Cat Story
By H.G. Miller
So, I’ve spent most of the night cleaning the crud out of my mouse. It’s a fascinating process; actually, exploring the myriad of places dust can build up inside a simple electronic device.
Of course, what I’m really doing is procrastinating. I’ve been stuck on this story for about a week now. I’ve got a killer opening line, but everything I follow it up with seems to fall flat.
Check it out:
Looking back, the cat was asking for it.
Intrigued? You should be. What happened to this poor feline? What kind of a sinister bastard is this narrator, that he seems happy about the cat’s demise?
Can you feel the poetry in the sentence? Back. Cat. Ask. The language begs to be taken far too seriously by literature professors a hundred years from now.
Sadly, the story ends there. As soon as I start to get into the details, I lose interest. The true story involves my friend Eric and I feeding this cat that managed to strand itself on top of some dumpsters near downtown Kansas City.
It was a heartwarming moment, actually. One of those instances in life when you can see the true humanity of your friends and realize why you cherish their involvement in your life.
Heartwarming, but not funny. The sadistic part of me thought it was downright hilarious that this tiny kitten managed to haul himself on top of this dumpster, and then lacked the capacity to jump back down.
Eric and I were wary of actually climbing this fence in order to get to the cat, so we just shoved food through the wires so the little fella could have something to eat until the construction crew came by in the morning to free him.
I want to turn this into an absurd tale about two twenty-somethings getting arrested for scaling a fence to save a kitten that darts from sight as soon as the authorities arrive.
Do you know what it’s like to be able to describe a story better than you can tell it? This sucks.
The interrogation scene would have been pure gold.
“Whachu doin’ in that dumpster, boy?”
“Saving a cat, officer.”
“Mm-hmmm.”
Okay, so maybe it’s a little derivative, and stereotypical, and well, okay you see what I mean. In my head, it’s brilliant. Typed out…. Not so much.
I’m about to scrap the thing and move on to something else. I’m trying to keep from writing about my new job just yet. It’s only been a week, and people don’t seem to understand that my razor-edged observations aren’t meant to be bitter, just cathartic.
Maybe I’ll write something about changing a washer out of the bathroom faucet. That was last night’s procrastination event. The one good thing about writer’s block: I get a lot of things done around the house.