prev Rufus, where art thou? next
2003-10-27 | 12:13 a.m.

Felony is writing a story called "The Mystery of the Missing Cat" and coincidentally our own high-heeled boy cat hasn't come home yet. Nobody's seen him since this morning. It was a busy day, one thing after another. Hot day. Everyone did their Where's Rufus? doubletake, but nobody worried until the dark had been settled for hours. He should have been home by now. I feel guilty; I feel a kind of low-voltage dread. I refuse to get hysterical over a free-range cat but I'm rather fond of the bastard.

The worst part is that he'd lost his collar. I should have gotten him a new collar by now, an ID tag, a microchip. Should have gotten him neutered by now. I did call one place last week and they said it would be $140 between this and that, and I thought I would call around, get some other quotes. Surely we could get it done for less. We don't have that much money anyway. We're so broke right now I borrowed twelve dollars from Bambi yesterday just for pin money. And now we have no cat.

I keep imagining some bleeding-heart "cat person" luring him with thick herring-wet fingers, boxing him up and quarantining him in some cat-reeking carpeted bedroom. Rufus, who has discovered every breach in our fort, will never be able to escape the hermetically sealed cat prison unless he figures out how to remove the heating vent covers. And that's a lot to expect of a cat.

And then of course there's always the possibility that he's dead.

***

Last night I dreamed that I worked for a modern-day French marquis. I'm not entirely sure they still have marquis (marquises? marquisi?), but this fellow was quite imposing. One of his other employees was plotting against him. It was all very tense. Strangely, there was no sexual tension between me and the marquis, whose beautiful wife despised him. It was all about power and intrigue. I don't usually have dreams like that. There were also, if I recall correctly, lots of ski clothes, which is very uncharacteristic for me. The whole thing felt like somebody else's dream.

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