I did not have to ask Etonians Wolverine or Peregrine their opinion of capital punishment. Let’s face it. Like generations of Englishmen, these two Etonians adored punishment. There was not enough of it. Hence the world was going to the dogs.
Wolverine also linked his routine commission of capital offenses as a reason for him having enormous earnings. “With big risks come big gains,” he’d chuckle. When I looked at the growing product line at Munitions Galore, Wolverine’s flourishing work as a spy was obvious to the discerning.
Of course, idiots never notice anything. Lots of lefties seem to view state-of-the-art weapons and military tech as manna from heaven. As Wolverine stressed, ff Senator BS and his crowd had their way, they’d spend the defence budget on freebies for bums. Let America wander naked in a hostile world as her enemies sharpened their knives and our bums wallowed in free digs.
My lessons on lefty politics, I got from my servant mike. One day I was letting him feed me a portion of his milkshake. We lounged in front of the telly. The silver-haired image of Senator BS flickered on the screen. He was raving before a cohort of college students. It didn’t take mike long to feel the burn. “Behold him,” sniped mike. “The chap and his beloved parasites have the chutzpah to make out that a nation of stingy Babbitts is denying them free tuition, loan forgiveness, and free public transport. These shameless mooches will have you accept as gospel that none of these indebted students without cars is thinking of themselves when they scream, let’s be honest for once, to force the despised Babbits and “billionaire class” to pay for their greedy fantasies.”
If Senator BS or just about any lefties started talking about guns around mike, I’d flee. He detested people who didn’t know how to unload a wheel gun or tell if a semiauto was empty, lecturing the public on the the evil of large-capacity magazines. As a rule, they’d solemnly remind the ignorant that large magazines are disallowed when hunting deer.
Mike would respond that large magazines were a convenience to chaps going to plink targets, a hobby vastly more popular than hunting Bambi and her overpopulating associates. Lefty friends of mikes were often surprised he didn’t care about using guns that held 15 or more rounds that he linked for plinking for home defence. But mike happened to agree with Shane who noticed that even a gunfighter doesn’t need two six-shooters if he knows how to shoot well with one. So, mike had an S&W Model 10 for the home. I’d advise against testing his accuracy.
Wolverine and Peregrine, Irascible and Constant Lawless, Lord Caligula and company saw guns as a necessity when no grenades, .50 Cals, or SAWs were at hand. They all admitted to sometimes having to conceal carry “tiny” pistols like a PPQ 9mm, but nobody serious about personal protection liked anything that small.
Hence Munitions Galore was happy when it announced that, in addition to its growing line of Blond-Bomb explosives, more lethal goodies were coming. Thanks to work by Mr Wolverine Lawless, Munitions Galore was coming out with new options in Killer Bots. I had no idea that Wolverine was skilled as an engineer, but he was named on patents in several countries.
Adverts for Wolverine’s Household-Cleaner model boasted that it could patrol a large home and its grounds. If it encountered any “unauthorized” life, the boat used a lethal laser to deal with it. The Household Cleaner would then feed the corpse into an ample incinerator that had a saw and mulcher to make sure that “even the tallest most corpulent corpses” could be forced to fit. The incinerator turned the mulch into a fine ash that the Cleaner sprayed over a lawn or bushes to promote “life and growth.” The adverts showed many pleased smiling naked women in bathrobes. Sometimes they reached out to fondle the robot.
Wolverine was especially proud, in videos, that the laser-enhanced incinerator cooked the mulch so hot that all traces of the corpse’s DNA disappeared. Wolverine’s brags included the idea that not only did the Household Cleaner know how to remove security threats, but it also knew how to deal with vagrants on the owner’s property. This latter feature Wolverine saw as his contribution to urban renewal. As Wolverine puts it, “First bum clearance and only then slum clearance.” You can tell that Senator BS was never going to win Wolverine’s vote.
Unsurprisingly, the Household Cleaner got somebody’s attention. Not long after a few patents got issued, I got a visit from two G-men, one of them a tall, hard, well-scrubbed redhead. She was the brains of the two, though her partner looked as if he spent most of his spare time lifting weights. She asked me if I had any idea how to reach Wolverine.
If I had known, I’d have told her. I suggested she might start looking in Waynesville or the Mark Twain National Forest. She was antagonistic about looking for him in Mark Twain forests. We believe he would be impossible to find there. So, I suggested she visit the north side of Michigan’s upper peninsula. She and her partner disliked that idea even more than the visit to Mark Twain. “Are you trying to get us killed’ they asked.
I mentioned that a visit to the woods can’t be any riskier than going to a residence of Wolverine. “Do you imagine he lives anywhere without several Household Cleaners?” I wondered out loud. The G-men tracked the reference to the Cleaner immediately. “Perhaps you, Crockett, have information on how Wolverine came to design this ‘Cleaner.’?” The redhead told me she thought somebody might have stolen classified information from an intelligence agency.
I guessed they didn’t have much of substance on Wolverine, other than their G-man-ish hunches. If they did have anything firm they’d pull his numerous clearances. She wished me to know that nobody was accusing Wolverine of anything. She and her partner wanted to get Wolverine’s thoughts on how many of the features in the cleaner came to mind. Also, she’d like to ask him about where Peregrine Blonde-Bomb was getting ideas for his bombs. Since neither Wolverine nor Peregrine had trained as engineers, but as classicists, she and her partner wondered about possible sources for their bright ideas.
Oh, my friends, how I want to say more about Wolverine’s gifts as a spy. Few have monetized the trade with the ruthless efficiency of Wolverine. Instead, I am writing about the murderous assclown, the chubby dung heap, that walked into a Tops to shoot dead anybody he took for black with a Bushmaster rifle. The assclown decorated his rile by scribbling racist slogans so beloved by righty loons.
As a black cat, Bart felt the deepest imaginable offense at chubby, pasty, young Gendron. She burst into a rage when she heard mistrained policeman had convinced this wannabe Einsatz Kommando not to kill himself. Her reaction called to mind a scene from “Babe.” Instead of Babe, it was Bart who wailed an endless “Why?!” So, Bart dashed off an irate letter to the editor demanding an inquiry into what has led authorities to send cops to mass murders rather than infantry. “One must never forget,” wrote Bart, “The rationale for infantry is simple. You’re not there to arrest anybody. You want to cut the killer down where he stands. If he has put his gun to his own head, don’t discourage him. Fill him with holes before he commits another homicide.”
Bart has always taken a hard line on crime. Gendron’s murdering blacks was a grave offence enhancement in her eyes. If a vicious fool likes shooting blacks of his own kind, what might he do to black cats like Bart or me? Her view didn’t surprise me. Her theory of justice and jurisprudence got absorbed from watching Clinton Eastwood and Steven Seagal movies. She loved old western too. “Notice, too,” Bart reminded me,” that when the drumhead court sentenced handsome Bill Budd to hang, they did it fast.
From the time the handsome Budd killed the demonic Claggart to the time he hanged was less than 24 hours. “Let that be a model for us all,” cried Bart. If a drumhead court could hang a sailor that fast, a hanging that required a trial, you can have on-the-spot justice from our infantry when they respond to a mass shooting nowadays. So reasoned Bart.
I mentioned to Bart that the authorities didn’t want to make mistakes. A shooter could be crazy. An innocent man could be hanged by mistake. Bart delivered two blows to my head as her answer.
Fielding then chimed in. “Who cares? If a madman is shooting people, he’s a malignant crazy. Screw him. Put him down. And why are you always worrying about so-called innocents? None of us is innocent. If somebody didn’t do the crime that we’re hanging him for, he must have done something else. Innocence is a ruse.
“Besides, don’t we say, ‘Better ten or even one hundred innocent men hang than let one guilty man go free.’ And there is precedent. If crucifying our savior, an actual innocent man, remitted our bloodguilt, what’s the big deal about killing one innocent guy we mistake for a guilty one? You should worry about finding the bad guy, not keep living in the past.” When I started to challenge Fielding’s logic, she had had enough. She beat me up. Bart joined in.
I sometimes forget I don’t live in a house of lenient, prissy Democats. Bart and Tank see themselves as survivors of Martinez Creek because they never feared having bloody paws. Fielding had made her living killing rats, a job that she claimed made her the feline moral equivalent of Eastwood’s Man-with-No-Name.
As I tended to my battered face and body, Bart and Fielding told me, “To do true justice, a cat must learn to live with her mistakes.” Their cold stares told me I had best shut up about Gendron. Feigned agreement with their opinions was a wise path. In the past, when I tried to defend myself in these kinds of cases by pointing out I was taking mike’s position on a controversy, they’d just sigh.
“Mike,” I was told, “didn’t know any better.” “You know,” Bart added, “that his mum’s maiden name was Shea. That’s an Irish name. The Irish are a race of rogues. Being from a clannish race of professional connivers, mike has a congenital predisposition to leniency towards criminals. Have you noticed that mike even believes in letting somebody appeal a conviction? Appeals??? Did Billy Budd get an appeal? Was a “Wanted Dead or Alive” notice dead letter until the rascal named on it had a chance to appeal? Did Fielding accept surrenders or appeals from rats? Please! What a pile of Bravo Sierra! You must talk to your chums Wolverine and Peregrine about punishment. They’re sound thinkers on legal theory. Stop listening to mike the excuse monger.” Okay, I get it, I’d been warned.
The first time Munitions Galore story convinced me that Wolverine was a successful spy was an advert in a Janes’ publication. It boasted of a bomb that a good operator could “convert” to dirty. Once loaded with radioactive wastes, no CBRNE expert could clean up the blast area. An ad caption asked, “What could this do to Manhattan shopping?” Above the caption was a gorgeous apartment. A more or less naked woman, with chic outfits on a chair behind her, stood in anguished horror with a platinum credit card covering a nipple. Caring people could see her sorrow at the obliteration of life and clothing in her favourite boutiques.
If you read the whole advert, you got details. For example, you learnt that you could pay an upcharge for a stealth jacketed bomb. Your stealth bomb would be undetectable to the prying electrical eyes of NGA. A retired Lieutenant General of indefinite national affiliation explained how it was vital to have this bomb before Putin bought them all. The advert mentioned that, according to rumours, Putin helped finance the bomb’s development. After all, he might decide to take a profit rather than buy all these bombs. Lord Caligula had also agreed to a speaking tour to tout the bomb.
When a grinning Lord Caligula showed up for an interview with an irate “Morning Joe” team, his Lordship swore he hoped nobody ever used the bomb unless “absolutely necessary. ” He denied Munitions Galore got any money from Putin or the Chinese. If you believed his Lordship, that was all fake news. Rumours denied, his Lordship started scolding the Morning Joe hosts. “Why” he sniffed, “has nobody on the “Morning Joe” team mentioned that the Munition Galore adverts never encouraged anybody to explode this type of bomb.” With watering, sad eyes, his Lordship reminded anybody watching Morning Joe (though he conjectured few watched) that the new bomb was meant as “a deterrent.” If it explodes, you’ve lost your deterrent.
Mika then got up the nerve to ask, “A deterrent against what?” Without losing a beat, Lord Caligula invited her to learn the answer over dinner with him that night. He adored the company of older women.
Whilst his Lordship stared lewdly at her and Joe Scarborough, he told Mika to leave her hysterical, boring husband at home. For a moment I feared Joe’s eyes were going to pop out of his head. Before Joe could recompose himself, Lord Caligula sashayed from the set laughing. Mika shouted after him that she probably didn’t have time to dine with him. “Do keep a table for two. It’s hard for me to pass on a scoop.” For some reason, Joe’s face went as crimson as a blushing cuckold. Had he been at a Cardinal game, his red face would have guaranteed him invisibility in a sea of red caps.
The same evening Tucker Snarlson denounced the “Morning Joe” for its mean-spirited, hostile interview of Lord Caligula. His snarling escalated. He denounced the Morning Joe hosts’ implication that President Putin had no right to invest in Munitions Galore projects. If Putin had, as Lord Caligula claimed, declined to invest in “the greatest advance in anti-war bomb-making since the hydrogen bomb,” the answer was at hand. We all know how sensitive Putin is. He hates violence. It makes him sad.
Ever an educator to the people, Tucker didn’t stop with a lesson on Putin. He had charts. Out they came. Tucker displayed a few tables to tell the story. The new bomb was so humane that it killed far few people when it exploded than “even a small H-bomb would do.” Not being able to help himself, Snarlson reminded viewers that nuclear weapons have never been used on anybody. After a look at his teleprompter, he emended, “Save the warlike Japs.” Perhaps sensing a faux pas, Snarlson snarled. “I already know the word police will attack me for using the “J” word.” Indeed. Imagine, if you will, the new bomb’s advert. Picture, gentle reader, the relief of that naked shopper in her penthouse at Tucker’s calling to her mind his Lordship’s reassuring words on bombs. A safer bomb is a great comfort.
Operation Gobble stayed a mystery to me back then. I had a few putative pieces of what I suspected was a vast jigsaw puzzle. That’s it. During this time, Wolverine wrote stories for the Moscow Times. In stories that should have insulted even a moron’s intelligence, Wolverine told stretchers about life as a louche Army Sapper’s wife, life as a keen CBRNE trainee, or life as a driver of military vehicles of all kinds. As often as not, Wolverine titillated his Russian readers with tales of Army wives that would have shamed Madame du Barry. If that trollop du Barry’s name rings no bells, then picture Tallulah Bankhead, Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Love, or, indeed, Wolverine’s mum, Constance Lawless. You’ll then know what what Wolverine conveyed about Army wives. Wolverine depicted soldiers as industrious Sad Sacks.
Wolverine wrote a few substantive pieces about a possible move of NGA from Saint Louis; however, he opined NGA would stay in Saint Louis. Beneath the avalanche of mindless fluff that occurred beneath Wolverine’s byline, substantive work did appear. For example, Wolverine seemed to have plenty of good information about Putin’s doing. From Putin’s adventures, he distilled a hagiography of Putin.
From talks with Snarlson, who was still wearing bowties that stop circulation to a man’s brain, I can testify that Snarlson and Donald Trump, two ready friends of Truth, insisted that Wolverine was writing the true news about what a swell guy Putin was and is. They even welcomed a a salacious story about Donald’s alleged evening with urinating hookers. Snarlson argued this alleged Trumpian pee-pee party was a grotesque exaggeration of the liberal press. Besides, a man as rich as Donald Trump would, if the fake news about this evening were true, have been pissing on the whores, not vice versa, as odious purveyors of fake news pretended.
In Wolverine’s Moscow Times columns, he went so far as to quote nameless Russian security experts. According to them, “They had no records of the alleged events at a Moscow Hotel room located at . . .. Further, if the events occurred, perhaps they happened between 22.00 and . . . hours, etc., etc., etc.” Wolverine touted his sources’ reports as an exoneration of Donald. With Wolverine’s columns in hand, Snarlson hit the air snarling. He screamed sundry evildoers were conspiring to humiliate Trump. And why? “Because they hate America.” Thus spake Snarlson!
When had the chance, I asked Melania if she believed these Moscow stories. She began laughing with so much fury I feared she was going to have a cardiac arrest. And I never did get an answer from her. Whenever I asked, she would laugh and laugh and laugh. She seemed to have, at best, guarded confidence in Donald’s fidelity.
One evening when I asked, after a fit of laughter, she pointed at a photograph of Donald (the Penthouse brimmed with them). Then she blurted out, “Does that look like the face of a pervert?” Then she began to cackle hysterically. Earlier that evening, she had told me she had no idea Donald had a pee phobia. She snicked as she told me she learned of it from Snarlson reassuring the public on Fox.
It did begin to dawn on me that Operation Gobble had more to it than the gaining control of national secrets held by the Army or the NGA, just as the one Holy Apostolic Church is about more than its material holdings.
Operation Gobble extended far beyond the accumulation of software materiel and software to win battles, or intelligence necessary to make better weapons and software. Like the Church, Operation Gobble aimed to obtain loving allegiance and control over minds. And unlike the Church, Operation Gobble had no intention of making the grave error of ceasing to burn witches. Neither Lord Cali nor Peregrine Blonde-Body planned to coddle apostates.
As a journalist, I often must rely on intuition. I sensed a connexion between the unknown scheme of Wolverine and Peregrine and what I had I learnt about the Russians chez Melania. Then there was a novel taste of Peregrine powering my intuitions. He had evolved an intense curiosity about the armed forces of all countries that he nourished by reading Janes Journals. Peregrine devoured new issues of “Janes Defence Weekly” and “Janes Intelligence Report.”
Once he revved up my curiosity when he chuckled that you can’t make a decent bomb unless you know what you want to blow up with it. He added that you also need to know, as NGA does, where the stuff you plan to blow up is. By Contrast, Wolverine had a keen curiosity about anything that promised a fat profit, not just arms. When Skyping with Wolverine, I also noticed that more than once I had caught him reading Army Field Manuals on CBRNE, Intelligence, Combat Engineering, and driving military vehicles, a far cry from his Etonian taste for Catullus, Suetonius, or Petronius. Wolverine never tired of reading about the scandals of the classical world, but there are pitifully few scandals in an Army Field Manual. Peregrine, I heard, littered his office with military manuals and doctrine.
I suppose the world should be glad Peregrine had military interests; otherwise, he would have spent a career filling his office with naked secretaries and boys. If not for a career at Munitions Galore, I’m certain he would have devoted his life to making and marketing porn. Perhaps bombs and missiles were his sublimation. Evidence? Peregrine never missed a chance to sell his bombs and missiles by having leering half-naked women straddling them. Given the sales, the adverts worked.
Anyway, my reporter’s intuition told me something was up. And how did I get the idea of a visit to Melania? Had Wolverine hypnotized me? I could think of no other plausible explanation. With his smooth, bedroom voice and piercing eyes, Wolverine was a mesmerist supreme.
Also, could it be a mere coincidence that was after the first visit to Melania, I heard mention of Operation Gobble. I then had no idea of how Operation Gobble pulled seemingly unconnected threads together.
I was glad when mike returned to St Robert with Fielding and the boys. Later I felt mad when I discovered via Roberta that mike, even before interrogating me, had dialed iSALUTE to report his sighting of Wolverine in uniform. A counterintelligence agent investigated and determined that a soldier named Constantine Law was TDY from Fort Bragg. His documents were immaculate, though the agent agreed that, based on a photo mike showed him, he could have passed for an identical twin of Wolverine. There was no surprise about the quality of the paperwork, as Wolverine insisted on meticulous work from his blackmailed victims. He got it too.
But that’s a different story. The day after he left, I sneaked out of the flat to catch a flight to NYC. Any cat with his salt knows how to play the stowaway game. In a few hours in NYC. I got to Trump Towers dressed to the nines. I wore in my midnight-blue silk suit and was wearing a midnight blue Borsalino homburg. After wending my way to the Trump’s penthouse, I gave the door a kick. As a butler opened the door, in I went.
Butlers and other riffraff are among the obstacles faced by an industrious cat seeking entry into a richlings home. This butler tried to throw me out. Faced with this emergency, I began to squall with all my might. Soon a faint patter of feet came my way. Voila. To check the butler’s assault I slashed him and presented myself to Melania’s gaze. She smiled and dismissed the brutal butler. Good riddance to the brute!
Now you must keep in mind that a cat’s seduction of a human woman is a study in indirection. Most of the so-called great seducers—Casanova, Don Juan, Cyrano, Wilt Chamberlain, Warren Beatty—would have done well to have made themselves understudies to a cat like me, the Love Machine. You must learn how to work a woman. Never make your move too early. You must wait. Good women will start to make a fuss over you. Move away from your target. You must move away. A woman disrespects and easy conquest. She’ll tend to follow you about the room or hold her hand out for you to sniff as if you’re a dog, an infuriating gesture. Don’t fall for it. Preserve your dignity. Keep a distance. Finding a chair or davenport to hide under is perfect.
The odds are your women will start talking in motherese. Let her. Time is now your friend. Make her wait. In fact, the more smashing her looks, the longer you should make her wait. Beautiful women like Melania expect men to come at them faster than a hungry cowboy to the chuckwagon. Confound their expectation. You must feed your woman’s insecurities.
Once you have the woman approaching complete exasperation, make your move. I recommend you start by rubbing your head on her outstretched hand. Pretend to be wary but allow her to pick you up after a decent interval of pets to your head. You own her now. You can now also learn something that always astonishes amateurs. No matter a woman’s politics, women are suckers for kitty faces. You have a purr. Use it! Your woman may be a radical feminist with Gloria Steinem posters marring her walls. She may have a history of filing sexual harassment complaints against incompetent men. If you know your game, it never matters. If Donald, to take a pathetic example, had been home, Melania would have banished him if he began to paw her chest or sniff her lap. I, though, simply began to make biscuits on her chest. She was oozing her delight in seconds, as she had fantasies of having won me over. I sniffed about her lap. She murmured what a sweet boy I was and asked if I would like something to eat. And why not? I was soon munching on tartar of tuna whipped up for me by her cook at Melania’s command.
After my lunch, I let her enjoy more lap time, then we retired to her comfy bed for a nap. She stripped without shame to sleep with me. Once again, match point for the Love Machine.
Once she fell asleep, I hopped down, read any correspondence lying about, and checked her computer. Oh, the things I was learning. Some of it was tricky as it was in Slovenian, a language I barely knew.
What I most wanted to learn about was Trump’s Russian connection. To me, I viewed her as an unlikely chum of Putin. It’s not as if the Yugoslavia she was born in had an affection for Russia. Besides, I couldn’t believe she’d think a womanizer like her hubby DT could resist honeypot traps the Russian CBP (SVR) would set for him. Throughout his life, DT has let his little head do the thinking for the big head. Anyway, getting to know lonely Melania was going to be worth my time. How I loved her cook.
It’s too bad that my visits put my remaining good eye at risk. Somebody once described the Trump penthouse as what you’d get if you gave Louis XIV’s architects too much crack before setting them to work. I concur.
To spare my eyes, I wore sunglasses there as often as possible. Journalists must steel themselves to the necessities of their work.
A few days after talking to Wolverine, mike, Fielding, and the boys came to visit. Quine, acting like total peckerwood, ran about the houses like a lunatic. He has a gift for getting on my last nerve. Even worse, mike started to interrogate me. He had seen Wolverine on base in a LTC uniform with an 82nd Airborne patch, a CIB, paratrooper badge, and a few other medals and badges. As mike saw it, he should have had Wolverine picked up by the MPs. Wolverine’s fraudulent presentation offended mike.
He asked me what I knew about Wolverine’s “scam.” I feigned a headache, but mike still didn’t shut up. I tried walking away. Alas, mike pursued me. For a while, I stayed as silent as Mr Ed when in the presence of Wilbur’s wife. That got me nowhere. With no good lies at hand, I simply professed my ignorance. Why can’t mike get it into his skull that my brain is not a holding tank for Wolverine’s secrets? Once he wearied of interrogating me, he went off to bother Roberta and the other cats. He and Bart got along famously. Fielding adored him too, believing that in the role of a conductor, he had got her a ride to Missouri.
Bart ratted on me immediately. She ratted to mike that I had Skyped with Wolverine and she could tell from his sinister cackles that he was up to no good. If I weren’t so afraid of her, I might have killed her that day. Sooner or later, mike would turn that fink info against me.
So, I decided to keep a low profile with mike, doing my best to suck up to him at every opportunity. Sometimes, you must pump up a servant’s ego.
I then recognized an opportunity. If you may recall, Don Trump had started an onanistic campaign to be the Big Cheese of the USA. Chaucer, of course, knew Trump. Chaucer shared DT’s love of others. Oh, how they loved swapping revenge stories. Mind you, Trump has never been my kind of guy.
First off, he doesn’t eat enough tuna. If you have money, you should eat tuna, lox, and pork tenderloin. Second, he was giving loud talks on illegal aliens in the south. I cry, “Bravo Sierra!” I knew from my experience at the Battle of Martinez Creek that the menace to our country is coming from the north. We need to do something to keep the furry, snow-back killers from the north out. Who cares about a bunch of people coming from the south whose idea of a good job is a Hormel Plant?
Let’s admit, if only in hindsight, that DT had the wrong illegals in his sights. I grant that it is easier, given US History, to get Americans terrified of short meso-Americans than cute, sharped-toothed, furry killers. And don’t even get me started on our country’s coyote infestation. Who’s doing anything about that?
Nevertheless, DT’s fantasies of life in the White House put me at an advantage. I decided I had to get to know Melania better. She looked lonely and bored. “Perfect,” I thought. I look great in a tux. I need more rich female friends. Trump Towers here I come.
I want to mention that one of the glories of the US is the kindness of almost all Americans to a well-dressed cat. As always, there are wicked exceptions. Who can watch a Tweety Bird cartoon without noticing that the premiss of this sad effort at humour could only have come from a diseased mind? Do you not feel for Sylvester as he struggles to put that sassy, scheming bird in its place? Of course, we all knew the cat-hater that controlled the cartoon would never let that happen. Almost all Americans are better than that. Hence I knew that once I got to Trump Towers, Melania would be mere putty in my paws.
One cool, clear morning, I sat in my flat gazing through a panel of glass tracking cars and light trucks coming and going in the parking lot below my balcony. I like car watching but wondered why I saw so few expensive rides. Where were the Escalades, the S-class Mercedes Benzes, the Land Rovers, the Jaguars? It was something to think about. Had Roberta moved us into a tenement?
Feeling tense, I retreated to my kitchen. When I want to relax, I go to my water bowl to drink clean, cold water, especially if no catnip’s at hand. I always encourage Roberta to drop ice cubes in my water before she goes out to earn money for me. It’s among my lifelong habits.
As I peered into my bowl as a prelude to my drinking, I shuddered as a saw an image of Chaucer’s sneering face on the surface of the water. The bowl spoke. “Fear not, vassal. Before I died, I promised you a haunting. You will never escape my voice in your grubby world. I have news for you. Beware of Mr Wolverine Lawless!”
The image disappeared at those words. What might the ghost of Chaucer mean? Chaucer had encounters with Wolverine when they both had coinciding visits to Windsor Castle or Balmoral. I knew the Queen Mother thought Chaucer was a real dear and even felt love for him (so he told me), perhaps in the grip of the false belief that Chaucer was gay. Chaucer wasn’t gay, but would, I grant, do just about anything for a large enough stack of money. Being gay was also an irresistible quality to the Queen Mother. It was almost as good as being a fat aesthete. Chaucer liked pleasing royalty. If you aim for a baronetcy, you got to be pleasing to top-tier royalty.
What, though, would lead Chaucer to warn me about Wolverine? In fact, I doubted Chaucer meant it as a warning. He preferred to put fresh fears in my head. And what was Wolverine capable of? Well, let’s be honest, just about anything and everything. He loves money more than Chaucer did if that’s possible.
Not long after Chaucer’s revenant’s visitation, Wolverine Skyped me. Well-tailored as always when not frolicking in the woods or rutting with somebody, Wolverine told me he had sensed a crack in the world’s moral space and an urge to telephone to me. He took off his cocke hat, lit a Sherman, and continued. “Don’t imagine all I do is throw parties for perverts. Parties and videos are the fertilizers of my trade. They are paying dividends. Did you know that I have obtained a Top Secret SCI clearance from the Army?” Of course, I didn’t know that until he told me. I learnt he had even finagled himself into having HRP (Human Reliability Program) status. Even I shuddered at the idea of Wolverine with access to nukes.
Wolverine bragged these clearances and tickets were fruits of his soirees. “No matter what it is or where it is, somebody somewhere had the god keys to the objects of my desire. It’s just a matter of getting the keyholder to use the keys,” remarked Wolverine. I gathered as he elaborated that he had clearances both as a contractor and as an Army intelligence officer. “I only put myself up as a lieutenant colonel (LTC) intelligence officer working with the 82nd Airborne as a G-2 for my CAC.* Fort Leonard Wood is a training site, so it’s unremarkable for me to be there. LTCs stationed at Leonard Wood might get noticed, but I trusted my status as a visitor would keep me invisible when I went in for my CAC and various badges. I repeated the process when a different soldier was doing the work of creating the cards to obtain my civilian card. It’s child’s play once you have cowed marks with the god keys who are too scared to decline to do your bidding.” Wolverine had an immense toothy smile as he conveyed gloating descriptions of his just-picked fruits. As I already knew, nobody, not even I, should trifle with Wolverine. More were learning that lesson.
He surprised me by making no demands of me that day. I did wonder about his larger goals whilst also considering how it was possible, given the soirees he liked, that Wolverine had escaped the clutches of HIV. I keep Chaucer’s “Beware” alert in my head. Still, I wished Chaucer’s ghost had stayed put in San Antonio.
- editor’s note: CAC = Common Access Card
Webster Groves, as an inner and prosperous, suburb of Saint Louis, had plenty to recommend it. For example, the coppers could stop you without you having to fear for your life even if you were a criminal. In Ferguson, where Roberta worked, cops refused to make a habit of coddling criminals. I admit I had to adjust my brain to the Webster Groves methods of law enforcement. Chaucer had taught me his view of law and order: Better that a thousand innocent people get the lash than 1 guilty man go free. In his glosses on punishment, Chaucer hastened to add that these severe strictures had no application to cats. By nature, cats are law abiders. Chaucer also had no patience with imaginary offenses like a cat attacking a human being. If a cat attacked a human being, he no doubt had had his good reasons.
Hence, gentle reader, you can imagine how gobsmacked I was about the rioting malcontents in Ferguson. A copper by the name of Wilson shot dead a sassy, swaggering thief on a Ferguson street. According to a store owner, Brown, a self-described “gentle giant,” had taken five-finger discounts on items in the shop owner’s store. Being a giant, Brown displayed enough menace to terrify the shop owner. Now, following Chaucer, I do put a lot of the blame on that shop owner. Chaucer always insisted that everybody has a duty to arm himself to protect his holdings. Chaucer lauded the idea of self-help justice. “Don’t waste time calling for lazy coppers,” he’d cry. “Do it yourself justice is best.” Of course, nowadays goody-goods try to pretend that defending your holdings is a crime. Chaucer’s ghost howls with indignation whenever even a whisper of that lefty claptrap reaches his mind. I can hear him shaking his ghost chains.
If I learnt anything from the meltdown in Ferguson, I learnt that when somebody robs you, do yourself a favour. Shoot the motherfizzucker before he gets off your property. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. Bart and Fielding were for once in total agreement with my Chaucerian doctrine. In fact, Bart and I began to hold weekly claw-sharpening circles when Roberta was a work. “If somebody robs our house,” Bart chuckles, “he’ll wish he had sneaked into the home of Hannibal Lecter instead.”
Despite our family’s adherence to Chaucer’s views on law and order, when we, at last, moved into a house on Chestnut Street, we adored the local star entertainer, “Mr Squirrel,” (aka St Louie Squirrel and Louie). Louie’s flagrant raids on Roberta’s tomato plants and lettuce patch delighted us. When Fielding and the boys came for a visit, they couldn’t watch enough of Louie either. As time passed, we observed St Louie Squirrel grow fatter and fatter. We marveled that his chubby legs still carried him away too fast for Roberta to catch him. Bart took his escapes as more evidence that Chaucer’s calls for owners of anything to arm themselves got matters right. A Ruger 10-22 would even the game between Roberta and Mr Squirrel. Still, we kitties liked to watch Louie steal tomatoes and then relax on the backyard deck to eat his loot. It was as if Jesse James lived! He was though an inordinately fat Jesse.
During my first year in Webster, I began to work on getting myself connected to the city’s rich and famous. The Saint Louis Opera Theatre was perfect for that. Opera as you know attracts masses of rich snobs with a taste for stories emphasizing love, adultery, and murder. If you know the costs of season tickets to an opera house, you know it also is high enough to keep the number of poor people present to a minimum. You get your share of wannabe rich college students and art history graduates working as ushers, but praise the gods, most of the people in an opera house have enough money to make them worth a cat’s attention. And what cat can resist women in evening gowns or men in tuxes?
Wolverine and Peregrine approved of my opera attendance, as did Lord Caligula. Only his mistresses know how many hours his Lordship spent in Covent Gardens at the Royal Opera House. His Lordship touted good opera as better than rhino horn as an aphrodisiac. Also, Wolverine’s appearance at several of the Operas came as no surprise to me. I’d see him in the company of executives from Boeing Defense, Space, and Security or World Wide Technology in tow, as well as his usual diet of NGA officers, politicos, and General officers. Occasionally I’d get invited to parties that made what I saw in Waynesville look like dinner at a Trappist monastery. Wolverine held these soirees of unrestrained depravity at the Jesuit-owned Hotel Ignacio. “Always go with the Jesuits if you can. These smart boys are the playboys of the Church. The order has had centuries to learn how to hold secrets tight.” If you saw what went on in those rooms when Wolverine arranged the parties, the SJs better hold secrets tight. The Ignacio also had a level of luxury that Wolverine and Peregrine’s clientele expected. Rank, as they say, has its privileges.
I wish all mothers of the world a Happy Mother Day, excepting, of course, mothers who eat their young.