I woke up to mournful bleats. Some people have alarms. Rumour has it some are kissed awake by someone warm and special. I have a cat who takes care of this Charon-shaped passage between the land of the dreaming and the land of the mostly stressed or terminally bored.
The bleats still travelling through my auditory canal were not cat-launched, of course. Whatever you might say about the cat, Mary’s Little Lamb it ain’t – nor does it, ever, bleat, like those thorough(ly)-(in)bred Siamese.
“Stop messing about with your food,” I said, eyes still firmly closed. “Eat it or release it back into the wild.”
More bleats:
“Bleat bleat bleat help bleat bleat get that stupid bleep bleep cat away from me bleat bleat… BLEAT!!!”
I raised one weary eye-brow, yes, with my eyes still closed: now what?!
The damn animal was dragging in a bit of talking breakfast, this ill-begotten morning…?
Then some more bleating & cursing, followed by a resounding slap, resulting in an insulted & pained & furious hissing.
So, whatever the cat had brought home to come and play with was not willing to go gentle into that good night.
Now this I had to see!
I opened my eyes: nothing there…
“You’re the owner of that stupid cat?” a voice asked, from somewhere behind one of my many, many overflowing bookcases.
“The owner? Not really. We just share the rent.”
“It’s a frigging menace, that beast is.” the voice said.
“True. Though it’s the first time that one of its road kills makes a formal complaint.”
“I kicked it right in its balls, you know.”
“Ouch.”
“That will teach it.” the voice said triumphantly.
“Oh no, it won’t.”
Some thought-frought silence, then:
“Is it gone though?”
“For now, I would think so, yes. But it’s an extremely sore loser, so, it will be back.”
“…”
“Still, it should be safe to come out for a bit. It will be busy licking its wounded pride for a while.”
“You think so…?”
“Well, yes – I hope. I won’t eat you anyway.”
“Ooh-kay…”
Then the word became flesh – or the voice turned to stone – or…
“Bloody Hell…” I said.
“What?!” said the word-flesh-voice-stone-whatever.
(To be continued.)
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