Is That Your Cat, or Are We Having Guacamole?

          An image that Google correctly categorized as a tabby cat was, with only a few pixels changed, subsequently identified by the same algorithm as guacamole.

The Boston Globe

We’re heading into summer, which means that my cats are even lazier than usual.  They stay indoors most of the day, venturing outside only in the cool of the evening to chill their ever-widening bellies on our bluestone patio, before rushing off into the dark to wreak havoc on chipmunks and squirrels.

Rocco left, Okie right.

“I’m getting concerned about your lifestyles,” I say to them as they take the two Adirondack chairs for a change of pace.

“Says the guy who drank a bottle of Malbec by himself last night,” Rocco says out of the side of his mouth.

“I’m serious,” I say, trying to re-take the moral high ground.  “You lie around all day, then you’re out all night.  You’re not twenty-one in cat years anymore.”

“How do you do the math in your head so fast?” Okie asks.  He’s the handsome grey tabby who’s gotten by on his looks, not his wits, his entire life.

“Don’t you remember anything?” Rocco snaps.  “He’s the former Boy Scout/Altar Boy who does fractions in his head when he’s swimming laps.”

“Seven and 15/16 laps.”

“Fractions–ugh!” Okie groans.  He’s lived the life of the beta male ever since his younger brother Rocco arrived on the scene.  For some reason whenever the cat food is divided in half, he only gets 40%.

“I’m only saying this because we love you guys,” I say.  I found this rhetorical turn to be very helpful when dealing with our sons as they grew up.  In essence, it boils down to “Don’t break your mother’s heart, you sullen teenager, you.”

“We have to live our own lives,” Rocco says as he gets up to follow the path of a chipmunk, who disappears under the wooden fence we put up around the air conditioning units.

“Do you remember a few summers ago, when Okie disappeared for weeks?” I say in an imploring tone of voice.  “How are we not supposed to be worried when something like that happens?”  When I want to, I can really implore.

“One for you, two for me.  One for you, three for me.”

“That was then, this is now,” Rocco says as he sits back down.  “If you want to be able to find us, just give us Google chip implants.”

“Yeah, sort of like the Italian dad down the street who put a GPS device in his daughter’s car so he could break the legs of any boy who tried to slide into home with her,” Okie adds.  He apparently listens when we talk at the dinner table.

I give them a look of pitiless contempt.  “You guys think you’re so smart–you’ve been watching too many cute cat food commercials that glorify the feline brain.”

“It’s true,” Rocco says.  “I read it on the internet.”

“Well, maybe you should pick up a newspaper some time.”

“What’s a newspaper?” Okie asks.

“It’s that stuff he puts in our litter boxes,” Rocco advises him.

“What’s a four-letter word for ‘excrement’?”

“It has other uses.”

“Right,” Rocco says.  “You can also line parakeet cages with it.”

“While that is generally true of The Boston Globe, every now and then you come across something useful in it besides the comics.”

“I like Garfield!” Okie says–figures.

“No, I mean stories like this,” I say, and point them to an article about an Artificial Intelligence conference where the shortcomings of the technology were demonstrated.  “Change just a few pixels, and Google thinks you two are guacamole.”

“You’re not going to put me on a nacho chip, are you?”

They are both silent for a moment, as they walk over the Business section.  “Gosh–I had no idea,” Rocco says, for once sounding . . . almost humble.

“So let that be a lesson to you, okay?” I say as I give them both a scritch on the head.

“What’s the lesson?” Okie asks, as usual missing the self-evident.

“Simple,” Rocco says, stepping in like teacher’s pet to explain.  “The difference between your brain and guacamole is, like, one avocado.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

Return of the SWAT Team Cat

A calico cat that was the mascot of the Boston Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics Team disappeared in November and did not return until January.

 

                                                                        The Boston Globe

 

 

We were sitting around the SWAT Team house, listlessly swatting at things—flies, each other’s butts and so forth—when Officer Rudolph came walking slowly around the corner, a dejected look on his face.

His lips started to move, but he didn’t even have to vocalize what was on his mind—we all knew without him speaking a word.

“No sign of SWAT Cat, if that’s what you were gonna ask,” I said sadly.

“You read my mind,” he said, then plunked himself down on the bench beside me.  “How long’s he been gone?”

“Since late November, so that’s over a month now.”

“Do you think he’s been the victim of . . .” Rudolph began, when Officer Monday finished his sentence for him.

“This is fascinating!”

“Foul play?  More likely than not.”  We all hunched over, our forearms resting on our thighs, our heads hanging down, dejected.  The bond among SWAT Team members is so strong, when one guy dies, or gets fired, or quits, or has to move to another city because he got married, it’s like a death in the family.  Especially, like I say, if someone dies.  And even if, as in SWATsie’s case, he never appeared to give a shit about any of us except when he was hungry or wanted his head scratched.

“Do you think we’ll ever see his cheerful . . .” Rudolph began, when Monday cut him off again.

“Don’t sentimentalize him,” he snapped.  “That’s the problem with cat owners.  They have to gussy their cats up, anthropomorphize ‘em.”

“What does that mean?” Rudolph asked.

“It means you take ‘em to a taxidermist and have ‘em stuffed, right?” I said.

“No, you stupid doody head,” Monday snapped.  “It means you attribute human qualities to ‘em, like reciprocal feelings of love that you have towards . . .”

He was just about to say “them” in the contracted form “’em” when who should come ambling into HQ but SWAT Cat his own, bad self.

“SWATsie—thank God you’re alive!” Monday said, his voice cracking and tears starting to flow.  Ain’t that the way it always is; the apparently hard-boiled guy has a runny center, like a poached egg, or a chocolate-covered cherry.

“We’ve been worried sick!” Rudolph gushed, but it was sincere, heartfelt gush, not the phony kind, like society fund-raising gala gush.

“Glad to have you back,” I said, stroking him under the chin.  I knew I couldn’t top the two drama queens, so I tried to maintain my stoic, business-like façade.

“Thanks,” SWATsie said.  He was looking a little peaked, and I don’t mean like Pike’s.  “Any food in this joint?”

Rudolph rushed to get his two tin bowls, one for water, and one for dry food.  “See—we kept everything just like it was.”

“Iams Low-Calorie cat food in the turquoise bag,” he sniffed.  “I’m taken hostage, you guys don’t rescue me–and I’m still on a diet?”

We three human members of the team looked at each other with embarrassment.  “He’s right,” I said.  “I’ll go get him some . . .”

“Are you making this up?”

 

“No,” Rudolph said.  “You stay here—you’re the narrator.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t leave you two third persons here by yourselves.”

“I’ll run down to 7-11 and get him some wet food for a change,” Rudolph said, and I was glad it was he who volunteered. I had a feeling we were in for a hair-raising tale of suspense and escape, and I didn’t want him breaking out in a horrified exclamation with every plot twist.

“So what happened?” Monday asked.

“If you really want to hear about it,” SWATsie said, echoing Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the most difficult book he’d ever read, “the first thing you’ll probably want to know is who kidnapped me, and where they took me, and what my crummy accommodations were like, and all that Patty Hearst kind of crap.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

“All right,” he said. “You know that smoothie joint down by the waterfront?”

“The one that has all the add-ins, like wheat germ, and flax, and cocoa nibs?” Monday said.

“Right,” SWATsie said. “And all the men have pony tails, and all the women have preternaturally-healthy-looking skin.”  I was impressed—I’d never seen a four-legged animal pull off a Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance double-hyphenated word.

“But they’re all so . . . peaceful, and mellow,” I said.

“I shoulda known better,” he cracked out of the side of his mouth, like Joe Friday confirming the suspicions of his sidekick Bill Gannon on Dragnet. “They put a plate of milk out for me, and before I knew it Dawn or Heather or Rainbow or Aura or one of the other natural-phenomenon-named chicks had picked me up from behind and whisked me up the back stairs to a windowless room.”

The two of us gulped loudly enough for Rudolph to notice as he ran up with the Fancy Feast Classic Tuna in the easy-open pouch. “What was that gulping sound?” he asked.

“SWATsie here just told us how he was spirited . . .”

“I said ‘whisked’ . . .”

“ . . . up the stairs to a windowless room by his kidnappers.”

“They’re a cult,” SWATsie said as he wolfed down his food.

“You’d better slow down, you’re going to choke,” I said.

“I’ll come up for air to tell you the rest of my story. Anyway, once my eyes got used to the dark . . .”

“Wait a second,” Rudolph said skeptically. “I thought cats could always see in the dark.”

“Not all the time.  And we can never see fine detail or rich color.  We get by on about one-sixth the light a human needs, but it still takes a little time to adjust.”

“Oh,” Rudolph said, a bit chagrined at having been brought down a peg in terms of his reputation as an ailurophile.

“Anyway, once I could see clearly, I looked around the room and saw—little children.”

“So they were kidnapping . . .”

“Actual kids.”

We all gasped—I mean all of the humans. SWATsie had already been through the horror, and seemed a bit deadened by the experience.

“But didn’t their parents notice they were missing?” I asked.

“You know parents these days,” he said, shaking his head. “Always looking at their phones.  By the time they finish playing Words With Friends and Candy Crush their toddlers are tugging on their sleeve to write a college tuition check.”

We knew what he meant. We’d seen children dropped off at the beach or at the mall, while Scandinavian nannies tried to attract junior private equity analysts in the food court.  The kids could wander off for a half hour—who knew what kind of brainwashing they were getting at Orange Julius or Cinnabon?  Then when they came back to Ingrid or Kristin or Helga they’d be programmed to consume branded goods . . . for the rest of their natural born days.

“So the hippies were . . .”

“You got it. They were fighting for shelf space in the grocery store aisles of the consumer’s mind.  Doing the work of a thousand Saturday morning commercials in a fraction of the time, through hypnosis, suggestion and outright Mesmerism.”

“But how long . . .”

Don’t go in there!

 

“It doesn’t take long to get a kid hooked on hemp seeds, or quinoa, or cacao powder. Just a jolt of superfood add-ins, and the kids will be begging to come back to Rainbow Unicorn House of Smoothies.  Pretty soon you have a national franchise empire on your hands, and the odd toddler you lure into a bead ‘n brownie emporium is multiplied a million fold.”

“So that was their insidious plan,” I said with barely-repressed fury.  “To steal the march on honest, God-fearing manufacturers of consumer products who paid their good, hard-earned money to indoctrinate kids to develop dental carries and diabetes by eating their hyper-sugarized comestibles.”

“What did they need you for?” Rudolph asked.

“They’d brought me in as a familiar, a pacifier, something to keep the kids occupied while they did their dastardly work.”

“So what did you do?” Monday asked.

“I got the lay of the land after a while and figured out that I was just lap candy, that the real business of the place was getting kids hooked on high vitamin smoothies. Once I cottoned to their nefarious plot, I knew I had no time to lose.  I hopped up on the first lap available and started purring and rubbing up against the kids, getting their attention.”

“And then?” I asked.

“When the cult leader came by with a tray of the lethal smoothies, I sprang into action. I leapt up and knocked it over—all of a sudden the place is in an uproar.”

“And then?” we asked together.

“The kids all start crying—no smoothies for youthies–and finally the parents can hear them.  So they put down their compact mirrors and their iPhones and their BlackBerries and their tablets and say to themselves—‘Huh–I seem to recall we came in here with 2.3 children, but now we only seem to have 1.3.”

“So a sudden wave of consternation washes over them?” Monday asked.

“You got it. They’re cutting in line, saying ‘Where’s my Morning Glory Bliss Shake and me four-year-old named Courtney or Evan or whatever.’”

“Gosh,” Rudolph said. “They don’t even know their kids’ names.”

“That’s a hypothetical,” SWATsie said. “They know their kids’ names, just not their Social Security numbers.  Anyways, there’s nothing like a screeching cat to alert the local militia to the need for armed resistance, so about the same time the dads are busting down the door and I’m running for my life from twenty screaming kids the local constabulary arrives to put the collar on the commune.”

“What’s the charge?” Monday asked. He’s like that; thorough, a real professional, an eye for the telling detail and the procedural misstep which, if taken, can undermine a prosecution.

“It’s a felony,” he said, licking his paws. “Contributing to the health of a minor.”

 

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

Happy Hairball Awareness Day

It’s Friday, and I’m “working” remotely from home.  There’s just me and two cats, Rocco and Okie, three sullen males grunting their way through the day–as usual–while the wife’s out shopping for essential items.  Milk, bread, a tall vanilla no-foam latte, a 2024 calendar.

Rocco: “You insensitive clod!”

And yet something’s–not quite right. Okie, the elder cat, seems–distrait. Taciturn. Phlegmatic. And those are just leftover vocab words from my son’s senior English class.

“Just leave me alone–okay?”

He sits on a windowsill, staring off into the middle distance, as if he’s depressed. He’s indifferent to my attentions, or perhaps I should say more indifferent that he–or any other cat–is normally. Rocco’s outside rolling in the dirt, so I amble up to him for a sidebar.

“Nice day if it don’t rain, huh?” I say.

“Yeah. I’m going to hassle those stupid long-haired chihuahuas next door.”

“Okay, but get that out of your system early–I want to take a nap this afternoon. Hey–have you noticed anything funny about Okie?”

“Yip, yip, yip!”

“Funny strange, or funny ha-ha?”

“Strange. He seems somewhat–distant today.”

Rocco looks at me with a pitiless expression and shakes his head. “You are so freaking clueless.”

“What?”

He takes a second to scratch for a tick under his chin. “It’s all about you–isn’t it? You sit there at your computer all day in your own little world. Never thinking about anybody else.”

“Hey–if I don’t sit at my computer all day, you don’t get any Iams Low Fat Weight Control Dry Cat Food.”

“Oh, whoop-de-do! That stuff’s so bad I’d rather eat the bag.”

“You’ll thank me in a couple of years when every other cat in the neighborhood has a gut that’s dusting the floor. But seriously–is something the matter with him?”

“Don’t you know what today is?”

St. Swithin: Peace out, dawg.

I search my memory. Not Arbor Day. Not my elder sister’s birthday, although that’s coming up sometime in the next month–or two.  St. Swithin’s Day? Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding anniversary? “I give up–what?”

Rocco closes his eyes, as if he can’t believe how stupid I am. “It’s Hairball Awareness Day, you mook!”

I’m confused. “Okie’s a short-hair. Why would he get emotional about hairballs?”

“You are such an insensitive clod,” Rocco says, licking his white ruff. “Hairballs can strike any cat, at any time–long or short-hair.”

“I didn’t know. We get so many solicitations at work. United Fund. All kinds of diseases. You don’t expect me to keep up with all of them, do you?”

National Hairball Awareness Poster Child

“Look–just because there’s no washed-up comedian doing a telethon for Hairball Awareness doesn’t mean you can completely ignore a cause that means so much to someone right in your own home!”

“Ack-ack-ack–it’s the sound of a hairball attack!”

“But I don’t . . .”

Rocco cuts me off. “Okie’s mom died of a hairball.”

Okay. ‘Nuf said. I “get it.” “Jeez–I didn’t realize.”

“You should go talk to him. Maybe buy a bracelet, or at least a ribbon.”

I take out my wallet. I’ve got four ones and a twenty. Stupid cat won’t know the difference.

“And don’t try to stiff him like you do the mini-mites hockey kids who accost you at the stoplights with their coffee cans.”

“You’re right. I’ll go talk to him.” I go back in the house and Okie’s still sitting where he was when I left, his chin on his paws.

“Hey Oke,” I say, “I’m . . . uh . . . sorry I forgot about Hairball Awareness Day.”

He looks up at me without anger. “That’s okay,” he says. “Who was it that said the universe was indifferent to our suffering?”

Camus: 1951 Existentialist Rookie of the Year.

“I don’t know. Either Albert Camus–or Yogi Berra.”

He lets out a short little sigh. “I think of the poem by Auden . . .”

“Musee des Beaux Arts?”

Auden: “At least this post has a smoking section.”

“Right. How suffering takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window . . . “

” . . . or just walking dully along?” I say, finishing the line for him. Nothing like the consolations of art–their purgative powers–to help one get over sadness.

“I tell you what,” I say. “I’ve got $24–I’m going to make a contribution in your mother’s name to the National Hairball Foundation.”

His eyes mist over–or at least I think they do. “Save your money,” he says.

“But I want to.”

“No–you’re going to need it.”

“Why?” I ask.

“For some Resolve Multi-Surface Fabric Cleaner. I upchucked a hairball on the dining room rug.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

My Cat, Unregistered Investment Advisor

An orange tabby cat beat professionals in a stock-picking competition.  He made his selections by throwing his favorite toy mouse on a grid of numbers allocated to different companies.

                                                         The Guardian

 

I’m “working” from home today, and as I lay down to take the first of my two scheduled naps I noticed Rocco, our tuxedo male cat, standing with his paws on my computer keyboard.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just checking a few stocks in European markets,” he said.  He’s always been a bright cat, but I had no idea he’d opened up an on-line brokerage account.

“Sell Amalgamated Wolfram!”

 

“You’re not fooling around with my money, are you?”

“You?  Please.  Gimme a break.  Don’t they call security when you walk into Charles Schwab?”

I’m not a high-roller like some of our friends, who like to brag about how much money they make day-trading.  Nope, I’m the tortoise to their hare; diversification of risk, buy mutual funds and stay away from individual stocks, walk slowly and always wear your cartilaginous shell when you go outside.  Still, I know a little about investing.

“No they do not,” I said defensively.

“I know, that was unfair,” Rocco said as he tapped in the Euroclear symbol for General Electric.  “They ask you to go around back to the service entrance.”

“I’m overweighted in large caps.  Also in my hindquarters.”

 

“Har-de-har-har, so funny I forgot to laugh,” I said.  “Whose money are you playing with, by the way?”

“My own,” he said.

“And where did you get it?”

“If you ever read anything besides The Boston Herald, the comics in the Boston Globe . . .”

“Made famous by Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes when he said ‘What kind of newspaper puts the funnies on the front page?’”

“On the nosey.  And the New York Times Book Review, you would have noticed that I’ve been winning stock-picking contests with impressive regularity.”

“My cat’s smarter than your broker.”

 

“You mean you’re beating the self-promoting do-bees who expose themselves to public ridicule . . .”

“And the obloquy of all right-thinking men . . .”

” . . . by entering Future Brokers competitions?”

“You got it.  I’ve attracted quite a following in our sleepy little burb.”

I should have known.  Everybody wants to beat the market and bragging rights for best-performing portfolio–and try saying that five times fast–are highly coveted in playgrounds of the idle rich.

“You can have the Business Section when I’m through.”

 

“So what do you look for in a stock these days?” I asked, not that I was going to switch to active management of my portfolio anytime soon.

“Well,” Rocco said, stepping away from the computer for a moment and gazing out the window to literally take the long view while he figuratively did so.  “I try to toss my mouse up high–that way it can land on a larger number of publicly-traded companies.”

I was silent for a moment, waiting to see if he was pulling my leg.  When he turned back to the screen, I knew he wasn’t kidding.  “You’re taking money from our friends and neighbors . . .”

“They’re all accredited investors . . .”

“. . . and picking stocks based on where your stupid felt mouse lands?”

“You got a better system?”

I had to admit I didn’t.  Because of my innate cheapness–“Chapman” is derived from the Middle English “cheapman,” an itinerant salesman–I try to pick stocks whose price is unfairly deflated by trivial events of passing significance, such as natural disasters, bankruptcy and massive internal fraud.  This strategy–known as “catching a falling knife”–has caused me massive bleeding in my portfolio.

“Well, no,” I said.  “Still–throwing a mouse?”

“Hey–I use the best and most recent information available.  The print edition of The Wall Street Journal.”

“Those are yesterday’s papers, you dingbat.”

“P/E ratios are totally out of whack!”

 

“You need to take the long view,” he said, turning back to check the Hang Seng Index.

“I agree, but my attention span is slightly longer than a common housecat’s.”

He whirled his head around as if he’d heard a coyote.  “Who you callin’ common?” he snapped.

“Oh please.  You don’t seriously expect me to believe that you’re beating the Dow Jones and the Russell 2000 merely by your skill at throwing a stuffed felt toy, are you?”

“Of course not,” he said blandly.  “I use performance-enhancing drugs as well.”

“Adderall?”

“No, dubo.  That mouse is full of catnip.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

Cat Fancier Magazine Names “Kitten Stuck in Tree” Top 7 News Stories of 2022

ST. PAUL, Minn.  Cat Fancier Magazine, the leading newsweekly for cat owners, released its annual list of top news stories of the preceding year today, with “Kitten Stuck in Tree” taking the top seven honors.

Daring rescue.

“While 2022 was a year of great upheaval in the realms of politics, the environment and social justice, we felt that stories of kittens stuck in trees outweighed climate change and terrorism in terms of human interest and newsworthiness,” said Editor-in-Chief Carmella Hewlett.  “Mr. Wifflesworth agrees, dudn’t he?” she adds as she scratches her ten-year-old, fourteen-pound orange tabby under the chin.

In eighth place was “Kitten Rescued From Storm Drain,” followed by the conflict in Ukraine and inflation. In response to critics who found the list too heavily oriented towards kittens in peril, Hewlett blamed demographics and the changing market for special interest magazines.  “I plead guilty to that one–our readers just find stories about kittens to be more appealing, and we’re a business.” she noted.  “But Mr. Wifflesworth is just as cute as those kittens, idn’t he?” she added as she scratched her cat’s belly.

Mr. Wifflesworth, Jr.

Kittens stuck in trees have been a staple of the news business since the 19th century, when a period of intense competition between the Hearst and the Pulitzer newspaper empires resulted in low content, sensationalist reporting that came to be known as “Yellow Journalism.”  “With the dawn of the internet age the hope was that lower production costs would result in higher-quality investigative stories,” says Floyd Harches, a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts-Seekonk.  “The exact opposite happened, with cat videos placing second only to porn as the premier source of on-line banner ad revenues.”

Hewlett notes that a cat doesn’t have to be “fancy” to appear in Cat Fancier Magazine, a misconception she says causes more reputable news outlets to write off her reporting as “fluff.”  “It’s used in the British sense of a liking or a fondness for something,” she notes.  “And it’s not as fluffy as Mr. Wifflesworth, is it snookums?”

Available in print and Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

How to Floss Your Cat’s Teeth

The house is quiet, and so I lie down and try to take a nap. I’ve just dozed off when I feel the weight of fifteen pounds of cat flesh land on my chest. It’s Rocco, the younger of our two toms, looking for a head bonk and a back scratch.

“I was asleep–can’t you meow or something before you pounce on me?”

“What would you suggest–breath mints?”

 

“That would ruin the element of surprise,” he says, and I catch a whiff of serious tuna breath as he does so.

“Jesus–I hope you guys don’t wonder why you never get laid,” I say. “Your breath smells terrible!”

“It helps keep the coyotes away,” he says. “They think we’re skunks.”

Okie, the elder grey tabby, jumps up to claim his favorite spot, between my legs with his head down at my feet. “What are you guys talking about?” he asks.

“Why didn’t you tell me I had bad breath?”

 

“The need for a little dental hygiene around here,” I say.

“You do enough for the three of us,” he says.

“I’m serious–if you guys don’t floss, you’re going to get gingivitis.”

“What’s that?” Rocco asks.

“Gum disease. Stevie Winwood had it–bad. If he hadn’t recovered, we might have been deprived of the beauty of his ‘Back in the High Life’ album.”

That brings the seriousness of the disease home to them. “Geez,” Okie says. “I never knew.”

“There’s just one problem,” Rocco says. “We don’t have opposable thumbs. How the hell are we supposed to hold a piece of dental floss?”

“You don’t need to. Cats don’t actually floss, they . . . uh . . . let me see.”

Like many cat owners, we pick up feline health information when we go to the veterinarian, then promptly ignore it. They’re cats, fer Christ sake–they eat squirrel guts.

I rummage through the drawer where we keep their vaccination records and find the brochure I’m looking for–”Dental Hygiene for Cats: A Lifelong Program to Keep Your Kitty’s Teeth and Gums Healthy!” It’s considered a classic of the genre.

Here, kitty kitty!

 

“Here it is,” I say, showing them the suggestion I remembered. “To keep your cat’s teeth free from plaque, rub them with panty hose once a week.” I look at the two of them, expecting expressions of gratitude, but am met with blank stares.

“You’re kidding, right?” Okie asks.

“No.”

“If you think I’m going to sit still through a once-a-week panty hose polish job, you’ve got another think coming.”

“It’s up to you. If your teeth fall out, how are you going to eat?”

They look at each other, and appear to realize that they have no choice in the matter.

“Where are you going to get panty hose?” Okie asks.

Montaigne: “Hey–I’m too highbrow for this post.”

 

I know what Montaigne said: “When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is amusing herself with me, rather than I with her?” But still, it’s cracks like these that make me feel secure in the superiority of the human intellect over that of a cat.

“You fishstick! Where do you think we’re going to get panty hose–on mom!”

“But she doesn’t wear panty hose around the house,” Okie asks.

“She’s meeting her lawyer to update her will today.  She’ll be dressed professionally when she comes home.”

“Don’t we have to get the panty hose off of her?” Rocco chimes in.

I check the brochure. “Nope–doesn’t say anything about undressing your wife, girlfriend, date or significant other. Just ‘rub with panty hose.’”

Jesse James

 

“Let’s hide in the dining room and ambush her when she goes past the door into the kitchen!” Rocco says.

“Yeah–it’ll be like Jesse James robbing the train in Otterville, Missouri!” I exclaim, recalling a favorite highway historical marker of my youth.

The cats stifle yawns–for some reason tales of my boyhood bring on symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome–but they rally and we stake out a position just inside the dining room where we are hidden from the view of anyone entering the kitchen.

We hear the lock turn in the door and, like a precision Swiss clock, our plan ticks forward to its fateful conclusion.

“Ready?” I say as she hits the hardwood floor in the family room.

Rocco hesitates for a moment, then shouts “Now!” and we pounce.

She’s no match for the three of us, and we have her on the floor in a second. I take her legs and stick one in each of the cats’ mouths before she can collect herself and speak.

“What in the hell are you doing?” she screams.

“Flossing the cats’ teeth–this should only take a second,” I say.

She sits up and looks at the three of us, incredulous. I’ve seen that expression on her face before, when she broke up a fight between my kids. Over a Pokemon card. When they were toddlers.

“You have got to be kidding!”

“No, seriously. This is what the brochure says to do.”

“What brochure?”

“The one we got at the vet’s. Here.”

I hand it to her and she scans it while I work feverishly to fight the slow but inexorable advance of cat plaque.

“You didn’t read the warning on the back,” she says with a look that expresses the enduring skepticism she feels whenever I set out to do something around the house that involves practical knowledge and useful skills.

“What’s it say?”

“CAUTION: REMOVE WIFE FROM PANTY HOSE BEFORE APPLYING TO CAT’S TEETH.”

“What happenth if you donth?” Rocco says through a mouthful of nylon.

“SIDE EFFECTS: HUSBAND MAY NOT GET SEX FOR ONE (1) MONTH.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

The Perfumed Kitten

The Perfumed Kitten – Con Chapman

Baptizing My Cats

Another weekend with the in-laws ends on a sour note as the question is again raised, once the Agnostic-Rastafarian in the family (that’s me) steps outside to load the car, why our children aren’t baptized.

For some reason this discussion always takes place when I’m out of earshot and can’t participate.  I think it’s because of my reputation as boy theologian, the kid who received a little plastic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary every year in grade school for the highest score in Catechism class.  That kind of street cred scares off church-goers who worry more about what to wear to Sunday service than the parable of the lilies of the field (Matthew 6: 28) would suggest is proper.

“The kids are grown–it’s their choice,” I say when the uncomfortable discussion is relayed to me once we’re on the road.

“I know, but it’s really important to my parents,” my wife says.

“Do you think it would help if we baptized the cats?” I ask, trying to think of some way to heal the rift that I’m blamed for causing.

“Why on earth do you think that would help?”

“Well, that way they’d know you’d have company when you get to heaven, since I’m not going to be there.”

“I don’t think that’s the solution, but I know you’re going to do whatever you want, so don’t mind me.”

We drove on in silence, but as soon as we got home I broached the subject to our two male cats, Okie–a grey tabby–and Rocco, a black-and-white “tuxedo” cat.  “Grandma and Grandpa think you can’t get into heaven unless you’re baptized,” I explained.  “Would you guys be interested?”

“Is the cat food better in heaven?” Okie asked.

“It can’t be any worse than that low-cal Iams crap they feed us here,” Rocco said out of the side of his mouth.

“Everything’s supposed to be perfect up there, so I’d say yeah, it will probably be an upgrade,” I say.

“So we’re talking ‘wet’ catfood for once–like every other cat in the freaking universe gets?” Rocco asks with more than a trace of bitterness.

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay, I’m up for it,” Okie says.  He’s gotten by on his dashing good looks his whole life, and as a result his critical thinking skills are–shall we say–underdeveloped.

“You maybe ought to ask him what’s involved in this ‘baptism’ ritual everybody thinks is so important,” Rocco said, as he lifted one leg and licked at the spot where his balls used to be.

Rocco: “You can’t be serious.”

 

I was silent for a minute; Okie stared off into the middle distance, profoundly incurious.  Rocco gave me a look like I was a chipmunk peeking its head out of our stone wall and asked–“Well?”

“Let’s just say it involves water,” I said, trying to keep things vague.

“How much water?” Rocco asked.

“Depends.  Could be a little on the forehead, could be what the Southern Baptists call ‘full immersion.’”

“I’m a martyr for my faith–or lack thereof.”

 

“What do those words mean?” Okie asked.  Every now and then he shows a spark of intellectual curiosity.  About as often as Halley’s Comet comes around.

“It means I’d dunk you under water and hold you there while I repeated some religious mumbo-jumbo.”

“You’d let me up–right?” he asked nervously.

“Don’t worry–I was baptized Catholic, it’s the lower orders of the Protestants who are the real wing-nuts.”

“So that would involve?”

“Just a little moisture on the forehead and you’re good to go.”

“I’m in!” Okie said as he ran to the laundry room sink, the one he knows from past experience he can drink from without getting in too much trouble.

“How about you?” I ask Rocco, who’s been taking all this in with a gimlet eye and a skeptical ear.

“I think I’ll stay rational and maintain my membership in Agnostics of America in good standing,” Rocco says, not even trying to conceal his mammoth indifference to things religious, that source of comfort to so many.

“I baptize thee in the name of the Father . . .”

 

“You know, the irrational is way underrated,” I say as I prepare to administer the holy sacrament to the more credulous of our two pets.

“You ever notice how Okie hides under the bed when there’s a storm–and I don’t?” Rocco asks.

“Yes, you’re brave that way,” I say.

“Not brave, just not stupid,” he says.  “It’s a simple discharge of electricity,” he says.  He spent a lot of time sleeping in front of educational TV programs when our kids were young.

“I think the two go hand in hand,” I say, as I scratch his head a bit to show him that we two are of like minds, although I’m pretty sure mine is a good deal bigger than his.

“Lightning and thunder?” he asks.

“No, the tendency to believe in a world of spirits, both benign and malign.  People who think there’s an afterlife where the rivers flow with beer and wine are also the ones who get spooked by mundane natural phenomena,” I say.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he says as he washes a paw with his tongue.  It garbled his message but I understood him.

“Wait–what?”

 

“Are you guys about finished, because I’d like to get a dish of that wet cat food before I die,” Okie calls from the sink.

“As usual, you missed a fairly essential part of the program,” Rocco replies.

“What’s that?” Okie asks.

“You have to die to get it,” Rocco calls back to him.

There is silence from the laundry room.  Rocco and I wait to see whether the paradox of the belief in an afterlife will penetrate Okie’s thick but good-looking skull.

After a moment the suspense is broken as we hear Okie say “I can live with that.”

Rocco and I look at each other with, as Keats said in On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, a wild surmise.  That’s the Okester for you.

“How about you, Roc?” I ask as I get up to baptize Okie.  “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”

He looks at me for a second, then returns to the task of washing that paw.  “No, pops.  I’d rather be with you.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

My Cats’ Luxury Apartment

     An official of FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, maintained an opulent lifestyle that included a luxury apartment in New York–for his cats.

                                                              The Wall Street Journal

“Put down the Friskies and nobody gets hurt.”

As I turned the key in Apartment 31G, high above Manhattan, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the spectacle I was sure to encounter once I entered.  I opened the door and, just as I expected, saw empty bags of Iams Less Active Catfood in the distinctive turquoise bag strewn across the floor.  A Fancy Feast Classic Seafood Variety Pack was sitting on the counter, with three cans empty.  My roommate Rocco had apparently used the sports page to relieve himself rather than make the arduous trek all . . . . the . . . way back to the kitty box like a civilized cat.

Working on a six-pack.

The situation was nearly intolerable, but I had no one to blame but myself.  After all, I’d acted in The Odd Couple in high school, and should have remembered that roommates were like drinking–never mix, never worry.  But there was something about Rocco–the tuxedo cat I lived with–that made him hard to turn down when he asked if he could move in with me.

Maybe it was his lack of manners, the way he bowls over everything and everybody in his way to get what he wants.  He’s an alpha male, and I’m a beta.  He’s Oscar Madison to my Felix Unger; he’s a slob, and I’m–well, let’s just say I’m . . . fastidious.

I heard a burp from the vicinity of the couch and knew he was home.  I supposed that should have been some consolation, that he hadn’t left his mess for me to clean up.  On the other hand, if he were out somewhere I could straighten things out without his interference; the infuriating indifference he shows to any attempt whatsoever to maintain a luxury apartment in a state that wouldn’t warrant condemnation by the Board of Health.

“Geez, ya scared me,” he said as he lifted his head up from the sofa cushion.

“I hardly think so.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if I’d truly scared you, you would have at least jumped out of that heap of trash you’re lounging in.”

“I’m comfortable with whom I am.”

“Who not whom,” I said.

“Geez–I woulda thought you’d go the other way on that one.  I was tryin’ to use proper English.”

“I’m glad I’ve had some influence on you, even if it’s only superficial.  The relative pronoun functions as part of the relative clause, not the main clause.  So think of it as ‘I am comfortable with the person who I am.’”

“If I ever think of it again, I will.”  He sat up, grabbed the remote and turned on “Top Cat,” the 60s cartoon that’s his favorite–dare I say “only”–artistic interest.

“You know, our master works very hard to provide us with a luxury apartment–it’s the least you could do to pick up after yourself every once in a while.”

“Define ‘hard work,’” he said with a skeptical tone.  “Is it ‘hard work’ to open up an envelope with a large cash payment from a television network?”

“Well, probably not.”

“Is it ‘hard work’ to accept sexual favors from a precocious jeune fille sent to persuade you to site the next World Cup in Moldavia, or Upper Volta, or Burkina Faso?”

I had him dead to rights now.  “Upper Volta and Burkina Faso are the same country, you dingbat.”

“You get my drift,” he said as he stretched his arms before hopping up onto the counter and popping the top off another can of Fancy Feast.

“Oh, give it a rest, wouldya?”

“You’re getting quite a gut from lying around all day eating that . . . junk.”

“You know and I know that being an international soccer official is just about the most corrupt job in the world, after New Jersey traffic court judge and Massachusetts Democratic elected official.”

“So?”

“So you’re in this up to your whiskers, don’t come on all high and mighty with me.  You’re in pari delicto with the whole scam.”

It struck me that there ought to be a Latin logical fallacy for what Rocco had just done–“argument by changing the subject” or something–but there wasn’t, so he had a smug little smile on his face as he made his way back to the couch.

We went our separate ways, as always.  It’s no fun having a roommate who doesn’t share your interests which, in my case, include washing myself 6 times a day.  Still, we were very fortunate.  It isn’t every cat who has a luxury apartment, and a room of his own to sleep in–on the bed!–to look out the window of, to retire to when the din of the television in the living room becomes too annoying, to . . .

“Holy crap!”  It was Rocco, screaming at the TV.

“What?” I called out to him.  He doesn’t usually get excited, it had to be something important, like a Today Show interview with the editor of Cat Fancy or something.

“They just indicted a bunch of soccer officials for bribery!”

I came around the counter and looked at the screen.  There was our master, doing the perp walk, while the announcer droned on about a $150 million kickback scheme.  I shook my head in disbelief.  “We’re doomed,” I said finally with disgust.

“Why do you say that?” Rocco asked.

“All of this,” I said, sweeping my paw before him.  “You can kiss it goodbye.”

But as always, the Roc-man saw things a bit differently.  “Don’t be a sap,” he said.  “We’ll turn state’s evidence and write a true crime tell-all book.”

“Isn’t that prohibited by ‘Son of Sam‘ laws?”

“You mean the guy who claimed he was possessed by a demon in the form of a dog named Harvey?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Wrong species–we’re cats!”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

Poetry for Cats

Call me crazy, but I like to write poetry.

For cats.

Cats are a good training ground for poets. They are largely indifferent to poetry, like the overwhelming majority of people, but that still makes them a more receptive audience than my wife, who is openly hostile to the stuff.

Writing poetry for cats is low-level mental stimulation, like doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, but you make up the problem to be solved, not some faceless drone at a newspaper syndicate, so when you’re done you’ve created something.  Albeit on a par with a gimp necklace at summer camp.

It takes very little activity, or inactivity, on the part of my cats to serve as my muse. Here’s a cat poem I thought of just last night:

I take my laser pen in hand
and shine it in a circle.
My little cat goes chasing ’round,
it drives him quite berserkle!

Then I take what I’ve written, crumple the paper up into a ball, and throw it across the room. My cat pounces on it, extending our fun, and conserving precious resources through recycling. I’m trying to reduce our humor footprint.

Just because I write poetry for my cats doesn’t mean they’re sissies. They’re both males who will stay out all night, getting into fights with all manner of beasts. They bring us sustenance; field mice, birds, chipmunks. Once Rocco, the younger of the two, horse-collared a squirrel from behind, like a member of the New England Patriots’ defense, and dragged it, dying, to our back patio. As a former high school middle linebacker in a 4-3 defensive alignment, I found this to be a most gratifying spectacle.

Horse collar tackle

 

T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” is perhaps the most famous collection of cat poems, but it has always struck me as a bit fuss-budgety, like its author, a native of St. Louis who became a British subject in 1927, thereby missing out on seven World Series titles by the St. Louis Cardinals.  What a dope! That book, of course, was turned into the hugely successful Broadway show Cats.

T.S. Eliot: And you call yourself a Cardinals fan!

 

My wife once bought us tickets to see the show for my birthday, assuming that because I liked cats, I would like the show, but she sensed my indifference to Eliot’s work at dinner. As we left the restaurant for the theatre we were approached by two show tune mavens who breathlessly asked us if we had tickets we were willing to sell. We gave each other a look that lasted as long as the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings, then sold the ducats at a premium. This is the first and only known instance of scalping by a Presbyterian woman since the church was established during the Scottish Reformation in 1560.

Cats: Thanks, I’ll pass.

 

Lots of poets have had cats, chief among them Samuel Johnson, whose cat was named “Hodge.” I had a girlfriend whose cat was named after Johnson’s. When we had her refined friends over she’d tell the story about how, when Johnson learned of a wave of cat-napping sweeping London at the height of the popularity of cat’s meat pies, he looked down at his cat and said “They’ll not have Hodge!” Sort of NPR humor, as Harry Shearer would say–loads of muted titters. We broke up; she got the cat, and I got the hell out of there.

Johnson: How do you know you won’t like cat’s meat unless you try it?

 

For my money, the greatest of all cat poems is For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey by Christopher Smart (1722-1770), from Jubilate Agno. It’s a work that all pet store owners and cat groomers should have on their walls, in needlepoint. Surely you know its stirring opening lines:

Christopher Smart, wearing his “everyday” mortarboard

 

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey.
For he is the servant of the Living God,
duly and daily serving him.
For at the First glance of the
glory of God in the East
he worships him in his way.
For this is done by wreathing
his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,
which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

 

Musk is the smelly substance found in a small sac under the skin of the abdomen of the rodents cats kill, and to “roll upon prank” refers, in a charming 18th century way, to cats’ preferred method of applying it. Yep–that’s a real cat there, not some Broadway-bound dancer-pussy.

Oh–I neglected to mention that when Smart wrote the above, he was a resident of Bedlam, the London hospital for the mentally ill.

Call him crazy.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collections “Cats Say the Darndest Things” and “poetry is kind of important.”