Rapid Fire Love

I opened the refrigerator door, old plastic containers brewing mean waste, a pizza box that was weeks old, bottles of mustard, ketchup, chiu chili oil, all filled only to the base of their bottom, all awaiting that day when either Lola or I would throw them away. We were a messy couple, the dirty clothes were awaiting the same thing though dirty clothes have a limit to how long they will wait to be washed, eventually they nest pincer bugs and worms to eat them away. Amidst all of the cryogenically maintained foods from our gastronomical history on the main shelf lay a Dead Goose, a dead Goose. A Starch White Goose!

I yelled at Lola who was in the other room, wasting away in anger, we had yet brewed another argument, they were getting easier to repeat by the day, “What is this feathered Goose doing in our refrigerator?” Lola scurrile yelled back rancorously scratching her voice as she did, “I am going to cook Goose on Saturday, Victoria and Robert are coming over for dinner I don’t care if you are there!” She really did not need to add that last comment, I would be there, we had not called off our irritating relationship, we were still a couple, and she was still a terrible cook, which made me more curious about Goose and Saturday. Victoria and Robert were two of our funkiest friends, Opera buffs, connoisseurs of expensive wines, dinner at their house was always an exquisite perfection, it was dangerous to cook for them, it was dangerous to go out to dinner with them, Victoria was known to make Chefs and Waiters squirm, male emasculation was her liberal practice. Robert was a nice guy, how he ended up with such a bitch is unknown, and now as a couple they are incubators for everyone else’s bad luck.

Seeing Goose in the refrigerator made me forget my anger and instead remember why I had fallen in love with Lola, she was an enervating nerve ending at the bottom of her own sole, walking around disguised as a woman, every second dying to explode. Such reckless passion was a formidable attraction for a man, such as I that spends most of his life planning and never executing the infinite number of master plans that were always on the verge of being perfected. Lola had but only one plan, to have a nervous break down, to be dangerous, to be sick, to have a massive illness nasty down on her depressions, it was like cohabiting with The Cold War, at any second the world would explode, you were her hostage, but most wonderfully amazing it was that, while Lola was Neutron Bomb Lola, it was me that was the Atomic trigger. Lola was set to go off, yes, but it would be my fault if she went off. And I don’t need to tell you how insensitive we men are, we are very insensitive. The cold war got colder, no intimacy.

There were many times that I avoided going home just to shelter my emotions, exoskeleton building activities, my hands to my head, a Martini calling my name, an olive distastefully asking me to eat it, I was in love with Bombay Gin, I took the olive out and threw it at a man that must have thought I was crazy like Lola and not crazy because of Lola. I don’t know if you can love your captor, there had been many cases of male prisoners falling in love with their guard-women, but you don’t have to swim too far to figure out why a prisoner might find a guard attractive, love is an escape, but Lola had me hostage to her roller coaster, and then too it was all my fault. Lola was The Scream in my life, I never had to yell at anyone, Lola was able to tell everyone off in any furious direction so that we would all repel each other. Now Lola was not a phenomenally attractive woman, she was pretty in her own way but not pretty. Still I held it to be true that an applied force creates an equal and opposite force, Lola, by fatally repelling the world was causing an equally fatal attraction towards herself. I did not know why I was still with her it had to be this force thing or maybe Goose on Saturday sounded good.

I went to work, I was managing a restaurant, it was a temporary job until I perfected one of my master plans, everyone could see that I did not belong there, true they all thought that they did not belong there either, but there was something special about me, I had a master plan. Restaurant work is the best, everyone in restaurants knows they are losers, you will not catch then telling you “Yes this is what I have always wanted to be.” Bankers, brokers, doctors, lawyers they all act like they are doing what they want to be doing, but restaurant workers never. And there is something humbling about working for tips in an obvious manner, brokers work for tips too, so do politicians and salesmen, technically everyone does, but restaurant workers beg for their tips. “Can I take your order please.” Translates to, “Can I take your insults please.” Or “Let me feel you superior while you chow down our grub." I was the restaurant manager, which means that I was the most overworked and underpaid of all the employees.

But being the manager had its privileges, I could account for most of the money at the end of the day, I could fuck with peoples schedules so as to make them love me or hate me, I could give away free dinners to all of my friends, though Victoria and Robert would never be seen at my restaurant. And there were terrible sides to it too, missing cooks had to be replaced by me, I was a terrible cook, I would swash and scramble things around to make them look sophisticated and different and customers never complained about my cooking because it looked so different, that they did not know if they were suppose to like it or not. The worst thing about restaurant work is cleaning restrooms and doing the freezer inventory. If there is any evidence of how backward our civilization is, it is in the fact that we have to clean restrooms, humans originally roamed in the wild and did their shit wherever they might happen to be, so it is difficult for these roaming assholes to get their shit and urine right into toilets and urinals, they miss all the time; it is amazing how inaccurate they can be even as they try; and then there are those that do not want to get it right, instead they want to send a DNA message through every other asshole that sits on that particular toilet. One day you walk into the restroom and before you is a sculpture that someone has managed to erupt, magnificent in its repugnance, and you have to clean it up, and you have to clean it up, that is the horror! And then there is freezer inventory. You have to go inside of this huge freezer, which has an axe inside, just in case you get locked in, not very encouraging, and then you have to count all the roast beef, all the pork, all the ham, all the sausages, all the prime rib, and you know when meat is frozen like that it looks scary, blotchy red and fat and purple cold and it hurts you so much to touch it that you want to take an axe to it, only it is so damn solid it is only going to hurt you more, so you don’t, and you can see your frustrated breath, belching out of you to keep you warm but it is really making you much colder, and then there are the sauces and salads and dairy products, and by the time you finish your freezer and cooler inventory the last thing you want to do is be around food and well, there you are.

On this day however there was no freezer inventory, no big bosses coming around to prove their existence, no ordering to be done, and it was a slow traffic day, few customers all very nice and quiet. I sat at the bar, our most profitable center and chatted with Geoff our most intellectual bartender. Geoff was not just an intellectual he was also a superb athletic masterpiece. He participated in He Man events like triathlons, bike races, that sort of thing. One day while lighting the restaurant’s glass fireplace, an action that required one to lean forward, bend the knees, and twist one’s torso while searching upwards with one’s head, Geoff almost fell into the blaze that he had started, fortunately he managed to recover himself instead turning into a back injury. But it was not all just back pain, there was pride to be had from the incident, Geoff, explaining to me the complexities of a highly tuned muscular body, paraphrasing words spoken by his doctor. An average torso under the same situation would have collapsed and suffered little injury, but because Geoff’s torso was a highly tune muscular action machine, his muscles, sensing perilous disaster, exerted reflexive reactions to recover him, which they did nicely, only that caused a differential straining disengagement from the left side of his lower back to the right side, which tore some ligaments. In other words his body was too sophisticated, geared to respond to severe situations, such as daunting mountain climbing, it overreacted and ripped itself apart in the recovery process. The distance one places between averageness and one’s self is not without its dangers. Or how about the time when someone was stealing money from our cash register and Geoff argued that the management could be sued for making it too easy to access the cash register. Yes, Geoff believed that to cause temptation was a crime. That is how we chatted away the infamies and consulted each other on how to best handle this or that piece of gossip, person or situation. Geoff’s final advice was always good and equally predictable, He would lean into me whispering, “Well if he bugs you so much I tell you what we can do, tonight you and I follow him home and kill him.” While I never took him up on the offer the truth was that there had been many managers and many servers that had come and gone, but Geoff had been here for eons.

So while drinking my Martini along comes these two women, both a bit average in their own very different way, and we sort of make conversation with them and for some strange reason I find myself unusually attracted to the uglier one of the two. Maybe I wasn’t feeling lucky, maybe I just want it a sure shot, maybe we were soul mates, I doubt all of those reasons, all I know is that for some strange reason I really liked her, her name was Carrie.

Carrie and I walked outside, a stroll through a dark night, lots of tourists everywhere, but we went to a balcony that was unseen by most, and talked about petty things, Carrie had a child but she was not dating anyone, and to be truthful I don’t know if I was dating Lola, we were abstinent lovers, twirling knifes at each other and not as members of a circus, one of us ought end dead; I did not molest myself with explaining my relationship with Lola to Carrie, she did not ask about it, it wasn’t like Carrie and I were really sexually attracted towards each other, I sensed that we were just feeling like the emptiness was ours to share, so Carrie and I ended up kissing each other but only once. Again it wasn’t like we were dying to do that, it just happened that way and it tasted like a perfect pot sticker. Then we parted company. We did not even exchange phone numbers but we both wanted to get together again, neither of us knew how.

I get back home late, past midnight, and Lola is, naked, sitting on the bed crying, she has been nurturing into existence many tears, she was a marathon weeping body, a bath of tears was not unusual, I was into spiritual crying myself, occasionally once every six months I would just cry for no reason at all, hey that is good for you, you don’t have to know why, I don’t have to know why. I asked her if she was OK, holding back possible guilt while wondering if someone had seen me with Carrie and called her. “Lola, what’s wrong honey?” She began to cry more ambitiously, and holding her hands to her face spoke: “I can’t cook the Goose…” her breaking voice, “…I can’t cook the Goose.” I said is there something wrong with the Goose?” but she was to busy crying to tell me so I went to the refrigerator opened the door, the light from within flooded the darkness outside, and I looked at Goose and while he was dead, he looked ok to me. I went back into the bedroom thinking maybe Lola was put off because of her very unrealistic cooking talents, or maybe Victoria had wanted to avoid the entire evening and had called to cancel as was her usual manner. “Honey what is wrong?” She got a little quiet, intermittently sobbing, and responded “I can’t cook Goose he’s an Aries.” My eyes dashed to the ceiling to see what I was missing, oh dear me and she repeated herself “Our Goose is an Aries I can’t cook a Goose that is the same sign as you are.” Well there you go, she did love me, the damn Goose was an Aries, I was an Aries… “But honey that does not matter…” She interrupts me… “You’re so insensitive sure it matters, I don’t want to eat a dead Goose that is the same sign as you are that is like killing and eating you… but I bet that if the Goose was a Libra like me that you wouldn’t care and you would eat it anyway…” “But Lola honey please, how do you know it is an Aries maybe it is something else?” “No, no, I know, I called the Goose Man who sold it to me he knows a lot about Astrology and we counted back to Goose’s hatching days and he is definitely an Aries.” So come to find out that this guy is so fanatic about horoscopes that he has a preference for Geese that are born Taurus and Aries and Leo’s and the one he sold us is an Aries and he won’t take it back, he can’t exchange meat, so we can’t get a Goose that is at least a Leo which neither of us are.

At some point in the night, not as concerned with Goose as Lola was, I was able to sleep while she stayed awake staring at my abominable insensitivity. The next morning Lola went to work and I took Goose out of the refrigerator just so that I could look at a fellow Aries that was now dead. He was a good looking Goose, oh you just have to imagine how many places he visited, how many fishes he ate, how many little Gooses were running around with his DNA, but then all imagination fades when you find out he was raised in captivity. Hard to keep us Rams in captivity sooner better dead. I talked to Goose thinking maybe we could change his sign somehow, I even called the Goose Man to see if he would cooperate but he was too ethical to try to deceive Lola and recalculate the birth date of my fellow Goose.

I went to work counting that we ought cancel Saturday’s dinner, counting that maybe we ought substitute Goose for Chicken Salad or Pasta Primavera, and I drank away wishing that Carrie the woman that I kissed once, would show up and drive away with me. This was Wednesday. The same thing happened on Thursday and Friday and Goose was still dead in our refrigerator, and Carrie had not been seen.

Saturday morning, Lola was sleeping late I went for coffee and to read the headlines, revolutions and murders were priming themselves everywhere, I tossed the paper aside and just tasted my coffee, don’t ask me why but coffee started to taste like a kiss, and I begun to suck kiss my coffee and the heat was moisturizing my lips, and it just felt better than that pot sticker kiss from Carrie but remembering Carrie I just wanted to kiss her again, maybe to accentuate the difference between coffee and pot sticker kisses. While trying to perform that imaginative trick, kissing away every sip of my tongue licking coffee so as to ascertaining why pot stickers could taste like a kiss and a kiss like a pot sticker, mushy, semi indifferent, you are going to eat me, you are going to kiss me, I don’t really mind if you want to kiss me, I sort of want you to kiss me too, and I shall well follow the perfunctory actions that are required here, move my lips, my tongue, attempt to feel sensual about the moment when in reality, I just really like you and don’t really need to kiss you. Am there thinking all this out, still preferring a kiss from my coffee when a voice at another table interrupts me. “Hey, hey aren’t you the guy that was with Carrie the other night?” I turn and act as surprised as I was, which was a lot, “Yeah, how are you?” And without responding she rushes to my table, grabs herself a seat and wobbled on it as if she could not sit still, “Did you hear what happened to Carrie? did you hear?” I frowned creating a labyrinth of doubtful looks, “No, what is it, is she ok?” “Well after she left you that night she was driving, a bit drunk as you know, going home and lost control of the car, off into a ravine, they did not spot the car till morning; she bled to death.” She follows that with, “I am sorry, I have to get going now, bye.” I went home, despondently wishing the whole earth to end my kiss of death.

When I got home, Goose was already in the oven, baking at 380 degrees, its hotter in the center of the Sun, colder in the North Pole, Lola came to welcome me at the door, looked like she had been cleaning for Queen Victoria’s arrival, I hugged her, she embraced me, gave me a big smile, “its going to be a great dinner you will see.” I kissed her and went into the room to shower and change. Aries Goose was smelling up the place. Lola was playing some lively tunes, and had drawn aside all the curtains so Sun could shine on our happiness. Coming out of the shower Lola greeted me with a towel in hand, helped me to dry my back, and said “You know I think with the leftovers from Goose I am going to be able to make you a wonderful Goose soup too.” I thought at that point of asking how she had resolved baking my fellow Aries but I did not want to deal with the possible outbreak, I anointed the soup idea.

Both Victoria and Robert were their usually properly boring selves, we discussed all the latest movies, Victoria listing in detail which directors had done what and noting their individual styles and backgrounds, she was the equivalent of a Baseball fan. Oh but she hated sports, they were so stupid; baseball card collectors were not as sophisticated as movie buffs. Robert had a butterfly collection, he talked about that, there is a name for butterfly collectors, I don’t remember it, same as stamp collectors. I had always been fascinated by butterflies that did not have to eat their entire life, to fly and then to die, no Goose meals in-between. Robert did not seem to know which particular butterfly I was talking about, maybe it didn’t exist, we talked instead how lots of these butterflies only live a few days, hours, whatever. How long do you really need to live to watch the same old Sun and the same old Moon avoid each other? I do admit to being enamored with Monarch butterflies that fly from Mexico to California, welcome migrants that flourish the tourist trade, there is even a Monarch butterfly parade. Interrupt, Lola got a little upset when I told her that I could not eat any Goose, my stomach was upset, I wasn’t lying.

Both Robert and Victoria praised the Goose, praised the soup idea, praised Lola; she was ecstatic with joy, and once gone, Lola plummeted into the couch into a ravine sleep. I called Peter our Chef, it was 11pm, “What are you doing calling me at this hour?” “I was just wondering what you would think if we added pot stickers to the menu?” “Pot stickers to the menu? what are you crazy there is nothing in our cuisine that compliments pot stickers, we are not Chinese you idiot, we are a blackened, or mostly not, steak and potato house, all of our customers are over the age of fifty, they don’t like pot stickers, they don’t eat pot stickers, they don’t even know what pot stickers are.” Peter didn’t like me, he earned a higher salary than I did, he was the Chef. All chefs think of themselves as kings, and they are really miniature kings, rulers of Serfdom Land, every restaurant their castle. Peter the cook ordered me around; he had created an award winning potato dish with a special sauce, someday in the future people would be eating his stupid potato dish out of an instant carton meal box, today he was the only one that knew how to prepare it; it tasted like hollandaise sauce to me, but I don’t know about those things.

Having used up all of my influence with Peter I went to the library and searched pot sticker recipes, a pot sticker is not that complicated of a thing, you wouldn’t imagine it but there are more recipes for these things than there are for hamburgers. I wanted to perfect pot sticker making but I wasn’t a great cook. I decided to wander the Chinese joints in search of pot stickers. One week later my boss asked me into his office, bottles of expensive wine everywhere, he fancied himself Bacchus, he was appropriately fat and more a roaring pig than Bacchus may have been. My boss questions me “Peter tells me that you want to add pot stickers to the menu is that true?” I peevishly respond “Yes…but..” Boss interference “…and what is this that you have been leaving early to go into china town? What business do we have in china town? Is your heart in your job? Are things alright at home?” I was forced to resign, that bastard Peter, he never liked me, and the wait staff did not like me either, mostly because I did not do anything, nor did I tell them what to do, which people really need, they had complained, to human resources, that I provided no direction; I don’t know how much direction a restaurant requires, specially a steak house, not much you can do with that.

Lola could not believe that I had resigned, I told her that I was working on my master plan, whatever that was, instead I spent my days hunting down the perfect pot sticker. A couple of people directed me to places that they were certain had the perfect pot sticker, but neither place tasted like that kiss of death. Reaching nothing but dead end after dead end, I felt that I was cornered into learning how to make the perfect pot sticker myself. Much to Lola’s consternation I got a job at a Chinese restaurant. There I would spy the methods of the masters, I was the only one that was not Chinese, I was the only one that spoke English, I never tried to correct the spellings on the menu, I always used numbers when ordering and I bowed my head a lot, those simple acts won me their acceptance.

I did the soups, not much to do there, you just add noodles, cabbage, peapods, ginger, celery, onions, etc… …add this add that, boil, add salt, add pepper, boil, and reboil and you never stop boiling, it is steam room ten hour facial; one after the other cauldron after cauldron, doing my time so that I could get to the perfect pot sticker, one amongst these people must have admission to the divine pot sticker kiss.

A very old woman, called by some Tzu Hsi a name that meant nothing to me, was, to me, the nicest of the group, all the rest really did not want me there, stood by me with mindful assistance; offering extra spices and extra herbs, occasionally gently urging me with grouchy menace, she would not say anything, she just gave me this very quiet push, her teeth all gone her lips curling inwardly could not much manifest more than that. I was happy that she sort of took me under her crabby care, and I expressed it by occasionally caressing her shoulder all so marvelously without words or meanings.

One day I was moved to the crab boiling pot, I had boiled all the herbs, vegetables and roots that the land and sea had produced, even done in a lot of shrimp. All boiled in my endless boiling pots. Shrimp are ugly, very ugly, I used to eat them all the time sautéed in garlic buttered cilantro, but once you see them alive and walking, forget it, you become aware of their inedibleness; Geoff used to call them “The cockroaches of the sea.” But my experience qualified me for the higher crustaceans species, Crabs. Those creatures that have one tentacle claw longer than the other, lack of symmetry problems, a formidable right tendency; I don’t know much about crabs, I did not eat crab meat, too much work, and while the whole world seems enamoured with crab cakes every recipe I ever saw for those things, and crab salads too, used imitation crab. In Spain, home of my most favorite dish, Paella, they serve it with a Crab that serves as garnish. The Crab sits with you throughout your dinner, sitting there on your plate, that is wrong, that is why we South Americans had to break with Spain. Anyway them crabs are just too much work. Boiling them was now my new job. I left the toothless Chinese lady all by herself boiling noodles away.

A very diligent, skinny and energetic fellow took over my charge. He said his name was Fong, I don’t know if that was his first name or his last name, or where in China he was from, he never tried to laugh with me, he never sparked an emotional connection to my being, I was just someone there to help him with the Crabs so he could smoke more cigarettes. My first lesson was tying the Crab’s very menacing Claw. You get these Crabs, they don’t look deadly, but Fong explains with gestures, sort of saying, “very, very dangerous these claws, you be very but very careful with Crab you hear; …grab here, like this, and then clamp claw shut, like this, and then toss the Crab back on top of all the others, so they can be uncomfortable and fully miserable right up until we boil them, ok, ok.” Life is hard even for crabs. It was for me difficult to make sense out of gestures, specially for a fellow as verbal as myself, but I managed, if only through intuition to get the idea, clamp the claw, let the thing live as long as possible before eating, then boil it alive just like a vegetable.

I had heard that Lobsters make a shrieking sound when they are discharged into boiling water, butter, lots of butter eliminates shrieking echoes; but I wasn’t expecting the same from exoskeleton armored Crabs, but I tell you true that those Crabs, all of the one’s I tossed into the boiling pots, substantiated a hideous piercing shrieking that brought many an army of Crab nightmares to my dreams. You can’t kill them fast enough but you just have to keep on killing them as fast as you can, but you really can’t expect beady eyed crabs to love you, and you can’t expect to out survive them. I don’t care where you are, who you are, or what you are, the concrete is that there are more Crabs than there are people like you, you and I will die before we boil all the Crabs. It was with this weary knowledge that I followed safety standards and made sure to keep the Crabs at a fair distance while clamping their menacing claw. They would stand on the wet ground, I would bend over and while they were looking intently into my eyes I would grab them from behind and snap the clamp on. Its not like those things can fly, still there were stories of clampers that had fallen victim to the Crabbing menaces before reaching their retirement plan. Jostling his finger at me Fong, threading similarly black beady eyes himself, would motion, “You just better be careful, they are swift and shifty creatures of the sea.” I had never seen any Crabs running, maybe on the bottom of the sea they could clock a decent kilometer, but here on concrete that exoskeleton could not possibly help them any; I smirked a little at Fong, but he did not move his beady eyes.

Lola was on the verge of leaving me, she wanted me to get a real job, she did not believe Crab Executioner Maximums, at minimum wage per hour, had much of a future, so she wasted much effort on trying to get me to quit but I was after a recipe here, so I stuck it out and Lola was boiling to get out of our relationship. Well one day, I managed to sit during a break next to my dear old Chinese lady, and so I ventured to ask her if she knew a really good recipe for pot stickers. Oh her eyes lit up like a diamond dragon, pot stickers! She knew pot stickers! She was just doing time in this joint because at her age she could not get a job anywhere else, but it was obvious that her vegetable boiling was only a side job, her true and secret talents were her magical pot stickers. I asked her for the recipe but her revolt was absolute, more or less gesturing, “oh no mister, no mister, won’t give my recipe to no one, go to my grave with it, this world isn’t good enough for my pot stickers.” Wow, I had stumbled upon the divine pot sticker Chef and she was not willing to share her secrets because she thought this world not good enough, and where else might they make pot stickers? Still I understood her, there are things one ought never give away, so I nurtured our relationship very carefully easing here the idea that I needed to have just one of these pot stickers. And then one day, she, so again gesturing, “ok, ok I make for you, but you no tell nobody, you no try to make, you just taste, taste one, one only.” Her cursive finger raised “one, only one.” One kiss. I fervently agreed.

Not three days later, she came to me while I was clamping crabs, not three days later, she halted me and handed me a foil paper wrap holding no more than just one, one, singular pot sticker. Then she went away, ushering her hands and making frowning faces in such away as if saying “now go away, leave me alone, leave me alone!” I held the moist and tender beauty in my hands, forgetting the unclamped crabs on the wet concrete floor, I stepped aside and took the daring bite, oh what a gentle kiss my lips did felt dash deeply through them, a moist tender moment, I don’t know the taste, I don’t know what condiments adorned this succulent delight, what ingredients composed such an edifice of joy, I just wished to slosh pot sticker flesh in my mouth, and not to let it wander down my deep esophagus ravine; ecstasy! Look me, to sky above and heaven I could touch, and then, all the foil paper in my hand but only empty.

Fong, seeing me not cooking gestured me to get back to my work, I nodded my head many times, “yes, yes, yes,” back to work it was; there laid a big crab below me, I, quite dazed, went carelessly to lift Crab from the wet concrete cement but beady-eye Crab swiftly reached for my neck before I could grab and clamp his enduring claw, Crab’s claw rapaciously around my Adams-apple, smack front of my neck, clamping hard down on my neck, seeking to extract divine pot sticker, while I fought and struggled to jerk Crab off of me, but it was not to be, asphyxiated, dangling from this Crab, I crashed into the wettest ground.



If everything is attacking you, you are in enemy territory.

ricardo

we have four cats

We have four cats

We have a cat, his name is Loki Cat, we have four cats and Loki is one of those cats, of all my cats Loki is the most cat like, he consumes all of his life manifestations in this manner of representation and one would not think him a very sensitive fellow, certainly the other cats know that Loki is going to do things his way and everyone else better watch out.

Our other male cat is Pacho, Pacho is the backdrop by which Loki demonstrates his maleness, Pacho is aware that his role in our household is to be fragile so that Loki can be strong, Loki attacks Pacho, Pacho never attacks Loki Cat, he is our timid cat and as such the one that we have to spend the most time protecting from Loki claws.

There are two female cats, Sarah and Lolita, Sarah is the matriarch of the family and as such the greater of all characters and she is very tender and loving while maintaining a strong sense of dignity. When I found her at the pet shop it was because she was screaming: “take me out of this cage, you have to rescue me from this hell hole, there is brutality in this world take me away from here!”

Sarah was older than I had wanted, I didn’t know anything about cat ages then so I didn’t realize it but she must have been six months old, which I think in cat years is more; anyways the thing was that something inside of Sarah told her, “there is your owner, that is the guy, scream now, scream louder, louder or he is going to escape…” and she was meowing: “these peoples are brutes, this cage is feces wridden, the food sucks here, I don’t like all these animals, get me out of here.” Of course all I could hear was “meow, MEOW, MEOW!”

One day my wife Domaine said to me, “I want a cat, I WANT A CAT, I WANT A CAT!” and I said, “I don’t like cats, I like dogs.” Cats seemed sissy like, they appear the dandies of the animal kingdom, or at least to me they appeared cold and arrogant, I once heard them described in a comic strip as “the perfect Human Resources director is a cat because they give the impression that they like people when they really don’t.” that made sense to me. One day Domaine came home with Loki, I didn’t pay attention to him for the next year, it was something that was growing and eating in my house, lots of spiders and insects and fungi did that too, so I just ignored him.

But one day I thought to myself I don’t want to have to take care of this cat thing so I must get him a companion, all things in life come in pairs, if I don’t get him another cat this guy is going to demand more attention from me and that isn’t going to happen. So I went to the pet store convinced that I would get another boy cat so as to eliminate the possibility of more cats being born; only Sarah started to scream “you will take me with you,” i.e. “MEOW” and I lost control and rescued her from the hell that is a pet store. On the way home the taxi driver asked me if she was female or male, I fumbled around trying to find her balls and she didn’t have any.

One day Domaine was working on her notebook laying on the couch with Sarah on her legs when she started to feel something else moving down there and as she motioned to look over her notebook screen there was a little mothball of hair, orange and black hues leather with eyes, and thus was born Lolita. Her mother never uttered a cry of pain a lesson and fine example of probity to all would be mothers.

We appropriately named Loki the mischievous cat of Nordic mythology, and Sarah one day just called herself Sarah and we sort of accepted it. Pacho came into the house after Domaine too found him somewhere saying “take me home” and she just could not resists, I hope those are not the same parameters by which Domaine decided to marry me. We didn’t name Lolita right away, we didn’t know what to call her, I think it was because her mother rejected her at first. Sarah was kind of not there next to her little baby girl, she kept a distance and we panicked and called the veterinarian; a very nice man that has been around cats and dogs and snakes long enough not to panic, and he said: “Sarah doesn’t yet connect the fact that she is a mother, she doesn’t know what that thing is and is still trying to identify with it. In time she will come to realize that it is her baby.” And doc was right, in a matter of a week or two Sarah accepted her lot in life and she never left the side of her baby unless it was to eat so as to replenish. She was such a good mother that one day we thought they would like an electric blanket and placed it underneath, and Sarah feeling the heat thought it was a fire and grabbed her little kitty by the neck and took off for safer ground.

It was at about this point, the entrance of Lolita into the world, that Loki Cat and Pacho started their territorial war, it seemed that they both wanted to secure sexual pleasures from both the daughter and the mother, and thus begun the hellish territorial war that has divided our household hitherto. More interesting is the fact that Loki doesn’t know that even though he is Sarah’s husband it was indeed Pacho, the passive fear stricken cat, that fathered the girl. We know this because Loki had been neutered and we were just about to neuter Pacho too when suddenly we were a day or two too late. And this is how the aggressor cat thinks that he is passing on his DNA while in reality the meek one has inherited the earth, his wife and daughter.

As I was saying we waited and waited to name Lolita waiting for her to tell us too what to call her, as she dallied around the house it became evident that Lolita didn’t care about anyone but herself, she was all, “don’t touch me, don’t love me, I don’t need you to love me, what is there to eat in this house? I am comfortable for now but stay put in case I need something.” And the whole time there was absolutely an attitude of “I don’t know if I like it here yet, I might leave at any time, I will develop an illness if I have to die to leave this rat hole;" or "...am just getting used to this place, don’t get used to me.” Appearance wise she was a Lolita cute in every way, appearing harmless but her attitude was all Lola, she was out to have fun on her own terms, one day sitting at the table, I said, “her name is Lolita” and sure it was.


RC