Cat’s Meow
Oh Innernetz! Where do I begin? The hardest part about blogging is what to say after a lengthy absence. I’m going to forgo the Compulsory Retroactive Asskissing Pity Party and the tale of woe about antidepressants, side effects, life, death, and all that other bullshit that had my muses screaming like whiney little bitches: “Ohhh, I’m too sad to write! Oooohhhh! I’m too tired to write! Ooohhh, zombies!” But now they’re back kissing my ass because their unemployment benefits have run out. But there’s no room for them at my laxtop because there’s a new bitch taking up room on my keyboard — Morbidly Obese Cat. MOC is 20 pounds of drama with a high-pitched meow like an emphysematic helium sucking Fran Drescher and a penchant for catching mice. That he brings to me. One. Piece. At. A. Time.
This is why I got Morbidly Obese Cat. I had mice. Oh, sure, I had insomnia and mental illness and poverty and cramps. But you know what, Innernetz? I can live with all of that. You know what I can’t live with? Mice.
Fuck you, Walt Disney. Fuck you for so many awful, hideous things. But fuck you most of all, Disney, for thinking a mouse was cute or funny or charming or had even an ounce of anything approaching a personality worthy of stardom. And, come to think of it, this entire paragraph is worth repeating, except replace the word “mouse” with “Nicolas Cage.”
I have seen at least one mouse in every apartment I have ever had in New York City. Now, maybe some of you buy those humane mousetraps and drive your mice out to the woods so that snakes and owls can eat your city vermin instead of you having to kill them yourself. Good for you. I don’t do that. I murder them. And I am not nice about it. I had an electric rat zapper that fried mice so that they made a wet little sizzling sound — kssshhht! — when I dropped their smoking, still-twitching carcasses into the toilet. Don’t fuck with Dingo, Mickey. I am to mice what M. Night Shyamalan is to movies.
But my rat zapper broke. And Not A Dingo has never been one for catching mice. She’s a lovah, not a fighta. She’s six pounds of Hello Kitty on Xanax. I needed a monster, a Hannibal Lecter of cats. I wanted the mice in my apartment to wake up in unfamiliar surroundings bound to a sinister contraption watching my cat on a tiny TV saying, “I want to play a game.” I wanted internet sites most frequently visited by mice to have pictures of my cat with the caption, “I can haz death.” So, I went to the local animal shelter where I rescued Morbidly Obese Cat. MOC, a healthy black-and-white Domestic Short Hair, weighs more than three Not A Dingos. MOC means business. When you look into MOC, MOC also looks into you.
MOC doesn’t just catch the mice. He toys with them before ripping them into little mouse bits. He leaves the rodent chunks where he knows I spend most of my time. I might come home from work to find a mouse tail on my chair, or a head on my desk, or an unrecognizable lump of mouse on my pillow. It’s kind of nice not knowing what to expect, like having drinks with Mel Gibson.
Last Wednesday night, as I sat in bed nursing insomnia and a vodka cranberry, Mr. Dingo, Dingo Girl, and Not A Dingo snored peacefully beside me as MOC wheezed fitfully at the foot of the bed. Fuckers. Suddenly, MOC jumped up and ran down the hallway faster than Halle Barrie changes partners. From the living room I heard thudthumpbam! Several seconds of silence. And then BAM. I was so startled I spilled my drink. Oh helz no!
Buzzed and exhausted, I shambled down the dark hallway. “MOC, what the —” was cut short by an eeeeeiiiiwwwww! as my foot stepped on something soft, fuzzy, wet, and cold. So very, very cold. And nasty. I was afraid to look. But I didn’t have to. I could feel it. A thin cord-like tail pressed into my heel and a soft, moist, boneless body flattened and expanded between my curling toes. Vodka and cranberry infused vomit caught at the back of my throat as I hopped around on the unsullied foot banging into walls. Gah gah gah! I gurgled. Gah gah gah! I wiggled, whipped, and whirled until I was krumping down the hallway like a white guy at the Gangsta Ball. And then my knee buckled sending me crashing into the bathroom door. I hate our bathroom door. It sticks. Except when a hundred and none of your business pounds of Dingo slams into it.
When my butt bone and hand cracked on the floor, I saw stars. And, for the first time, I felt a twinge of sadness, like when you’re driving down the highway and come upon a furry, reddened patch of roadkill that you recognize as a once-vibrant and beautiful woodland critter. No creature deserves the ignominy in death of finding itself flattened between my second and third toes. I felt — Sweet baby jebus! What the fuck is this?! My fingers landed on something soft, moist, and lifeless. Gah gah gah! I began to crawl to the light switch and each agonizing inch revealed a new horror. It was the ghost of flushed mice past coming to get their revenge. Every step was littered with — I flipped on the light — tampons?
The bathroom cabinet was open and my brand new box of tampons was ravaged, its contents chewed, severed, and scattered across the floor. It was a tampon massacre! It had obviously been a group effort. I grabbed all the saliva-drenched shreds of cotton and bits of string and put them in their final resting place: the trash. Words were said. Sad words. Tampons are expensive. MOC came to see what all the fuss was about. He threw me a “Whatever, bitch” side-eye as he sauntered into the bedroom.
As I lumbered back to bed hoping for just a few hours rest before the day started, I stepped on another spit-soaked tampon. Damn it, MOC! I reached down to take it off my foot. Except, instead of a played-out Playtex, this was a ravaged rodent. Or at least part of one. The back half. Plainly, it had been a male. Gah gah gah! I am good at krumping.
