When Roberta moved to Webster Groves, she loaded Bart and me into her car.  I battled depression over having to move away from my beloved sons, Chicago and Quine.  Bart made matters worse by yet again telling me they were Walt’s sons.  But why would Fielding lie to me?  Who has ever heard of a woman making lying paternity claims when no money is at stake?  Bart shook her head.  Fielding told me not to worry about it.  I wish she hadn’t topped that with a paean to Walt’s beauty and virility.  To me, it undercut the sincerity of her reassurances.

Fielding and her boys stayed with mike.  They had to make more trips to Webster because mike proposed (without their consent, I might add) to shuttle them to Webster Groves on the weekends.  Chicago and Quine fought so hard against weekly trips that mike figured out fast that taking them once a week would be the end of his arms and fingers.  So, I missed my boys even more; Bart not so much.

Bart disliked Quine.  He was a nervous guy whose hyperactivity wore on Bart’s always slender reserves of tolerance.  She also disliked his pretension.  Quine insisted that, prior to Chaucer’s death, owing to his precocity, Chaucer have him dharma transmission.   According to Quine, his profound grasp of Chaucey’s teaching of universal predation underwrote his transmission to teach.  Nevertheless, when Quine preached his predation doctrines around Bart, he had to do so at a distance.  If he didn’t, he had a short wait before he got a blow on the head. 

You might be wondering what Bart and I thought of the first trip to Webster Groves.  There’s nothing to remember.   Like many cats, we adored sleeping through road trips. Trips without memory are the kitty way.   Bart, being paranoid, would wait long enough before dozing off to verify that we weren’t headed to a vet.  Although I had personal experience of modern medicine (recall my joy when I could pee again), Bart was a medical nihilist.  She viewed vets as about as trustworthy as a coyote.   She waged war on vets and their so-called science.

Once we arrived in Webster Groves, Roberta’s flat in Webster disappointed us.  It was small.  We were used to more room.  Worse still, we enviously recalled that Chaucer had a palace in Vienna, Virginia, where he had a catnip plantation in the garden.  He viewed it as his personal stash.  The existence of his Vienna estate made it all too clear to me that I was being gypped.  Chaucey got a palace.  Bart and I got a 1-room flat.   At least the flat had a balcony, albeit one that overlooked a parking lot.  What had the architect of this disaster in Webster been thinking?  Still, a man must learn to accommodate to himself to what is, not to what should be.

  I discovered too that Wolverine reached a level of happiness that no normal person could attain without drugs when I told him of the move to Webster.  “You’ve reached the antechamber of NGA,” he purred. He went on to talk about how convenient it would be.  He couldn’t wait to tell Peregrine the good news.   I admit I also felt glad that my being away from Saint Robert would get Wolverine to stop pestering me every other day to “borrow” mike’s Common Access Card or CAC.  He always promised he would return it.  I didn’t trust him with it.  Besides, mike treated his CAC as if it were part of his body.  I never did figure out what clearances mike might have.  Mike’s a secret monger.

Even though Bart and I had doubts about the flat, Roberta didn’t mind it but promised us that as she learned more about Saint Lous and its suburbs, we’d move to a house at an auspicious moment.  Bart tried to get her to promise a house without Fielding and her kids. Ominously, Roberta reused that promise.  I felt glad about that.  I love my sons.