Thursday, May 3, 2012

Cat Boy

My cats follow me wherever I go, at least whenever they can.  First off, they sleep in my bed.  Trust me. I don’t bring them to bed with me.  That’s the last thing I need: three warm furry creatures on a hot summer night locked in an interspecies snuggle fest, jostling around and leaving me confused as to where their tail ends and my arm begins.  When I go to the basement to play my keyboards, they anticipate me, as I am a creature of habit; the sons of bitches have already parked their oft-licked asses on my expensive sound equipment looking bored out of their gourd as I come down the stairs.  If I walk to the shopping mall from my house, they’ll tag along, like they're my posse or something.  It’s embarrassing.  Who wants to be known as “Cat Boy”?  Not me.  I'd rather be called something more manly like "Shark Man" or "Dog Warrior."

Yesterday I was at Caribou Coffee enjoying a latte macchiato and discussing the upcoming fall semester with a literature professor and college administrator, Marcia and Josh.  We look outside through the glass wall and see three cats staring in at us.  "Would you look at that?" Marcia says with a chuckle.  I didn't acknowledge my four-legged friends and  most certainly didn't want to address them in any way.  My colleagues thought it odd that I didn't see the cats crouched on the grass with their arms folded up against their chests less than a foot away from us, a fact that became all the more glaring when those persistent pussies started to rub their bodies up against the glass.  "You really don't see them, Der?" asks Josh with a puzzled look on his face.  "You don't see the lion country safari going on out there right now?  Really?  You don't see any of that?"  I just didn't want to deal with it, you know?  I responded rather sternly, I must admit: "No, I do not see them!"  I don't think I succeeded in warding off their suspicion that somehow those three furballs and I are intimately connected.  Anyway, I didn’t realize felines are so frickin’ gregarious, for cryin' out loud!  I thought they like to do their own thing.  I was under the impression that they were individualist creatures like me, but no: they follow me wherever I go.  Fuckers.