• TomTiger1

    He thought it must be a crime when he
    saw her. It was the way she was dressed, black spandex and a blouse
    that appeared at first glance to be made of feathers. Deep russet the
    color was but he couldn't help but to think of her as a bird, bright
    and small so he called her Canary.

     

    “I still don't believe you fell in
    love with me on the day we met,” she said on their wedding night
    more then two years into the future. She admired the shape of his
    face in the blue light of the hotel room. He hugged her deeply and
    told her once again that it was true. Canary fidgeted with the love
    she knew she had and let her thoughts wander to the future. The
    children they would have and the home that they would make together.
    They would go to church weekly until their youngest was a teenager
    ridden with angst that they wouldn't be able to see and then they
    would begin slowly to feel free again.

     

    Of course it wouldn't be all cream and
    peaches. There would be the affair he would have, a women he met at
    the office and then later at the health club. She would also discover
    that seaweed didn't cure cancer and felt the true meaning of pain
    when it had to be cut from her body.

     

    And there was the accident, a dark
    night on a highway that had been pelted with rain. He was too eager
    to hurry home did not see the water upon the pavement until it was
    too late. And from one moment her happy family had been ripped and
    shredded by the tree planted next to the roadway to make it more
    beautiful. She would sit crying with the body of a child in her lap
    unable to do anything to stop the pain it would feel as it died.

     

    He would simply clutch her body
    tighter, burying his face into her breasts as he recoiled from this
    knowledge. Surely to know such things would be criminal.

  • It was rare for the wind to blow from
    the north but on a certain Thursday it did and that's when the stray
    cat in the abandoned garage across the street gave birth to three
    kittens. That east wind also brought cold to that late march and the
    mother struggled to feed herself and her kittens through a cold and
    rainy April. But the weather warmed in May and the kittens began to
    sun themselves daily. 

    The orange tabby was the first one out.
    He would go on to do great things but this story isn't about him. He
    would pause every two or three steps to lick himself—even then
    being caught up in his own vanity that would be truly revealed years
    later in his tax returns.

    Then came the the dark one—a kitten
    not quite black but a dark slate gray with a whitish tip to her tail.
    She, too, would make her own rich and luxurious history and be singly
    responsible for the return of beaver pelt fashions.

    The third one did not peek out timidly
    or slowly emerge into the sunshine with caution but rather strutted.
    He stopped when he was full in the sun and stretched and extended his
    claws. The warm sun was showing him his world and it was time to make
    his entrance. It was as if he knew what was going to happen next and
    he was not just simply offering himself up to fate but actually
    looking fate in the eye and smiling.

    And so fate smiled back and brought the
    little boy who lived down street to walk by at that moment. With the
    unfamiliar sounds and shape looming into their world the orange tabby
    and dusky kitten both darted back under cover. But not the third one.
    He kept sunning himself. It was easy for the boy to spot him—his
    stark black and white patches made him extra visible against the rock
    and wood background.

    The boy stopped and called to him.
    “Here, kitty kitty.” The black cat looked over at his two
    littermates for a moment then trotted up to the little boy and
    allowed himself to be picked up and taken home.

    “Did you see that?” Said the orange
    tabby. He came when he was called.”

    “I did see such a thing,” said the
    dusky kitten, “and I feel that it has shown me a new way, a
    different way.”

    Outside the weather had turned again
    and it began to snow.

  • Frederick didn't like cats. This
    wouldn't have been a problem if cats also didn't like Frederick, but
    they did and so when he would find one they would immediately rub up
    against his leg as if he was the only person on the planet to ever
    pay attention to them. It didn't matter if he tried to ignore them,
    they would rub anyway and cover his dark clothing with a layer of cat
    hair that seemed to never go away.

    It was taken all into stride until the
    day in January when the temperature got really cold and Frederick
    slipped upon the ice. He felt himself going and was able to gently
    lay his packages down before hitting the ice coated concrete. Despite
    his best efforts he still went down hard, but initially felt that he
    was unscathed. It was a cat that let him know otherwise.

    “That was pretty funny.” He said.
    He was a large cat and his fir was a gray tiger stripe. Frederick was
    surprised that he was able to tell—no smell– that this was a male
    cat with his testicles removed. “I didn't know humans can fall.”

    “What?” Asked Frederick, still
    confused.

    “Humans seem to be so sure-footed.
    Their balance is awesome.” The cat flicked it's tail. “Like some
    kind of gymnast.”

    Frederick thought about it for a
    moment—it challenged him because he had always thought humans were
    clumsy. “But you guys make these incredible jumps onto narrow
    surfaces. They're incredible.”

    “I once was taken into a metal box
    which then appeared to accelerate. I would then put my nose next to
    the edge and there was scent of many places at once, so rapid that it
    seemed as if I was traveling through time itself. And I was because
    when I left the box I was in a place much greater the before.”

    “Greater?” Frederick asked. “You
    mean it seemed like you passed over a great distance.”

    “And water.” The cat flicked it's
    tail again. “But I remembered that I was supposed to be there, but
    had always wondered how I would spend the time getting there. I know
    how I get home but don't understand how I started so far away.”

    “What's your name?” Asked Frederick
    who felt that he needed a different kind of reference.

    “I could tell you Tom Tiger,” The
    cat replied, “But it really wouldn't make any difference. For just
    like my appearance here the labels attached are only a passing
    description. Whatever name I give you will only help you identify me
    in easy conversation. It's only your understanding that can apply
    meaning.”

    So Frederick scratched behind the cat's
    ears and thought ahead as to what he would do when he met another
    cat. He would think of each situation in which he would meet a new
    cat and hear it's story—but knowing that if he conditioned himself
    he would understand that each unique moment would, in itself,
    represent a cliche. And in taking that simple social affront would be
    actually converted into knowledge and he would totally understand why
    some cats would, for example, defecate on the bed of their affiliated
    humans because of a rapid change in the price of fossil fuels.

    After a few months it got worse—cats
    began to tell him such mundane aspects of the future like weather
    reports or the occasional newspaper horoscope. Soon the cats would
    tell him everything. It began to be too much when his girlfriend's
    cats detailed her bathroom behavior when he wasn't around in exchange
    for cleaning a litter-box.

    His girlfriend had two cats but he only
    would speak to Jake the dominant one. Early in Frederic’s
    enlightenment Jake explained how he had once hitchhiked across the
    country once in an effort to find some place in which no one else had
    ever seen before.

    It wasn't Jake that made a difference,
    though. Frederick learned that he could understand the story of every
    cat he met. He could patiently listen to an orange tabby explain how
    they fought in the war in the desert and then have a tuxedo cat
    explain how he used to tour with the Dead.

    And so Frederick was able to take a
    step back from the onslaught of truth spewed by random cats. He was
    able to filter and with the flowing clarity he saw their message
    reaching a crescendo that sounded important but was just more babble
    in the soundtrack of life.  

  • Across the street from my home is a
    house made of red brick. Behind that is a large oak tree which
    spreads it's great limbs across several yards, including the home
    just behind the red brick home. In that house lived a cat.

    He came to me one fall afternoon during
    the weekend before it really got cold and people started getting glum
    for the upcoming holidays. He was going from house to house, an
    orange tabby affair who looked like he had spent a little too much
    time with his nose in the wet food.

    He finally made it to my front door.
    “Please, sir,” he said in a fake English accent, “I'm selling
    these cookies to pay for my airfare when I join the foreign legion.”

    “You're not going to get into the
    foreign legion.” I scoffed. “No one would trust you. At the first
    available opportunity you're going to go to sleep. Terrorists at the
    embassy? Snooze time.”

    “You're quite mistaken, sir. Once
    they see how hard I worked to get there they'll let me in.” He
    looked up at me with those big cat eyes—the ones you see all over
    the place that come with pathetic little stories about how Mondays
    suck or how your check engine light is on. “Please, sir, buy my
    cookies?”

    I looked at what he had brought.
    Typical cat fare—a couple of bottle-caps, a slow moving brown bug
    of indeterminable origin and something that looked like a choice
    morsel of leftover mouse. “I don't think so.”

    “Please sir—I don't need much
    more.” He began to rub against my legs.

    “If I give you a quarter will you
    promise to never come here again?” I asked.

    “Yes, sir, I prrromise.” I dug into
    my pocket and pulled out a coin that was fully silver and had my
    birthdate. I handed it over to him.

    “Thank you, sir. You're very kind. I
    shan't be any more trouble.” In that same annoying fake English
    accent. He left his pouch of 'cookies' and dashed into the
    underbrush.

    I might have been seeing things but I
    think he was actually wearing a saber in a scabbard. I learned later
    that his name was Birdie from the missing cat sign that was posted on
    the light pole.