posted by WDavid at 8/11/2006 10:17:00 AM
Excalibur
By W. David MacKenzie
The doorbell rings and the delivery driver looks me up and down as I take the box he’s holding out, then shakes his head, and strides back to his truck to continue his rounds. I look down at myself and the mat of cat fur stuck to my shirt. I have three cats and they work in concert to make sure I’m covered in cat fur at all times.
As I recline on the sofa, watching TV, Montega feels it is her duty to sit on my sternum and curl up into a fluffy ball and tickle my nose with the hair on her back. If I’m surfing the web at my desk then she jumps up, sits on my keyboard, and rubs her head against my shirt. In each case, she works hard to see that my chest is covered in short white hairs. I lift her up and drop her to the floor, but like a superball made of space-aged plastic, she just bounces back again and again until her job is done.
I’ll be sitting in my chair with the DVD remote in one hand when Mavado decided he wants to be my best buddy. He jumps into my lap and sits on my abdomen, sphinx-like, his bent arms stretching up my chest; his green eyes staring at me until I scratch behind his ears. He’ll close his eyes and enjoy the gentle attention, but as soon as I stop to press a button on the remote his eyes spring open and the staring resumes. If I do this too many times he’ll get annoyed and leave, but his shadowy residue of long black hairs remains on my belly as his calling card.
Tag Heuer, the old, fat, gray cat, has a more aloof approach to my furificaton. His jumping days are long passed, so he’ll climb laboriously up onto the back of the sofa, getting his considerable mass up to the highest possible vantage point. Once atop this plush perch, he’ll stretch his bulk across two full cushion tops and launch his daily salvo. He licks and bites at his course steely hair until tufts of gray fluff, like dandelion seeds, float away to drift on the eddies and breezes of central heating. Like submarine mines bobbing in the Sea of Japan, these fur bombs wait for my passing. Static electric attraction sets them on course when I come into range and they latch on just where I won’t see them but everyone else will.
I take the package to the table, rip off the tape, and open the flaps. My heart soars as I see the twenty-four items inside. Grasping one blue handle firmly, I lift it up like Excalibur. To my eyes it glows with a magical radiance. I tear off the protective cover and roll its sticky surface over my cat-furred shirt. It leaves a path of fur-free cloth in its wake. I have three cats, but now I’m ready for them!
The End
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WDavid,
Fred MacKenzie,
Friday, August 11, 2006
Excalibur (499 words)
2 Comments:
This essay about my cats has been floating around in my head for almost a week. This morning I wrote it down. Please feel free to comment or critque as you like. This might be something I could get published in pet magazine or maybe a humor magazine. Maybe you have some ideas on where I might try.
By
WDavid, at 8/11/2006 10:21:00 AM
It's very funny.
By
Fred MacKenzie, at 8/13/2006 09:28:00 AM
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