Kitty Tales

My cat is strange. Probably not the strangest cat ever, but weird enough for me to have the occasional story about her bizarre behavior.

This morning was fairly typical. Alarm goes off, I haul my sorry ass out of bed, feed the cats, and proceed to the bathroom. My girl cat, Pudgy, was sitting outside of my bedroom door as I left the bathroom. I keep the door to the bedroom closed at all times because I have an antique dresser that I don't want clawed up. Pudge looked up at me beseechingly, her cat eyes huge in the early morning dimness. Miaow? Rowr? Hmm, it's really difficult to spell cat noises. She's talking to me and pawing rather frantically at my bedroom door. I decided to do a little experiment. I was going to stand there, staring down at her, and see how long she would continue to beg to go in the bedroom.

Well, I gotta give the fat furball some credit; she kept it up. She looked sort of pitiful - her tiny head and fat body and stubby little tail. After a few minutes I relented and opened the bedroom door. Pudge immediately darted inside and began to rub her little face on my laundry basket. I don't know if she felt that my clothes weren't permeated with enough "Essence of Pudge" or if she simply enjoys the feel of the rope handles against her whiskers.

After marking my laundry, she crept over to the closet and sniffed at the door. She has a bit of a fascination with closets but since she has a nasty habit of clawing at the things she finds in them, I tend to discourage her from exploring them.

As I wrote that last sentence, an idea popped up. We have all observed cats staring into space and attacking nothing that humans can see. Maybe when Pudge is clawing things up in the closet, she's saving me from monsters that are only visible to felines. Perhaps I owe my continued existence to my brave little kitty.

At this point, I'm dressed and ready to leave the bedroom. I'm hoping that I'm not going to have to tackle her and throw her out of the bedroom. I had to do that to my boy cat, Penguin, once and I managed to give myself a decent case of turf toe in the process. Not fun. Surprisingly enough, when I opened the door, Pudge strolled out, cool as can be.

I have decided that Pudge is making periodic inspections to assure herself that everything is up to her feline standards. Laundry basket? Check. Monster-free closet? Check. Clean sheets? Check. Okie-doke, my work here is done. However, this does not explain why she finds it necessary to hide in the cabinet with my pots and pans. Maybe she loves the feel of Teflon against her fur.

Food for Thought

My dad sent me this article at salon.com this morning. Aside for making me seriously hungry, it got me thinking about how something as simple and delicious as bacon is subjected to over-analysis. Bacon is, as I've heard many people put it, god's perfect food. I could eat bacon daily and it would take a long time before I tire of it.

I don't have much else to say about bacon. It's delicious. Eat some.

Wanted? Maybe, maybe not.

"Kill one, and maybe save 1000. That's what we believe, and that's why we do it."

If you don't live under a rock, or have a severe allergy to all forms of media, you probably recognize that line. Only, they don't say "maybe" in the previews - probably because when you add the "maybe" there is more moral gray area. It's from the movie Wanted, and it's the guiding principle of the Fraternity of Assassins. I saw the movie last night and it got me thinking about some things. Oh, and this isn't a review, but there may be spoilers. You've been warned.

Very short synopsis ahead. Wesley is a loser - an anxiety-ridden, cuckolded account manager at some nameless corporation. One night at the store, he encounters Fox (Angelina, looking luscious yet somewhat expressionless), and mayhem ensues. Skipping right along, Wesley learns he has these gifts that, if trained, can make him a very effective assassin. Training montage, small bits of plot, lovingly filmed violence, bendy bullet trajectories, fin.

What got me thinking was this: This poor, sad sack was aching for a new, more meaningful existence. It didn't matter that said existence could only be achieved through many training montages and intricately carved bullets. I'll admit that I've had the odd fantasy or two about being pushed out of my life into another. This other life may be scary and throw me for a loop, but I'd rally and embrace my shiny new meaning. Then I think about what I'd have to leave behind and I wonder if being swept away is really what I want.

See, in these fantasies, I'm either an entirely different person or only one aspect of my life changes. This allows me to indulge in the idea of being some sort of world-saver superhero type without leaving my friends and family behind. While I am an independent creature, I do enjoy the occasional bout of human interaction. I find I have the same kind of problem when I'm fantasizing about, well, sex. I've been known to be attracted to the odd celebrity/personality/musician now and again. Once I discover that said celeb isn't available, I stop thinking about anything. For some reason, I can't simply erase my competition. I have to come up with some bizarre and convoluted reason why the fantasy object is single. If kids are involved, well you can just forget it then.

At the end of the movie, Wesley asks us, "What the fuck have you done with your life?" I think I can say, with all honesty, I'm OK with not having killed people, or fallen into a gorge, or made out with Angelina Jolie. OK, that last part is probably a bit of a lie. Who doesn't want to make out with Angelina? Also, I would love to be able to curve the path of my bullet, but I don't want to get banned from my shooting range attempting it.