face pressed up against the glass

The cat was thrilled. I’d found a can of slightly dusty albacore in the back of the cupboard behind the new-fangled tuna pouches and from the other end of the house the orange boy somehow heard the tiny sound of a hand can opener.  A fraction of a second later he had teleported the length of the house and was rubbing against my leg, shaking in anticipation. Tuna! There is tuna! In a can! It’s been months! Damn you, pouches!

I set the mostly emptied can on the kitchen floor and he circled it in disbelief: is it real? Can it be?  It smells different - not the chunk light but the solid white - but finally it cleared inspection and he jammed his entire head into the tiny little can.  He would push against the can while trying to get every last little bit and this would cause the can to move away from him, so he’d follow it without lifting his head, skating around the kitchen as a tuna can/cat hybrid.  Or perhaps a hockey puck/cat hybrid.

The can licked clean, the orange cat decided the only thing that could make this perfect time better would be to go take a massive crap.  Or at least I assume that’s what happened, becuase he disappeared off to the corner with the litter boxes and a few minutes later came the sound of sand hitting the wall. And again. And again.  For multiple minutes.  I think he might have emptied one box completely into the other.  And then moved the whole mountain back into the first box. And then maybe back again. And then tunneled to China, perhaps to share the news: Hey! There is tuna again!

He sauntered over and plopped on the arm of the chair with his best drunken tiger look and went Mrrrrowt! which I have never been able to accurately translate.  It could be: Hey! There is tuna! Or - Hey! The litter box is full of Chinese cats! Or possibly, Hey! Enjoy the simple things, have no shame, and attack all pens! He might be on to a good theory there; after all, look how well he turned out.

Even though the date nearly slipped by me, for a few weeks now I’ve seen it approaching, not with a particular sadness or dread, but simply: it is coming.

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The other night I had a dream, the first I can remember in years. I snuck into a concert in a baseball stadium, not for the show but to see friends on the crew, and I was dressed in a baseball uniform, an old style, from not quite a century ago perhaps. I guess there was some sort of old baseball event going on before the show. As I was caught and branded a fraud, I woke up. Or at least, I think I did. My overactive internal censor brands me a fraud all the damn time.