Wednesday, May 21, 2008

cat quandaries

Dear Venom Literati,

I have nothing literary to write about but I do have two current cat quandaries: one is mine, one is Mr. Cake's.

The first one (mine) is the mystery of Mr. Cake's age. Until the other night I thought he was like five, because Garrison has always said very firmly that he is five. The other night we were talking about Mr. Cake's previous owners--there are many, which is why he suffers from serious abandonment issues. He was originally discovered by a woman named Liliana, who was from Columbia. When she finished school, she had to return to Columbia, which is how Gato became Garrison's.

Liliana inherited Gato around the time she first started school, and was in school for four or so years, which would make gato like 7, which is still okay with me. However it was revealed to me the other night that Garrison has no idea how old Gato was when he was discovered by Liliana. He could have been a tiny newborn or he could have been seventeen. There is no documentation of this anywhere, and Liliana is lost in Columbia, so we can never know. So my beautiful kittycat could be anywhere between seven and fifty three years old. This is so disturbing, but also maybe better, but also so sad.

This is Gato's quandary: it involves the new litter we bought him because Garrison liked the demonstration of it that the Petco lady gave us. I thought the lady and her litter were weird, but whatevs, it's called 'World's Best Cat Litter' or something and it is weird and made of corn. Gato doesn't know whether to eat it or crap in it; mostly he just digs around searching for his longlost previous litter. (See: abandonment issue #3,456)

Gato has other quandaries, too, such as which human foods to like and which to dislike. He won't eat any meat that humans eat; he loves butter but not bread, and also loves cucumber dill hummus but not other flavors of hummus. I guess he is a spread man, but he is so particular about them. I had the idea the other night of dousing Beachwood in butter so that they could become best friends instead of hating each other. Once I left a half-eaten granola bar in the windowsill and I am pretty sure he devoured it.

What should I/Mr. Cake do about these quandaries? Literary solutions only, please.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our entire 3-day book should be about kittycat mortality. We should explore ways in which to make cats live longer by using unusual litter. Once we tried the crystal stuff, and Eli was effing miserable. Crystals do not prolong cat life. Only human life.
But corn makes everyone live forever. Look at me: All I eat is tortilla chips, and I'm a specimen of robust health. Except for that cracked rib. That I got from coughing too hard.

potato said...

Are you guys entering the 3-day novel contest? That's on labour/labor day, not memorial day. Also, World's Best is the world's second best cat litter. The best is this lavendar smelling kind you get at Kriser's. But they're both good. I feel like an ass now.

Anonymous said...

That's funny that you go to Kriser's too.
Also, yes, we're asses. We figured out the labor day/memorial day mistake, like, yesterday.
we're making our own rules now.

Kathryn said...

gato is still young. i can tell. you can tell when cats are old. i mean, i can tell. what i'm saying is, i can tell. gato is still young.