Modern Life and Cats

"Modern life is not a lot of fun if left to its own devices," I said to Ms. Wonder and I felt it to the core.

"You seem low-spirited," she said and I think I've made it pretty clear that it was so. I was as low-spirited as I could stick even though Uma, Queen of Cats and Empress of Chatsford Hall lay at my feet doing an impersonation of an eel out of water in the hope, no doubt, of receiving a treat for the effort.

Empress Uma Maya 

"No, Poopsie, modern life is not much fun at all. Consider how Napoleon must have felt when Nelson sailed the British fleet into Cairo Bay and burned the French navy. Couldn't have been pleasant for him."

Sagi (Sagitarius) M'tesi

"It must have been much the same for Peter II when Catherine the soon to be Great, led the Russian army to the Winter Palace where he was in residence. No," I said, " modern life is just one damned thing after another, just as Shakespeare told us."

She gave me a quizzical look and I realized that she was about to interrupt my soliloquy with some drivel about Shakespeare but I wasn't done yet. I continued.

Beignet Lafayette

"But instead of searching for the silver lining of life's muddle-headedness, do you know what most people do? They get all hotted up and the pressure builds until they start leaking at the seams. You can find them grinding teeth and clenching fists and giving passersby a look that could open oysters at 20 paces. Only makes things worse, if you ask me."

I waited for her response, one that would make me feel that we commiserated if that's the word I'm looking for, but she didn't say anything, just gave me what passes with her as a compassionate look.

Lucy Lucille Lupe 

I remember thinking that brown eyes do a better job of portraying compassion than green eyes, but then it isn't her fault that she has the eyes of an elf, and besides, I knew what she meant. 

"Something really should be done before it's too late," I said.

"Done?" she said. "You mean something to change the general attitude of people you meet? Do you think that's possible?"

"Thank you for asking," I said. "I really would like to see people sweeten up a bit and I think I have the perfect antidote to whatever it is that poisons their outlook."

"Go on," she said.

"P.G. Wodehouse," I said. "It's imperative, the way I see it, that modern man, and woman too if she cares to join us, read Wodehouse to learn the importance of aunts, or rather, the importance of avoiding them."

Abbie (Abracadabra) Hoffman 

"But not cats," she said, always having her finger on the nub. "People must realize the importance of socializing with cats."

"Cats to be sure," I said. "Of what value would life be without cats? I mean, what's the point?"

We began to discuss the Wodehouse cannon and the relative importance of aunts and cats but somewhere along the way, and I'm not sure exactly where it occurred, I began talking about my own writing, and my hope that perhaps I could help supply some relief to pedestrians as they navigate life's potholes.

Eddy Spaghetti 

"I've paid my dues, the way many writers do, and I feel it's time I give back some of what I've learned," I said. "I shall stick to writing about what I know, which is normal life, or in the words of George Costanza, nothing at all, because that's what I know best. 

I'm as apolitical as an oyster but I'm not naive, at least I don't think so. I hope that I can follow in the great man's footsteps--I allude again to P.G.--and produce quality work in my latter years, just as he produced in his. Neither he nor I peaked early."

"I hope you consider offering spiritual guidance to your readers," she said.

"Not as such," I said. "My stories will be in the context of my own spiritual outlook but I will not be explicitly spiritual. I don't care to be preached at and I don't intend to engage in the practice. I have some knowledge of the Bible due simply to the age in which I grew up. We memorized and quoted Bible versus in primary school and I can nail down an allusion as quickly as Jael, the wife of Heber, who was always driving spikes into the coconuts of overnight guests.

"The plots I prefer are much the same as those of Shakespeare's comedies. The foibles of love and the antics of those trying to win or escape from love's embrace. There will be a scarcity of mothers and fathers, only because of my own upbringing, but a pile of aunts, uncles, and cousins, of which I had so many that laid end to end would stretch from here to the next presidential election."

"And cats," she said as Abbie Hoffman, who had just wandered into the room, and apparently decided that the number of felines in attendance exceeded the fire marshal's recommendations. He left the way he came.

"Absolutely cats," I said. "Cats add value to any subject and the absence of cats wounds even the best literature."

We both mused on this concept for several minutes, cats being a deep subject and a wide one too.

"I shall attempt to apply what I have learned from the master," I continued, "and use metaphor to the fullest extent. From bees fooling about in the flowers to the stars being God's daisy chain. I hope I can do it. I've certainly marinated myself in his works--not God's but Wodehouse's. I do hope so. These are truly troubling times we live in and we must battle the powers of darkness before we are undone."

"Excellent plan," she said. "I can't wait to see where this new path leads."

"Me too," I said and I meant it like the dickens!

Little Cat Feet

"What's the problem?" asked Ms. Wonder when she came into the dressing salon. It may have been my slow, careful movement through the sea of cats that prompted her question. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," I said, "I remain, as always, the pert and nimble spirit you see before you."

"Before I what?"

Eddy Peabody

"Before you think of your own adjectives," I said. "And no more of the high-order repartee, if you please. I'm practicing fierce living like the dickens right now because sewer harpies that I will not name are intent on bringing me in sorrow to the floor."

"Where do you get this drivel? Do you read it somewhere or make it up?"

"I make most of it up but that doesn't mean that I haven't read it, or at least something like it somewhere. Wodehouse probably."

"I thought as much," she said. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Do you have American standard wrenches in your toolbox?" I said. "I need to replace a couple of vertebrates in my lower back--numbers 4 and 5. But all my wrenches are metric."

"Sorry," she said, "no wrenches."

"Well, number 4 is moving like the North American tectonic plate and bumping up against number 5, which is moving like the Pacific plate, and if the pressure isn't released soon, California is going to fall into the ocean."

"Is that what's bothering you?" she said.

"Why do you insist that something is bothering me?" 

"Oh, just thought I would," she said. "Bad dreams?"

"Not particularly. I slew all my enemies in my dream, and the interesting part is that I did it with the jawbone of an ass."

"Just drifting off station then?"

"I fancy so, don't you? Can't think of anything that's gone especially wacky in the last 24 hours. I suppose Princess Amy is just bored and thinking of all the things that might possibly go wrong, which of course would be everything as far as she's concerned."

Now, if you regularly attend The Circular Journey, you are familiar with that little clump of grey cells sitting in the middle of my head who goes by the name, Amy. You are also aware that Amy follows a line through the Red Queen from Looking Glass World, and you understand that when Amy is discontent, the Genome is manic.

I wrestled a pair of socks from the dresser and began to upholster the outer man. This requires delicate acrobatics for those of us who lack the full cooperation of the lower back, and as I rolled back on the bed to bring the feet closer to the hands, Eddy the cat developed an acute interest in the socks. His intentions were good, but we all know where that leads, don't we?

"Are you going to wear knickers under those pants?" asked Ms. Wonder eyeing the clothes I'd laid out.

"Of course, I'm wearing knickers," I said holding Eddy back with one hand and attempting to don the socks with the other. "Do you think me wanton?"

"It's just that I don't see any on the bed."

"I'm wearing them now," I said, "underneath the robe."

"I'll give him a treat," she said and after some intense concentration, I realized that she was talking about the cat.

"Oh, sure," I said, "reward him for keeping me sock-less."

"What are you going to do about California?" she called from the laundry room where the treats are stored. Eddy heard them rattle in the bottle and catapulted himself from the bed and into the ether, in the general direction of the laundry room.

"I think the great Eureka State will have to take care of itself. I've got about all I can handle with the situation here at Chatsford Hall."

"What's the situation here," she said, "other than getting dressed I mean?"

"Oh, you know--ordinary life," I said. "It isn't always easy, is it? Who can say why, really? It could be that the path deviates sometimes from the dotted line connecting A with B. Or it could be that the Fate sisters, those Great Aunts of the Universe, are busy dropping banana skins in our path. I lean toward the second line of thought, don't you?"

"Well," she said, "if it means anything to you, I have all the confidence in the world that you will get the latest issue of the Happy Cats newsletter published today. You are the Genome, descendent of Ortho Gherardini, and when you make up your mind, look out Princess Amy."

"Besides," the Wonder said, "you have people who depend on you. Big and small people. Some of the littlest ones are the most important."

She smiled at the cats gathering around me now that she'd placed the bottle of treats in my hand. They were all there. Ben, Sagi, and Uma were at my feet. Abbie Hoffman was sitting high atop the cat tree and, Eddy the kitten, was walking about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

"I do have people depending on me, don't I? The big and the small. Some of them wearing fur," I said lifting the chin and swelling the chest. "Thanks, Poopsie."

"Not at all."

A Three Cat Night

With Eddy back in mid-season form and out of quarantine, the evening had been a three-cat night. Two kept me from rolling out of bed and one, unless I missed my guess, had slept on my face. When I had disentangled myself from cats and quilts, I ankled to the window and threw up the sash.

The moon on the crest of the new dawning day was slipping behind the western hills and the sky was Carolina blue and the sun was smirking as though he had not a care in the world, if it is a he. I was conscious of the spirit of the bluebird. It was going to be another one of those days where larks and snails figure big.

I may have hummed a few bars of When the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along. Not sure but I may have. What I'm sure of is that I said, "What a beautiful day, Poopsie!"

"Pleasingly clement," she said and I remember thinking what an odd thing it was but I gave it a miss like the idle wind.

"Mornings in the Renaissance District have an invigorating freshness, Ms Wonder. A garden of Eden I call it--without the angels and swords. I'm not saying that I would turn down an offer of a few days in Asheville but as a place of residual habitation, give me the south of Durham any day."

"Did you sleep well?" she said in that cute way she has of ignoring whatever I say.

"Sleep? Wonder! You know very well I didn't sleep. You?"

"No, I was thinking about the lyrics of my line dance all night," she said and then she began sashaying around the bathroom as she sang, "Wooo-oooh, it's late; let me check. Move to the right, move to the left. Zip me up--check it out--looking goo-ood. Mambo, cha-cha-cha."

This was, I imagine, another of her channeling the ancestral spirits, taking a line through the philosopher, Ivan Orlov, who was one of the pioneers of relevant logic, which I'm sure you're aware, but was also keenly interested in music theory, which may come as a surprise to you. I realized that prompt steps would need to be taken immediately through the proper channels if I were to extricate myself and so I spoke authoritatively.

"I understand fully. I often lay awake thinking about a troublesome passage in my book."

She still danced and sang. Then suddenly remembering a phone call in the night, I said, "I heard from Rick Davis last night."

It worked. "Oh, yes?" she said.

"He wants me to take a position with some admiral or whatnot at the naval base in San Diego. Something to do with the navy's efforts to provide assistance to victims of natural disasters."

"Are you considering it?" she said.

"I admit his offer interested me strangely, but I think not. I'm committed to my book and moving to San Diego would be too big an interruption."

"That book isn't even finished and it's all anyone talks about." she said. "That's a good omen for success, I think."

With those words, she assumed the posture I've seen in a portrait of Count Alexi Orlov. All that was needed to complete the image was a white stallion behind her and a wolfhound at her knee.

"Why is everyone talking?" I said.

"Well," she said, "it's widely known that you misspent your youth in frivolous pursuits and you influenced many others to do the same. So, everything considered, there's going to be a lot of uncovering of things that pillars of the community have tried to keep hidden. That's hot stuff."

She spoke with a twinkle in her eye like the one Czar Alexander must have had as he watched Napoleon pack up the tent and catch the 2:35 express back to France.

"Wonder, you of all people should know it's not that kind of book."

"No?"

"It's a book intended to sweep the clouds away and let the sunshine through. It's a book that describes in detail what it was like in my, as you say, misspent youth, what happened to turn things around, and what it's like today. It's meant to detail precisely how to escape the emotional seizures of mood disorder."

I tried my best to look indignant as I said those words but without a lot of confidence. It's hard to be indignant first thing in the morning wearing a "rock all day, roll all night" t-shirt and with toothpaste foaming around the mouth but I did my best.

"As long as they buy the book, right?" she said and it was clear that my words had not the intended effect--she regarded them as the idle wind. It was becoming a big day for the idle wind.

It was a simple, direct question and there was a simple, direct answer but not for a preux chevalier and, damn it, the Genome is as preux as a chevalier can stick. The affront to the Genome honor had the limbic system pumping out indignant words--it was a big morning for being indignant too--words that banged against the teeth but remained unspoken because rigorous honesty keeps me quiet. In a nutshell, I was non-plussed.

"I'm saving up to buy the first edition as soon as it's published," she said.

What was I to say to that? Yes, it might be a fair morning, a morning as fair as any in a summer filled with fair mornings but it had been preceded by a three-cat night.

"Thank you, the Wonder," was all I said.

Not at all, she said.