By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Nine Lives
The concurrence of cats voted mayors in more and more communities and Larry marking 15 years as Britain’s First Feline and Chief Mouser reeks of conspiracy.
Nowhere is the West’s decline more clear than when pussy posses pounce and our personal freedoms die.
I quake watching Poe, my three-legged cat, perched atop my office computer peering through the window for any living motion — bird, squirrel, human … all prey — on Carrier Street, his domain. Only glass detains him from slashing forth with razor eyes, laser teeth.
I study him studying me but he learns much more. Poe possesses perspective to see through people’s faux pas, with paws seizing reins from and ceasing reigns of lesser species. Puss-ilaminous? You bet.
I abet his appetite with Meow Mix, Fancy Feast — Kibbles and Bits from the dog bin in a pinch — twice daily. So his girth grows and litter boxes fill. The fix is in for this feline felon who follows a crypto code of love and hisses to distract me from robo-calls like:
“Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Delbert Grady for Cat Extinction Services. Your profile shows you have issues …”
“One each week. Then, when I bring home print copies, my cat shreds them. Mundane Mondays turn into Tortured Tuesdays into Fractured Fridays, weekends fall and and don’t rise again …”
“Perhaps, if you forgive me Mr. Sullivan, your cat needs … correcting.”
Calls like that I miss while Poe overlooks the Grand Rapids Creston business strip a half-block downhill and plots demise of:
• The Choo Choo Grille, classic diner that occupies an ex-train depot, its bricks painted bright red, dishing up ham, eggs, pancakes and gossip for capacity crowds of three;
• The NoxxMichigan pot shop with bright-packaged products displayed geometrically lining walls and in plexiglass cases, and
• The Rezervoir Lounge, another neighborhood bar where friends drain drinks, watch games on big-screen TVs and nosh on Cajun munchies …
All any predator prince might plunder in purr-suit of inscrutable yet indubitable ends.
Michiganders recall too well when Jinx reigned as Mayor of Hell. The black cat’s one-day term purr- portedly won her millions of TikTok and Instagram followers, but did not live up to campaign promises to fill bars with ranch dressing exclusively, ban eggs and raise taxes 200 percent (all proceeds going straight to her).
“She did not tell me what she would do with the money,” Mia, one of peeps Jinx owns, told media, “but I think it’s not good. We can only hope.”
Fat chance. Hope dies as Poe’s circumference grows to encompass galaxies, universes, all time itself, assuming time has a self. Days become drabber and drabber for me. My Myers-Briggs 4-letter Personality Type last I checked was DEAD.
Larry the cat has outlasted six Prime Ministers who served under him. “Larry’s approval ratings will be very high,” says Cambridge University B.A. Ph.D. Professor of Historic Geography and Fellow of Emmanual College Philip Howell See what education can do for and to you? “He represents stability, and that’s at a premium.”
Larry’s other duties, purr his U.K. government pwebsote rofile, include “greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defenses and testing antique furniture for napping quality.”
Meanwhile Tripod Poe is Ahab-lie in his fixation on besting Cheese Fry, the four-legged orange kitten who, with tail twitching, circles and stalks Poe, then pounces from his missing side.
His undimmed ego compels him to groom incessantly lest some queen of spayeds or jolly molly saunter by. This Cats-anova resembles Narcissus too in his mirror gazing, seeing all but his missing leg in time.
I see a bad mood rising, Poe sipping iced tea on the veranda of his Great Gatsby manse and drinking in the yachts gliding on the sound.
As the moon rises higher, inessential houses melt away until gradually Poe grows aware of the old island that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes; a fresh, green breast of the new world, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to plunder.
Poe believes in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before him. It eluded him then, but no matter — tomorrow he will run faster, stretch out his three limbs farther. And one fine morning …
So he beats on against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
