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from: Sir Edmund Plovos
209.100.18.185
1/11/00
2:41:02 AM
I saw a cat today. Shag rugs, the cheap brands which fray and send forth shimmering pebbles of gray polyester Russian thistle--the fuzz you might scrape from the belly of your sock, and eventually from the dryer’s forgotten filter--the type of shag rugs which often find residence in bachelors apartments. Depleted Dorrito snack-sized bags, still offering a few enticing morsels of stale corn chips--floating through a sea of plastic, and surrounded by a flotsam of sand (mostly salt, cheese, and red-40)--for the fuddled, ravenous hunter; six-packs of Bush (cheapest shit on the shelf), some cans intact, others crushed to a state which leaves the label hidden beneath folds of aluminum; rags: t-shirts and sweat pants, jeans and shorts, baseball caps and towels, weeks of underwear (four, perhaps six pairs) and socks create a miasma of mold spores and body odor; all strewn atop the rug. As this repugnant feline approached me, I contemplated the cleanliness of its fur; the bachelors shag carpet came to mind. My duty as a thinker soon prompted me to weigh the possibilities of this impending encounter. Roughly eighty-five cents in nickels, quarters, a few pennies, and mostly dimes jangled around my fingers inside my pocket. A pay phone was surely near. An absurd thirty-five cents would mean contacting an animal shelter. Such expenditures are well within budget, but not to be wasted. Suicide, the obvious solution to anything--not applicable here. I could pull the neglected vagabond into a deserved embrace, bring it home and name it Felix or Mittens. Cat-naps in my lap, warm milk at eight when the sun is down, just bring out Beaver Cleaver and the Olson twins. Now within a few paces, each idea (some evolving) quickly drained from me, such as the bowels of a heroine user. I then had a startling realization: how like Michael Bolton was this cat. Disgusting, repulsive, undoubtedly festering with venereal diseases, naturally provoking a grimace from any respectable citizen, yet provoking caring and love in the disturbed. Now caressing the penultimate limit for decision making, I relaxed, at peace with the most beneficial solution. Tension palpable, silence ear-splitting, a quarterback draws a breath and readies for the tie-breaking punt. Much in this fashion my eyes drew over the approaching target like soaked beach towels, unflinching, gauging. My brain carefully sorted the information and corrected my gait. Now within a second, still quite not ready to deliver the critical kinetic energy into my foot, my leg drew back and hesitated for what could only have been milliseconds. NOW! My leg crushed forward in a furious orgasm. My foot blazed forward with the G-Force only a fighter pilot could appreciate. The feline cocked its head and froze, unsure of what to make of this display. No handouts here fella, no stroke down the back, no scratch behind the ear, just a speeding boot made in China. Connection solid, kinetic energy delivered. My boot briefly disappeared into a heap of matted gray fur, producing an audible but muffled crunch of bones. The cat soared like so many a song bird it surely killed. A strikingly uncoordinated mass of paws, legs, tails (could there possibly be more than one?), rocketed away from me in frenzied, dizzying trundles. Behind the projectile flowed a contrail of flabbergasted mewing, made intensely amusing by a rapid ebb and flow of decibel level, as the mouth spun away and towards me. Through the erupting guffaws and rivulets of tears coursing from my eyes, I could well see Michael Bolton in the cat’s place, hissing a flat C from his busted clarinet. I have often heard a feline may correct its fall and give grace to misfortune with a paw-first landing, but this was not the case. Apparently the feline did not compensate for an approaching obstacle. Kinetic energy which began in my leg was now finding an end twenty feet away. The blurred fur ball smashed into the stone work of a building, ricocheting towards earth--punctuated by a dense sound similar to a tennis ball rebounding from macadam. The mewing ceased, any effort to correct the fall ceased; feline returns to sidewalk. A flaccid mass of broken material slumped to the ground like batter dropped into a pan. Left in memorial was crimson patchwork embroidered with fur and possibly tissue or bone (I didn't look closely) crocheted across the building with much care by Sir Edmund Plovos.
