My letting Fielding and Bart bar me from seeing my own sons, from having access to my own beloved room did not sit well with old-school Toms in the ‘hood when the word got out. I suspected Bart was the fink. Even though many of these same Toms shrank in the presence of Bart or Fielding, they sneered at me for my strategy of Metta. Everybody knew I was a Love Machine, not a fighter. Why the blame? Instead of tolerance, the local Toms told jokes comparing me to Varys that sneaky eunuch in Game of Thrones. On the upside, I was an indoor cat with bodyguards. Let these cruel Toms tell their jokes. I was untouchable, save by Bart or Fielding.
And you must also remember the time. Science had not discovered the secret of jump-starting a chap’s masculinity. Fresh discoveries are a hope to many guys. Within the last month, I was watching Tucker Snarlson. (aka Carlson). He noticed all the trouble in the world because of low-T men. If only guys would start tanning their scrotums with Red Light, they could become manly men with irresistible (to het women & gay men) bronzed scrota with puffy, baked. juicy rejuvenated testicles within them. It was a red-light miracle that, unlike traditional red-light treatments, carried no risk of VD. The treatment obviously worked. Just look at Snarlson. Back when Bart and Fielding bullied me, Snarlson would up on TV shows wearing fruity bow ties. Red light cured him. He had moved to masculine ties and ceased to have any embarrassment about being racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, or demophobic. You can almost picture him in his bedroom, his bronzed scrota dazzling after a red-light session, as he prepared to have at it with his wife or a smaller catamite if his wife was unavailable. What an inspiring picture in my mind’s eye!
Then it occurred to me. Guys like Varys and me, or Jake in Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, had no hope of benefiting from any form of Red Light Therapy. Fate had left us with empty sacks for scrota. Without bakeable testicles, the treatment would fail. We would stay as wimpy as ever, no matter how much red light we got. We’d keep wanting a collection of bow ties. We would have to develop our inner woman. We would need to rely not on testosterone but on an adaptation to our fate. Castrati must evolve crafty, female-like brains to make it in. the world. If you can’t (literally) beat them. Join them. Snarlson’s advice was a dead end.
And so, by dumb luck, and without the aid of science, I turned out to have hit upon the right method to advance myself: Acceptance. Let malicious maligner joke and sneer, I was marching forward. I had also learnt the whole family was moving to Missouri.
Fielding had landed. As you see and as so often happens, calling “Police” proves a bad idea. The evildoers escape and the victims become your wards. Roberta turned my beloved room into a nursery where Fielding, Quine, and Chicago lounged. Worse was yet to come. When I tried to visit my sons, Bart and Fielding blocked me. They told me as a matter of policy, Toms were persona non grata until further notice. I reminded them I was the father and the Love Machine. Bart swatted my nose in way of reply. It hurt. Keep in mind I had no idea how long the bully hoydens planned to block me. I complained to ailing Chaucey. He yawned, then observed that he (a) was too tired to deal with the problem and (b) I had cried “Police,” and that choice created the problem. If I had shown restraint, perhaps Roberta would never have got it in her mind to invite anybody in. She’d have been digging holes in the backyard. I authored my own misery.
As pater-familias-in-waiting I despaired. Fielding and Bart had begun to create a matriarchy in my future realm. My complaints crashed as fast as they left my mouth. Roberta did nothing. When I went to mike, he started a sermon on the Myth of Patriarchy. Women have always called the shot, he said. Part of their art is a genius for rhetoric that made it look as if guys run the show. But who decides when to wean us, when to toilet train us, when to spank us, what we wear, what we eat, what our chores and honey-does are, where the kids get schooled, how to decorate the house, what we do on weekends, and whether to take birth control (as many a conscripted father discovers)? And all of them have an appealing out. They can go the way of Sappho, which mike viewed as the thinking woman’s choice. Sapphists don’t hate men. They have fathers and brothers and men friends. They know we have a role as congenial friends and, in a pinch, sperm donors, but they’re not much as husbands. They’ve down their homework. They know what pigs men are. And if a woman tries to clean up all of a pig’s dirt, she’ll have endless work. She’ll have an early trip to a graveyard. Many women have this life. Their hormones doomed them. In fact, if you study who the men haters are, talk to a het, divorced woman in her 40s. But that’s all theoretical, he told me. I had to figure out how to proceed in the now. What a boon to me living next to a Zen Center was. I’d listened to their services (lots of loud chants to a beat) through a bedroom window. How to live with my now crisis, the Buddhists had the answer: Acceptance. So, I accepted it. Time works as a friend if you’re patient. Sooner or later, Bart and Fielding would get bored with protecting the kitties. I could then become a daddy. Acceptance works better than resistance. Resistance to Bart and Field would have amounted to suicide. Violence was their lives’ seasoning. Anyway, I heard mike’s subtext. To win, I had to become crafty, had to become, like Odysseus, a master tactician.
Fielding Grey (aka Fielding & Tank) once lived in a home across the street from the Zen Center. She had planned an indoor life of modest luxury. Her servant betrayed her. After a year of nothing but kindness to her servant, this servant one day locked Fielding out of the house. Fielding wailed to assert her right of entry, but her anguished pleas fell on deaf ears. When the servant came out to explain her treachery, she claimed her son’s asthma had gotten worse and worse from Fielding living in the house. A doctor told her the boy should not live in a house full of cat hair and dander. Fielding felt rage at this doctor. What kind of medicine man was he? Had he never heard of Advair, of Flonase, of Zyrtec? Why criminalize something as natural as cat hair when medical science has answers on the book to the sequelae of exposure in wimps? After Fielding later heard that mike was allergic to cat hair and took Advair, Flonase, and Zyrtec to live in peaceful co-existence with Chaucer, Bart, and me, her resentment grew. By then, though, she had moved in with us all.
Survival for a dispossessed cat is never easy. Fielding’s traitor servant, probably out of Catholic guilt, continued to put food out to feed her. The traitor encouraged Fielding to go on rat patrol to supplement her diet. You already know from the story of the Battle of Martinez Creek that Fielding liked killing. Martinez Creek was already habitat for a full range of murderous undesirables; for example, raccoons, rattlers, and hawks degraded the neighborhood. Fielding saw no reason to put up with sneaky rats as well. Besides, rat kills kept her razor sharp.
But Fielding also knew she was too pretty–a sleek, grey, emerald-eyed beauty–to have to live outdoors. She launched her campaign to return to indoor life. The first step was easy. She began to come over to my house’s porch. She’d wait till Roberta had set herself down on a bench on the porch, then would start a charm offensive. Fielding figured out fast that Roberta liked it when Fielding would charge her fist if she held it out. Roberta demonstrated the technique to mike. He’d make a fist, then stretch out his arm, and then fielding would charge the fist. She’d purr as she rubbed against it. The other method for home entry was unsubtle. Fielding would charge into the house whenever mike opened the door. He would grab her and return her to the great outdoors that she detested, but he was proving a hard sell. She wasn’t gaining entry. Even worse, Chaucer was all against her. He had enough subjects to bully already. He also slandered her whenever he could
What Chaucer had never counted on was Fielding’s sex appeal. Living outdoors is not a friend of abstinence. It soon became obvious that Fielding was knocked up. She told Roberta that I was the father. Bart called that story a slut’s lie. I admit it. I didn’t remember good times with pretty Fielding, but I figured my wounds at Martinez Creek had caused a touch of amnesia. I was so focused on the bad times; I forgot the good times. What’s more, I liked the idea of being a father. I would be in line, once Chaucey croaked, of being a pater familias. Kids would prove I wasn’t always like that chap Varys in The Game of Thrones. I was no Varys. I had used my manhood before Roberta turned me over to the castratrix.
Pregnant cats have kittens. So it was with Fielding. Roberta set up a birthing center on my house’s front porch. It was a wood box with a single entry and a New-Mexico-style flat roof that was covered in fleece. Fielding delivered four kittens. Two soon found homes. The treacherous servant claimed the right to the pick of the litter. Her daughter came and collected one as did another. Fielding believed it a scandal. Why had the daughter not offered to take her in? The other two Toms got named. The runt of the litter mike named Quine, an homage, I suppose, to the Harvard logician and philosopher. Quine looked like you probably imagined Fielding did as a baby. The other was a chap with white rear paws and a large, ascot-shaped white patch on his upper chest. The rear white paws got mike thinking about the Chicago White Sox. Bam! The kitty had a name: Chicago.
Despite the kitties, Fielding and her Toms stayed out living in the birthing center. Then it happened. One afternoon, Bart and I were talking to Fielding through the screen door to the porch, emphasizing how good we had it. Suddenly, we heard a sound. Before my horrified eyes, two huge killer K-9s rushed onto the porch. Fielding retreated into the birthing center. Its door was a defensible position, provided the killers didn’t knock the roof off its foundation. A battle started. The filthy dogs shoved their hideous maws into the door, Fielding, ever a warrior, stood fast, slashing without remorse at these devouring K-9 snouts. Fielding was showing her mettle. She neither asked for no quarter nor was giving any. She was braver and tougher than a Spartan. Bart and I began to scream, “Police! Police!” Roberta heard us. She shot through the door faster than the Flash. When the door opened, Bart and I did the right thing. We fled deeper into the house, though I could still see Roberta. It was beautiful. She showed her rural Tennessee roots, as she began to kick the crap out of the demonic, murderous dogs. They scurried away howling “foul” louder than Trump after he blew the 2020 election. Roberta then verified the health of Fielding, Quine, and Chicago. She also noted with pleasure Fielding’s blood-stained claws. Fielding’s valor equaled her and her brood’s admission ticket into the house. Bart frowned. Roberta gave them my entry room, which I viewed as sacred, the sanctum of sanctums. Of course Fielding and sons liked their new digs.
Chaucer was dead. I had watched from my home’s back window as Roberta and mike put him in his grave and laid a bit of earth on him. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have howled for an exorcism before the burial. And I wouldn’t have settled for a cut-rate exorcism by a cheap diocesan priest. I had watched The Exorcist. Its clear lesson? Don’t send a boy on a man’s errand. I needed nothing less than a manly Dominican, an order that seemed expert in exorcisms. I should have got a real OP guy lined up. Like most sensible people, I wanted no smart boys (aka Jesuits) involved. Dominicans know better than to trust them. But I was so addled by my joy that I didn’t think of elementary precautions. Chaucer had threatened me with a haunting. His threats were never idle. Alas, as so often in the life, I had to say, ‘Should’ve, could’ve, didn’t.” That’s life, a tissue of errors.
Once Roberta and mike came back into my house, I had to feign sadness. Inside, I felt glee. In my secret heart, I was singing “Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead.”
Perhaps you’ll think Warlock was the proper term, but I was mocking him in my own mind. I was not the only cat the Castratrices had cut. I knew to keep my feelings in my secret heart. In the mood mike was in, he was a clear and present danger to me if I didn’t fall in with his view of Chaucer’s death as a tragedy. The other cats chez moi—have I mentioned them all?—shared my view. They need an introduction.
Homer wrote a lot about rose-fingered dawn. Chaucer in his 18 years had Dawn’s fingers again and again. But even Chaucey knew Death’s fleshless fingers were getting a grip on him. Days and nights passed, and Chaucer grew weaker. His tumor’s stench grew stronger. Only Chaucer’s selfish will, an insatiable desire to keep others from getting his holdings, kept him alive. He’d sometimes calmed himself by having mike read him sonnets of Shakespeare, playing the guitarist Antigoni Goni performing Duarte’s music for classic guitar, and recalling happy visits to Windsor Castle. When challenged, he admitted the Queen, her husband, and her family were crashing boors, and that the Queen’s turd-eating corgis were execrable beasts. Still, he didn’t kill the dogs because he didn’t want to wear his welcome thin at Windsor, or so he said. The pleasure of looking at a collection of Davinci’s drawings and the fine victuals made good manners his byword. But he could see the darkness descending on him. Death had a chokehold.
Early in the darkness of a May morning, Chaucer had a seizure. Even Roberta could not rescue him. Death was finishing his business with Chaucer. Chaucer gave me a last dirty look, muttered, “Fuck you” in kitty speak and he died. That morning mike and Roberta went into mourning. They put him in his winding cloth, carried him out to the garden, and buried him, building a small cairn to mark the spot. In his grief, mike wrote an obituary. I saved it. Here it is:
“Early this morning my cat, life witness, and buddy, Chaucer died. He was 18. For those 18 years, he has stood as either a silent or meowing witness to a long segment of my life river. He was there as I studied and obtained my Ph.D. in psychology, and I am at times inclined to think he channeled a dissertation to me. He was there when I married. He witnessed my comings and goings from Tucson, Arizona to Batavia, New York to Phoenix, Arizona to Minneapolis, Minnesota to Vienna, Virginia to Atascadero, California to Dubuque, Iowa to San Antonio, Texas. He witnessed me starting my private practice. He had waited for me when I did a postdoc in Minneapolis. He sat at my feet as I wrote book chapters, reviews, and articles. He was kind enough to meow approval as I wrote, but only if he was in a good mood. Despite it all, he never let me get a swelled head. He slept on top of Roberta. If I wanted something warm, I had to make do with a pillow. He has died in San Antonio. Before today, he had waited to move with me and Roberta to St Robert, Missouri. It is a trip he will not make. Instead, he waited one last time, this time a ghost, as Robert and I dug his grave in the garden. A statue of the Buddha will guard him from a distance.
Of course, Chaucer was no Buddhist. Buddhism teaches the cessation of desires. Chaucer was devoted to their satisfaction. If feeding his desires created new ones, he was fine with that, provided Roberta and I made the right effort to satisfy them. In many ways, he was an odd buddy for me. For example, we could never agree on capital punishment. I hate it. He was all for it, and had a long, long list of crimes that he viewed as capital offenses, most especially living in his space without paying rent or at least tribute. When we lived in Arizona, I know he would have attended militia meetings if I had let him, and the militia meetings consisted solely of rich, well-connected officers. I also suspect the absence of firearms in the house was an affront to his martial sensibilities.
For the first 16 years of his life, he did what most mammals do. He started thin and ran to fat. When thin, he loved to hop up onto my shoulder. He enjoyed perching there as if he were a parrot and having me cruise about the house to give him an elevated view of his estate. And he liked getting fat, even if the lard robbed him of spring in his legs. He had a taste for expensive chèvres and ignored the Kraft that I would eat. He had no use for beef but was keen for Chilean sea bass at $25 a pound. He also showed his solidarity with my father’s co-religionists by being mad for lox, though he preferred his lox with cream cheese on it. He liked expensive ice cream as well, but only when placed on a plank of wood to give it the flavor he liked.
Goodness is slippery. The gods are ironists. Against Chaucer’s loud protests, Roberta and I had him vaccinated. At heart, he was a kitty Christian Scientist with no use for vets or their practices. And he was not shy about expressing it. One vet wrote in his record, ‘Nasty cat.’ Chaucer didn’t care. If a vet wanted to examine him, it was the sedation tank first. I see the gallows humor in it having been a fibrosarcoma that blossomed from one of Chaucer’s vaccination sites. This cancer was a savage cannibal. Chaucer never backed away from him. When he was diagnosed, the vet reckoned Chaucer had 3 to 6 months to live. Chaucer stood firm for 19 months as this cannibal tumor ate him. Perhaps he would have died sooner if not so fierce when facing a remorseless killer. And the vet had not understood the skill and devotion of my nurse wife. For these 19 months, she has fed Chaucer prednisone, cleaned his wound, changed his dressing, and held him as he died. Chaucer was never abandoned. Roberta held him in love until the end.
Eighteen years is a long time in any human life. If I am lucky, I may live another 18 years myself. Roberta almost certainly will. Despite our good fortune, our lives will have a gap in them, even though we will carry the memory of Chaucer in us. It’s been a long journey we all have had together before we stood together a Chaucer’s grave. I thought back to how he got his name. He was a handful of a kitten. I found him curled on a Penguin copy in my library of the Canterbury Tales. From then on, he was Chaucer, though Chaucey and Mr C would also do. I write in his memory so that others may also remember my buddy and witness—Chaucer. I loved and love him. 09 May 2014, San Antonio, Texas”
If you read all of that, you can tell how delusional mike’s grief had made him. “Silent”??? If only! The whole obit is sheer, delusional hagiography. Even worse, where is the mention of me and Bart as able, consoling consorts? I also want everybody to know I never, ever got any chèvres or $25 a pound Chilean Sea Bass. Could the monstrous iniquity of mike’s scheme of distribution be more obvious? I remind myself, on mike’s behalf, that perhaps he did what he did for Chaucer because he was as afraid of him as the rest of us.
As I scribble out my thoughts in my mind’s eye, I have had a distraction. A gentle reader has asked, Given Bart and Fielding’s prowess as neo-Amazons, why have they not gone to fight with Ukrainians to beat back the Russian hordes? In fact, it is I, Crockett the Love Machine, who proposed to end this war with a Love Campaign. I would bombard the Russians until my Rose Barrages had buried them in the sweet smell of Love. The young Russian would develop a mad desire to find fellow Russians to rut with, especially since raping Ukrainian has turned out to be too damn dangerous. Neither Bart nor Fielding wants to fight with the Ukrainians and their namby-pamby refusal to take the War to Moscow. Bart has made it plain that if she ran the War, she’d leave a blood trail to the Kremlin and settle with Putin once she got there if that weasel had not sneaked away. But the Ukrainians have refused her covert recommendations. Accordingly, she has opted for the EU strategy of sanctions. She has stopped eating blini, Beluga caviar, pickled herring, and other Russian treats. Fielding, perhaps because she has German blood, has joined Bart, but allowed herself exemptions if (a) somebody else gifts her the caviar or (b) she’s at a gastronomica and is really hungry. Neither Fielding nor Bart buys Russian natural gas because they make their own. So now, gentle reader, you know why I, Bart, and Fielding are sitting out the war. Our advice ignored, we settled for a program of sanctions. It may take time to see their effect.
Now, let’s get back to Chaucer. My petitionary prayers that the Kitty Goddess put an end to Chaucey’s reign got no immediate response. Instead, I faced a new crisis. Knocked-up Bart gave birth to her bastards. My nurse made a big deal of it. Even though I was still recovering from my war wounds. A kitty ophthalmologist had operated on my mutilated eye. The eye still was running and my body still ached but Roberta ignored me to care for Bart’s bastard kitties. What a fiasco! All of a sudden, she and Bart banished me from my own bedroom. Bart and the kittens had barred me from the one room where I had no need to fear Chaucer. It was an outrage. If I did try to sneak a visit, Bart promptly beat me down. I don’t think she could have succeeded if Roberta, despite being a Catholic, had hired a castratrix. I barely survived the experience. Her Castratrix-ness sent me home before I could pee. Once Roberta noticed that I got rushed to a proper vet. I had to pee or die. He drugged me, pressed on my bladder and I suffered the indignity of peeing all over myself. I got forced to bathe to boot. If I hadn’t been debilitated by it all, I might have taught Bart a thing or two. When I mentioned that to her, she snorted and smiled. It is a bit embarrassing that in all the years I’ve known her, she has yet to lose a fight with me. Instead, I must live with a spouse-basher.
But what to do about the kitten. When I talked to mike, he assured me that the kitties would be moving out once weaned. It was Bart’s idea. She didn’t oppose spreading her DNA around but wasn’t about to let her Tom sons become moochers. “I can’t abide a Tom without resources. You’re not going to be a mama’s Man living at home on the dole in Cocke county, Tennessee. No son of mine is going to sponge on me! Chins up! The breast milk was free.” Lickety-split, mike and Roberta did find homes for the kitties. Whisky got placed with a rich family in Philadelphia. Rumor has it that with rich servants Whisky got a good education and now teaches veterinary science at Penn. Sarge landed less well. A weepy, disabled vet took him. He wasn’t much of a servant. In fact, he wanted Sarge to be his “service animal.” Can you imagine? What self-respecting cat wants to serve his servants? I never heard if this disgraceful on-the-dole servant forced Sarge to wear one of those ridiculous “service animal” coats. If so, I’m guessing he died of shame. Meanwhile, the growth of Chaucer’s cancer failed to sweeten his temper, though he did insist that I lie close to him on command to keep him warm.
As you might guess, Chaucer had zero tolerance for the idea that, to take one example, “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” is an artist. “Artist? The guitarist Prince you mean? I suppose you could call him an entertainer or, if feeling generous a musician. But why do mediocre minds want to inflate the meaning of “artist”? Michael Jackson? An artist? Michael was a ghastly paedophile. When not having night overs with children or riding with them in choo-choo trains, he’d write songs and sing? Consider Bob Dylan as an “artist.” He wrote folk songs and managed to sing them in a hillbilly voice that was foreign to the speech of northern Minnesota where he grew up. If you want to know what an artist is, read Vasari’s Lives, you’ll know soon enough what an artist. Artists’ paint, draw, sculpt, and design great buildings. Look at Brunelleschi’s Dome or Giotto’s murals, or Duccio’s triptych. You’ll see and hear even with your ignorant eyes and ears what a pack of dwarves pop musicians and their lot are. In the poet Elliot’s Prufrock poem, the women don’t scurry about talking of Caruso, they carry on about Michelangelo. You can bet Beethoven never called himself an artist. He was a composer, a gifted pianist, and a genius.”
When he got going like this, Chaucey would stop from time to time to purr about his own thoughts. Chaucey showed the influence of mike on his mental formation. He grew up listening to Coltrane and classical Music. Whilst listening to Sviatoslav Richter play Bach, Chaucey enjoyed looking at glossies of paintings by Old Masters in Janson’s History of Art and came to share mike’s taste for Poussin, Raphael, or other painters of high repute, though he puked when he saw Bacon’s portrait of Kate Moss. Chaucey would have been right at home at Windsor Castle or any gathering of rich Etonians.
Chaucer could not bear to bring up art without linking it to money. “Look” he would say, “at where real art is. I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in Louvre, the Prado the National Gallery, the Tate, the Musee de Rodin. And you know what, if it’s real art, the likes of you could never afford it. It is not made for the consumption of guys in bowling shirts or women in muumuus. One must attain a level of culture to know what art is. “
Chaucer was not shy in asserting his superiority over everybody. He claimed he was a member of the Azevedo-Grower family, an ancient Portuguese family that, during a period of impecunity had been reduced to marrying an Englishman. As time passed, access to royals made the English half of the name tolerable. When asked when he was not living with royals, he claimed Roberta had kidnaped him. A bad case of Stockholm syndrome hit him. He came to love — one of his wilder claims, as if he knew what love was—Roberta and mike so much he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them, especially since mike showed the rudiments of decent taste. For example, mike knew what a real artist was.
Now that you know what a grinding snob Chaucer was, you may excuse me for praying every night that that night would be his last. He did say one thing that worried me. “Don’t imagine that my death will rid you of me. I will haunt you. You will never escape.” Bart was wise enough to be spared all this. After the bite, she stayed far enough away from Mr C never to hear his soliloquies.
The house by the Zen Center marked a rising tide of good fortune for Bart, but even good love comes with bad. Chaucer was still alive. He had no use for antiquated theories of being a gentleman. Bart sauntered one day into Chaucey’s room, then took it into her pretty head to jump onto Chaucey’s bed. When I spoke to her later about it, she told me she never took Chaucer as a serious threat. He was, even in senescence, a pretty boy. Bart figured she could roll him. Instead, once she was on the bed and began to move across Mr C’s line of sight, he hurled himself forward biting her hard on her flank. I will never forget her anguished screams. As Bart put it to me, Chaucer was a wolf in pansy’s clothing. He had cleaned her clock before she knew what hit her. After that, she kept her distance. The pretty boy was a brute. Whatever the excellences of her new house, Bart learnt to keep a respectful distance from its ruler.
Chaucer’s pretty-boy looks and academic demeanor often fooled people. Chaucey liked to remind people that when you start life sleeping on a battered copy of The Canterbury Tales, the rabble without doors tends to underestimate you. Again and again, Chaucer reminded staff and wannabe peers that once upon a time, everyone knew it was the nobility, not scheming peasants, that knew how to fight. Somebody with fine clothes had enough money for fine weapons and lessons on how to use them. Mr C yearned for the days when a gentlecat would treat his inferiors as he saw fit. It consoled him that those halcyon days still existed in his own house. Bart learnt that the hard way. Chaucey was not going to let a saucy wench saunter across his path without consequences. Let her lick her wounds and beware. Being that I am not so grand a cat as Chaucey, I just could not think of Bart as a peasant. In my book, she was at least a Haut Bourgeois, more likely a princess. Chaucey laughed and laughed when I mentioned it, telling me, “Prole cats have no conception of quality. You all mistake zirconium for diamonds and think college profs have good jobs.” He had a point about profs. Aside from naïve coeds whose hormones distort their perceptions, who else imagines profs are somebodies? The Kissingers, the Rices, and the Janet Yellens are freaks of nature. You see even more reputation inflation when college students refer to grubby rock musicians as “artists.”
If mike made my career as a journalist possible, my nurse Roberta made my life possible. As you already know, the savages that flowed from the north to their defeat at Martinez Creek put it to me hard. When Walt brought me to the Aid Station, I verged on dead. Some lying cats tried to say I got my wounds whilst running away. I say, “Not so!” My heroism has gone unacknowledged in San Antonio. Calumniators talked about me being like my namesake “Crockett.” They sneered that I had never won a fight in San Antonio. Instead of being a cat of substance, these liars made out that I was pure flash. Bart was never going to want a Tom light on his paws. She and her friend Fielding Grey, a voluptuous Molly with a passion for combat, had killed whatever came onto their runs during the Battle of Martinez Creek. Neither Bart nor Fielding had any use for a cat that the calumniators were calling a canary. I was in need of an alternative narrative.
My position was a bit like fans of the Old South. That gang mob of slavers won’t get much sympathy if they give speeches on how they fought like banshees to keep their slaves slaves. Public Relations 101 tells you you need a prettier story. So, Old Southers (aka Slavers) talk about a Lost Cause and write ridiculous novels about aristocratic living that, as a result of depraved aggressors, is now gone with the wind. Likely as not you turn it into a ridiculous movie. Unlike the southern apologists, I lacked the cash (for mike, every dollar is a personal friend) to film a movie or even get a decent book published about me. I was going to need a good yarn of my own construction to get Bart’s buy-in on a tale of the Love Machine qua War Hero.
Lying insinuations on behalf of my heroism had failed. I had tried that. I tried wearing an Iron Cross, a Croix de Guerre, a Blue Max, a Purple Heart, and anything else that might impress Bart. So far as I can tell, she didn’t know what any of them were. The only things that impressed her were Scalp Locks and ear necklaces. Blood-stained paws also made a good impression on her. In my case, she would stare at me, sniff, then remark her memory of me at Martinez Creek was of Walt carrying me away howling from my wounds.
What was I to do? I mentioned my plight to mike. He smiled and told me a truth about women. Riches matter more than bravery. “Watch ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ with me.” What an eye-opener. Here I was living in a veritable mansion on Woodlawn, next to that Peacenik haven, the San Antonio Zen Center, and I was wearing myself out with schemes to look brave rather than rich. Praise the gods, Bart’s luck had run out after the death of her Mexican Lady Servant. The pack that replaced Bart’s servant had shoved Bart out of her long-standing home. They had reduced her to living in the crawl space under the house.
Hence I began to court Bart with tales of money whenever she came by. I boasted about my fancy meals, and just confessed that if you wanted food, you had to deal with Chaucey’s attacks. I worked on Nurse Roberta too. I would beg until Roberta let Bart in. For a nurse, she wasn’t too observant, as Bart was knocked up by then. Bart’s being knocked up forced Roberta to do what Sisters have done since the Church started. If the cat turns out to be a Molly rather than a Tom, put a “Mary” in front of her name. With my love offensive, I got Roberta to open the door to Bart. Bart’s love of luxury brought her in to me. She began to stay with me for longer and longer stints. Her memory of my role at Martinez Creek faded. Soon she was living with me, as she saw the benefits of living with Roberta and mike as servants. Bart had had a reversal of fortune. Avarice and repression paved her way.
As I got established in the house-by-the-zen-center, I began to see the need for more kitty company. It is not good for a cat to live alone. Look at what a solitary life had made Chaucer: a vicious, stingy, sadist. Often, I thought Chaucer’s sole pleasure in life was beating me up. He wasn’t much of a companion. His high IQ only made him worse. Do you want to live with a peer who applies his intellect to torturing and depriving you? People don’t get this. Consider the public schools. If bad parents have a smart kid, they’ll get puffed up about his good grades. But if a smarty kid has good grades but lousy work habits and non-existent citizenship, then what have you got? I’ll tell you: you got a master criminal in the making. Focus on a kid’s work habits and citizenship. If a smart kid works hard and cares for others, his grades will take care of themselves. If he is a dimmer bulb, he will still do as well as you have a right to expect if he keeps his nose to the grindstone and respects others. Don’t rear a Chaucey, an evil genius of a cat.
You can already tell I’m lucky in life. Living right next door to my new home was a cute little black cat. She was sweet to me. She did have a murderous tendency. She enjoyed killing little critters. One day I saw her in my backyard. She was walking along the support beam of the yard’s fence. As she walked, a foolish bird flew right towards her. She unhinged her mouth. It then was as if the clueless bird were in outer space. You couldn’t even hear her scream. The kitty on the beam opened her mouth, clamped down, and the next thing I knew I was seeing a spray of feathers emitting from my kitty neighbor’s mouth. What a woman! I had to have her.
My staff was too ignorant to recognize my neighbor was a girl. Instead, they took to calling her Bart. I could see that Bart was all girl. She had grown up in a Mexican household. An old lady had served Bart. From her, Bart got the rudiments of a young woman’s formation. Bart had a delicacy that you don’t find in kitties with all-male staff. I had to have her living where she belonged, that is, with me.