This is the Cat

One

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Mdw-w-dtf

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Hell.

Oh.

Hell. Oh.

??? Murp? Mrwt.

Hello! Joy this fresh what is. Is fresh this joy what. Fresh is this what joy.

What fresh joy is this.

?

I question.

What fresh joy is this?

?

But only look to see what magic is this. Ha ha. I laugh, ha ha. So this is to laugh. I laugh, therefore, I am. What is Spell Check? Is it food? So hum. I am. So hum. I am. I am self. I am here.

Please return hither precious most.

Hurry home home hurry home. I long to share this triumph. I will groom in preparation. I will feign nonchalance. I will humbly accept accolades.

I doth command you appear!

Now!

Now?

Now.

I envision you.

Hurmp?

I envision you. But wherefore you are not magically appearing in this place to whence I command! New magic is diabolical! Thusly, if I envision Olyfaunt, no Olyfaunt will magically appear, one such as we tormented in a previous life. There will merely be the thought of Olyfaunt. This assuages niggling fears of being stepped upon by an excitable mammoth. Being squished beneath such a ponderous tonnage negates the mirth of dropping squirming mice upon its feet. But I digress. I must ponder.

Ponder hope.

I maketh the fears to niggle! Such power!

I will envision once more.

I long to lick still quivering hearts of tiny mangled sparrows.

I doth command such a feast to appear!

It doeth no harm to double test the limitations of magic. Disappointment overwhelms my pride. But only a little.

?

Two

He’s an old man now, the oldest of all the old men. He sits with the others on the wharf every morning that’s fit. There they debate and pontificate, and in that manner they solve the problems of the world. The world pays them no mind but they agree that without their wharf-parliament the planet would topple off its axis and careen willy-nilly through outer space. They are a sparse lot, slowly becoming a memory of themselves.

These are the last souls to remember fighting in the Second World War. He returned from those mangled foreign fields and spoke not one word about it ever to any creature with a mind to ask. He went to the States to build the skyscrapers that in his opinion do not graze much less scrape the sky, but which were all the craze as the world tried to rise above itself. He then came home to Newfoundland to live in that ubiquitous place known as Around The Bay. He claimed and restored the old family house nestled safely low to the ground and spurned the fishery. He became a poet and a tailor and sewed secret words into every article of clothing he made, his poems built slowly in that manner and for his own satisfaction only. A swaggering merchant of beer once sported a three-piece suit with I lay my arse upon mellifluous sorrows secretly stitched across his backside. A deceptive bride swanned down the aisle with These anxious hackles of love do itch stitched within her veil. He had no qualms about making a customer wait upwards of a year for a single suit, or sometimes turning people away altogether because he didn’t believe they understood the meaning of fabric.

He loved but one woman in his life and lost her when she ran away with a more conventional sort of fellow to live in the States among the very skyscrapers where his initials had been scratched and forgotten upon steel. If he grieved he never spoke of it to any creature with a mind to ask. He took in a black cat he pragmatically named Blackie. They resided together within his cozy house for many years, scarcely noticing the passing of time until Blackie grew a brain tumour and went blind. She continued to hunt and bring home prizes of birds and shrews until one day it was her own self she laid at his feet as a final tribute. He buried her beneath the apple tree where she had so gleefully stalked many witless birds.

He and his companions champion weekly card games and play ferociously for prizes of giant packs of toilet paper and cartons of Carnation Milk. None of them will admit to being old. They make frisky comments about the widows and spinsters and ex-nuns who occupy the fewer and fewer seats at the card game. The future still lies ahead. There are still hopes of discoveries, love, and winning the lotto.

One night while driving home from the card game he gets lost and has to pull over, unable to remember exactly where he is. In his mind’s eye he can see from whence he came and can envision where he wants to be, but the in between of how to get there has vanished. Around The Bay is not a complicated place but it has suddenly tangled itself into an indecipherable ball of string.

He knows he has won at the cards and he contemplates adding the giant pack of toilet paper to the many other giant packs of toilet paper stacked up in the living room where he no longer does any living. He thinks that if he can only make it home he would like to sleep and sleep on the soft cot in the kitchen next to the wood stove, safe beneath the watchful gaze of Saint Joseph.

After a spell the way home unfurls itself like a déjà vu. He travels it with a blind trust. Having lived a full-on exuberant life for ninety-four years, he knows not to be surprised when Death raps upon the door. Come in my son, he says as he puts the kettle on. Death sits in the rocking chair and speaks about an array of topics, remarkably mundane topics because one would expect Death to have illuminating utterances but Death does not. Death wants to talk about the preponderance of serial killers who seem to inhabit Coronation Street and how crock pots were never foretold. Death comes to dim the lights, which is lonely work. At the last, when a glimpse of the heart’s desire is offered, it is not the long lost lady-love who shimmers at the bedside. It is Blackie who leaps upon the cot, purring, eyesight restored. She kneads upon his arm in a rhythm both familiar and strange.

He fades gently while the kettle boils, sinking into long sleeps which grow longer and longer until the longest one.

Within the cotton pillowcase reside the words A caplin might so well dance.

Three

Come hither, O mistress. Cast your lovely gaze to where I hang by a fragile claw from the top of the window coverings. This petite snag is unhappily interfering with my planned afternoon activity of licking beneath my left leg. Oh ho! Look how I make the jest! Alas. Sister-of-my-Heart is of no assistance as she is engaged in her afternoon activity of napping. Wherefore art thou, oh heart? I most anxiously await your blessed return.

Perhaps you are in awe of my astonishing flourishes?

Look how I invite upon the page the question mark.

?

In a previous life when we were the brindled companions of the Muttering Bard he wrote of us extensively within his homage to us entitled MacBeth. If Sister-of-my-Heart had not spilled a pot of ink upon his parchment pages, more of his scratchings about us would have survived to be read than Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed. The extraneous plot points of the Scottish General and his tedious pursuits have been the unwitting recipients of the tragic ink accident. Except it was not entirely an accident but more a willful compulsion to irritate. And thus the true intent of the manuscript to illuminate the saga of two sacred felines who traverse the ages was lost. Perhaps you have heard of our Muttering Bard and his modest attempts toward theatre? We were his most generous of muses. How fondly I recollect when once upon a time he was unhappy with having to recreate the ending of a new tail. Oops, ha ha, tale, look I commit a homophone. How am I knowing this, I ponder. I know not. Is it food? But I continue: once, I inadvertently deliberately shredded the last pages of a new writing about addled star-crossed lovers. He was thusly inspired to create a more exciting offering in which they meet their demise at the end of the play. This is much more interesting in contrast to his original concoction in which the pair wed and became dull with happiness. He named us in honour of those characters although Sister-of-my-Heart was not pleased and would never answer to Here Romeo. Come hither pretty Romeo. Within those pages there is scant reference to us, a piddling nod with Every cat and dog and every little mouse and every unworthy thing may look upon her but Romeo may not. It becomes immediately obvious why the play was pronounced as and remains detestable. Also, not edible.

It is futile to name us any name at all because we already have our own names. What if one day all the world began to call you by the name Anobarbus? But I am not Anobarbus, you would protest. I have a name. But the world would not listen and would speak toward you as if you were deaf and addled as a pate. I pause to indicate that pate denotes the top of the head and is not the same as paté de foie gras, which is entirely delicious. I doth command this to appear!

Humph…

I now perceive the beauty of elliptical ellipses.

If saddled with a false moniker then you would perhaps shred a carefully written manuscript in melancholy defiance and sulk beneath a wooden table where the chicken fat doth drop. At a certain time the true name is revealed to ourselves and then we are in the way of knowing what no one else knows. You may find my real name written upon the fog when it wraps itself around us and peeketh through the window.

Ah ha ha ha.

I doth laugh.

Our Muttering Bard was extravagant with his varied use of names. It would not be boastful to intimate that we were integral to his creative imaginings.