is no regular cat (or cow, for that matter). Indeed she has many odd nuances to her persona—nuances to which the Roommate refers as “charms” and “cute quirks,” but which I more objectively term “mutant adaptations,” “delusional pathologies,” or else “satanic excesses” when it involves paranormal activity. One of these delusional pathologies pertains to Lucy’s crazed feline addiction to plastic, or more specifically, the licking of plastic. Plastic shower curtains. Plastic litter box liner. Plastic cereal bag in the garbage bin. And yes, plastic shopping bags. Oh, plastic shopping bags. If you have not seen Lucy for the last half hour or so, odds are she is in some random corner experiencing ecstasy with a shopping bag. But probably not, otherwise you would hear it, because Lucy also has this irritating way of sounding like she has mad cow disease whenever she finds a plastic bag. Some of the most joyful moments of my post-moving-in-with-The-Roommate life involve entering a room, only to find Lucy on the brink of suffocation, deep inside the recesses of some Target or CVS bag—her addiction is so self-destructive she doesn’t even realize when she is killing herself. Or maybe (hopefully) that is the plan all along. There have been several occasions I have suggested having a group intervention to set Lucy straight about her addiction. We could invite the neighbors, some mutual friends, The Gray Tabby, and maybe Snowflake, my suicidal stuffed cat that Lucy once made friends with before realizing it was not real. But whenever I try to help Lucy recognize her problem, the Roommate always manages to get in the way (cough, cough, ENABLING, cough).
Whatever the case, when I walked into Lucy’s lair in search of what little remained of Mr. Penguin, I was walking in not only on an episode between Lucy and Mr. Penguin, but I had temporarily forgotten that Mr. Penguin was not just any penguin. He was a plastic penguin. Thus I walked in on the closest thing Lucy will ever have to a full blown ethical dilemma. She was trapped between her life principle of disdaining birds and killing them on the one hand, and her other life principle of being codependent on plastic ecstasies on the other hand (well, ok, the other paw). Lucy had Mr. Penguin’s head trapped safely within her clenched paw, with claws sunk deeply into his left eye. Every now and then she’d fling her paw around, as though trying to break his neck and further gauge his eyes out, afraid he’d fly away. (Lucy does not have much experience with penguins, otherwise she’d know penguins can’t even fly away. Not even to save their lives innocent penguin lives. She should have known that, and she should have had mercy.) But then, in a flight of desperation, she’d reel her paw back in to smother that same arctic bird in licks, the obsessional licks that Lucy only bestows upon her plastic lovers. This continued, and continued, and continued—and I could only assume the process had been going on for hours, because Lucy tends to lose all grip on time, space and reality when plastic is involved. It occurred to me I was witnessing a mythological and existential struggle that could well nigh become eternal, like that one mythological character whose eternal punishment is to drag a boulder up a mountain until it falls back down the mountain, and then drag it up again. Ad infinitum.
Of course, I didn’t waste all that much time troubling myself by that because, only moments later, it also occurred to me that this was a situation worthy of The Spraybottle. Since the Roommate has specified in the terms of our custody agreement of Lucy that I am not allowed to use The Spraybottle on Lucy unless there is a justifiable reason (further specifying that my “fun” and “enjoyment” are not justifiable reasons), I am always on the lookout for Spraybottle-esque opportunities. Surely mammal-murder fit the bill (I forget if penguins are mammals, but needed a bit of alliteration to make my point. Lucy has probably murdered many mammals anyway, either in reality or her delusional psychosis, so I don’t think I’m too out of line in asserting that.) The end to this story is not pretty, so I will spare you of the details. Suffice it to say, the Spraybottle was utilized, there was running, meowing and giddy laughter involved. The scattered remains of Mr. Penguin were thereafter collected, being given an honorable burial at sea (toilet), only because a burial at polar icecap ocean was not feasible.
As I watched Mr. Penguin float (swirl) away from me, something occurred to me. It was the 27th December. For anyone familiar with the Orthodox Christian calendar, this day of course is the commemoration of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian Church. His death is recorded in the book of Acts. As he is stoned by the Pharisees, he commends his spirit to God, asking Him to forgive the murderers of their actions. It is a moving testimony of mercy and leniency.
I could only wonder if Lucy had selected that day, the 27th of December, out of all the other days, to massacre Mr. Penguin, henceforth deemed The Penguin Martyr. The first Penguin martyred in the church. I could only wonder if she found some kind of sick pleasure in his martyrdom, as the Pharisees had found in St. Stephen’s death. I could only wonder if Mr. Penguin, with his last breaths, had asked God to forgive Lucy her heinous actions. Part of me hoped he hadn’t, because then I’d have to forgive Lucy, too. And wondering whether I could forgive Lucy is like wondering whether I could forgive Satan for being Satan. I mean, what kind of sick cat orchestrates a systematic killing of a gummy penguin who had done nothing to harm her? But knowing Mr. Penguin, he had most definitely forgiven Lucy in his heart. Surely Mr. Penguin is just a better penguin than I’ll ever be. I can only pray to one day live up to his Penguin footsteps. Amen.
-----
Editor's Notes:
After subjecting this essay to the most rigorous fact-checking standards, a few substantive comments are warranted. First, contrary to dominant public opinions on the matter, penguins are not mammals--they are birds, on account of laying eggs and having a coat of feathers rather than fur. Any first grader who pays attention during animal class can attest to this. Secondly, penguins do have beaks but they are black, not orange. Aside from these significant details, the remaining story is objectively and verifiably true.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Meet the Cat: A Poetic Journey
Fourscore and seven years ago (or thereabouts), a friend and I took our relationship to the next level by cohabitating with one another. This allowed The Roommate and I to save money, rent together, and amalgamate our insanely cute household decorations into one sickeningly Martha-Stewart-esque living space for the little time we both have left before we are, in a fit of passion and perfection, rapidly stolen off the market of eligible single young ladies by some handsome suitor or other. So, as you can see, my living situation was suddenly a win-win situation. Until I remember that, along with gaining The Roommate (and all of her baking apparatuses), I would also be gaining Lucy.
Oh, Lucy. Lucille. Lucifer. Her name comes from the Latin word for light, which is fairly ironic since she is actually the grim shadow haunting this apartment--and my entire life, for the time being. For months I was tormented by this shadow--it would beckon at my door in the early hours of the morning. It would mysteriously make food disappear as only a food addict can. It would do odd things like sleep with one claw stretched under my doorway just in case I woke up and there was the remote possibility I would be in range to claw. Also, the shadow would occasionally pounce on the water in the toilet bowl, or whatever else happened to be in it (we've never figured this out). But after extensive therapy, I was told I needed to start getting my feelings out there.
Only, I wasn't sure where to start venting my hidden subconscious ailments that had built up in the short months with the Roommate and her domesticated beast.I struggled to really find the right words to sum up everything that Lucy truly is. For days, nay months, nay ... For hours I slaved over parchment and fountain pen, filling up page after papyrus page only to shake my head vehemently and cast them into the flames with a flick of my diamond-studded fingers (flames of a victorian fire place, mind you, not the ones smoldering from Lucy's picture up top). For a long time, it seemed that no words, no pen of man, no pages of trees, no claws of cats could contain Lucy--and not surprisingly, given her startling body-fat percentage.
The MA of German Literature in me began to suspect that this was not a job for prose, my friends, but for poetry. Brevity, dear souls, is the zest of wit. But even this proved to be not without its own pitfalls...
I began with a haiku, which I now term Haiku #1. But when I said brevity before, seventeen syllables is not what I had in mind.Trying to fit the bane of your entire existence into that amount of space is like... I don't know, it's like what Lucy's mom probably felt upon delivery or something.
Lucy, Lucifer
The Roommate seems to love you
Wherefore I don't know.
haiku #2 followed close on the heels:
The Roommate has this cat
It may just be a cow
But I am not sure.
It didn't take me long to realize haikus were not the way to go. It is hard to fit Lucy into her litter box, let alone three short lines. I vaguely remembered learning about limericks in elementary school, so I decided to give it a go:
There is this ol' cat whom I live with
She could be a dairy cow's hind width
has white hair and spots
and moos lots and lots
but has no udders to milk with.
Now I was getting somewhere. But aside from the poetic progress being made, I still felt I had only scratched the surface of my experience living with Lucy. The limerick had been the sort of gate that opened to the torrential flood of my troubling feelings and inner turmoil that IS life with lucy (which was, incidentally, my first idea for the title of this blog). As the feelings of rage and despair began to flow freely, I cycled through poetic genre after poetic genre like a honey bee flitting from flower to flower.
Lucy from the first day I saw you
you and your little crossed-eyes, too
I thought how glad I was you weren't mine
because then my life wouldn't be fine
but when the I and the Roommate
decided to cohabitate
I had forgotten you'd be there
until it was TOO LATE. :-(
I knew this was getting out of control, I needed stability. I needed groundedness. I needed... An acrostic.
L- arge
U- gly (or... perhaps "umpteenth" which is how many times I usually have to tell her not to do stupid things before my words seem to make any sense to her).
Now, the C was hard at first... So I waited for the muses momentarily and moved on to Y.
Y-ack-like.
Oh, now I know. C is for "Cross-eyed." Lucy is definitely cross-eyed--not because of any birth deformity, but because she has never learned how to stare at things farther than 3 inches from her pupils.
Now, when I first moved in with the Roommate, I had come to the preliminary conclusion that Lucy's full name was Lucille. (I would later discover on my own that Lucy's full name is actually Lucifer, but I was naive in those early days.) So I decided to expand upon my accrostic to really emphasize some key points:
L- arge
U- gly
C- ross-eyed
I- rritating
L- arge
L- arge
E- xistent (which is an ironic twist I decided to add at the end for literary flair, since it actually describes the opposite of what I wish Lucy would be.)
But alas, this poetic journey was ultimately an exercise in existential futility. I had cycled through the vast, heavenly realms of poetry and come up with no real way to fully describe Lucy, her devastating impact on my life, the Roommate's codependence on her, nor the colorful happenings of our humble little dwelling. For many days I mourned the way that the most horrendous things in life simply elude articulation. Until, one night I awoke to the sound of Lucy meowing (more like "moo-ing") at my bedroom door. And I knew there was only one poetic genre truly worthy of encapsulating my life, trapped as it is by this whole crazed cat-cow debacle...
And that genre is, of course, a blog. Welcome to Randumb Acts of Lucy.
Oh, Lucy. Lucille. Lucifer. Her name comes from the Latin word for light, which is fairly ironic since she is actually the grim shadow haunting this apartment--and my entire life, for the time being. For months I was tormented by this shadow--it would beckon at my door in the early hours of the morning. It would mysteriously make food disappear as only a food addict can. It would do odd things like sleep with one claw stretched under my doorway just in case I woke up and there was the remote possibility I would be in range to claw. Also, the shadow would occasionally pounce on the water in the toilet bowl, or whatever else happened to be in it (we've never figured this out). But after extensive therapy, I was told I needed to start getting my feelings out there.
Only, I wasn't sure where to start venting my hidden subconscious ailments that had built up in the short months with the Roommate and her domesticated beast.I struggled to really find the right words to sum up everything that Lucy truly is. For days, nay months, nay ... For hours I slaved over parchment and fountain pen, filling up page after papyrus page only to shake my head vehemently and cast them into the flames with a flick of my diamond-studded fingers (flames of a victorian fire place, mind you, not the ones smoldering from Lucy's picture up top). For a long time, it seemed that no words, no pen of man, no pages of trees, no claws of cats could contain Lucy--and not surprisingly, given her startling body-fat percentage.
The MA of German Literature in me began to suspect that this was not a job for prose, my friends, but for poetry. Brevity, dear souls, is the zest of wit. But even this proved to be not without its own pitfalls...
I began with a haiku, which I now term Haiku #1. But when I said brevity before, seventeen syllables is not what I had in mind.Trying to fit the bane of your entire existence into that amount of space is like... I don't know, it's like what Lucy's mom probably felt upon delivery or something.
Lucy, Lucifer
The Roommate seems to love you
Wherefore I don't know.
haiku #2 followed close on the heels:
The Roommate has this cat
It may just be a cow
But I am not sure.
It didn't take me long to realize haikus were not the way to go. It is hard to fit Lucy into her litter box, let alone three short lines. I vaguely remembered learning about limericks in elementary school, so I decided to give it a go:
There is this ol' cat whom I live with
She could be a dairy cow's hind width
has white hair and spots
and moos lots and lots
but has no udders to milk with.
Now I was getting somewhere. But aside from the poetic progress being made, I still felt I had only scratched the surface of my experience living with Lucy. The limerick had been the sort of gate that opened to the torrential flood of my troubling feelings and inner turmoil that IS life with lucy (which was, incidentally, my first idea for the title of this blog). As the feelings of rage and despair began to flow freely, I cycled through poetic genre after poetic genre like a honey bee flitting from flower to flower.
Lucy from the first day I saw you
you and your little crossed-eyes, too
I thought how glad I was you weren't mine
because then my life wouldn't be fine
but when the I and the Roommate
decided to cohabitate
I had forgotten you'd be there
until it was TOO LATE. :-(
I knew this was getting out of control, I needed stability. I needed groundedness. I needed... An acrostic.
L- arge
U- gly (or... perhaps "umpteenth" which is how many times I usually have to tell her not to do stupid things before my words seem to make any sense to her).
Now, the C was hard at first... So I waited for the muses momentarily and moved on to Y.
Y-ack-like.
Oh, now I know. C is for "Cross-eyed." Lucy is definitely cross-eyed--not because of any birth deformity, but because she has never learned how to stare at things farther than 3 inches from her pupils.
Now, when I first moved in with the Roommate, I had come to the preliminary conclusion that Lucy's full name was Lucille. (I would later discover on my own that Lucy's full name is actually Lucifer, but I was naive in those early days.) So I decided to expand upon my accrostic to really emphasize some key points:
L- arge
U- gly
C- ross-eyed
I- rritating
L- arge
L- arge
E- xistent (which is an ironic twist I decided to add at the end for literary flair, since it actually describes the opposite of what I wish Lucy would be.)
But alas, this poetic journey was ultimately an exercise in existential futility. I had cycled through the vast, heavenly realms of poetry and come up with no real way to fully describe Lucy, her devastating impact on my life, the Roommate's codependence on her, nor the colorful happenings of our humble little dwelling. For many days I mourned the way that the most horrendous things in life simply elude articulation. Until, one night I awoke to the sound of Lucy meowing (more like "moo-ing") at my bedroom door. And I knew there was only one poetic genre truly worthy of encapsulating my life, trapped as it is by this whole crazed cat-cow debacle...
And that genre is, of course, a blog. Welcome to Randumb Acts of Lucy.
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