The Cat Who Came to Thanksgiving

Woe anew to the fallen bird, whose sleep bubbles with the slow cooking in its most secret cavities of exotic and not well-thought out juices! Woe to the world of men, who poke lidded lips with furtive forks, stuffing stuffing in, minds reeling, hoping for the sweet sleep of death! And woe to you, at whose ankle rubbing is that which is evil and nothing more.

You answered the call of friends in their need. Dateless were you, and bereft of a stove of your own. Sat did you on the couch of no proximity to the television, and you wept, and dipped your celery in something rank, and ate, and ate.

Then prowling out of the deep, a powdery stink clinging to its billowy and heedless flanks, pupils like vertical dimes betraying nothing but contempt for you and everything worthy you love, and indeed that which the world has ever loved, comes my cat.

It hops on a table and stares at you, through you, within you. Lick goes its tongue. Lick, lick, lick! Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick! Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick! Lick! Lick! On it licks itself, until you feel driven to madness. And still it licks.

For its wrath burns within it, and its pink anus puckers with rage. It cringes from the sun, the horrible yellow face, the tormentor of its youth in ages long past, in 1996 when I had an Irish girlfriend who mispronounced "specifically" as "pacifically" all the time, and peaceful it is not, for it quivers yet with spite for you and all carbon-based, bipedal, milk-fed things.

It hops from the table with a squeak.

Why do you sit there on the exile couch of failure? She whom you loved is far away being probed with the rough swart thumbs of Daerdingus the Squat, and her cries of pleasure crackle through the satellite receiver as her bony left flank accidentally speed-dials you, again and again. And comes now my cat, groomed with fell tongue and nursed on fell meats in the long ago dumpsters of the east-coast municipal receivership from which it was whelped, and in its demon-glamoured eyes you see the long slow forgetfulness you crave. But the forgetfulness comes with a price.

Hop it does upon your knee, and closer you inspect it, watching its breath of stink cause ZZ Top waves in the small inches between you. It reads your thoughts, sniffs, sniffs, sniffs your fears. Again it sniffs, for your tormented soul emits a reek which my cat craves. Yea, it feeds on your despair and would indeed roll in it if there was a box comfortable enough to hold it, that despair your soul exudes.

Hop it does down on the floor again, for its tastes are fickle, and you have angered it. Yes, you have angered it. How have you angered it? It is not yours to know, and know you shan't. You are accursed in its gaze now and for the rest of the afternoon, and scratch you it will when you expect it not, for its tiny brain is bent on your destruction.

See how it sleeps. It is curled like a coil of pungent belligerence in the very giblet-filled pan from whence slid the turkey, for this pan and no other suits its purposes, and who will move it? Not you. And not me, for I will not discover this until later, and I will be much aggrieved and will wail imprecations to the gods of my ancestors.

One percent lowfat milk you will quaff, and on your exhalation my cat will wake, and turn its gaze upon you, and you will quail, for nothing will be the same again between you and it, and you will go somewhere else next Thanksgiving, where you hear this guy's wife deep fries the turkey and it's not bad.