HUMOR

I Like My Psychopaths Like I Like My Animals: Cat-Shaped

You flightless meowing owl things, you sleep artists, you purring homicidal sadists, we salute you.

Cats don’t see you.

Cats see through you, and still they give you the purrs and slow blinks, and they condescend to siphon some of your breath away while you sleep. They like your vintage.

Take the compliment.

They sip your breaths whenever you’re not swallowing spiders all night long, which cats observe, doing nothing to stop the spiders. Cat policy concerning horrifying things happening to other people is strictly “Do not interfere,” and “However, we must observe.”

My mother had a tiny gray kitty named Mitzy, a German name meaning “faith of God.” Mitzy was an atheist. When she stared into darkened doorways and random corners of rooms, neither angel nor demon could withstand her unbelief.

Mitzy could de-spiritualize any room you threw at her, and she could do this:

It was a rainy day, a day so rainy that Mitzy’s realm, the basement, began to flood.

Mom was upstairs reading when out of nowhere something touched her bare foot, something small and cold, like a drip, but alive.

She looked down and saw Mitzy, Mitzy pressing one wet paw on her foot.

“Mitzy?” said Mom. “Why’s your hand wet?”

Why indeed? said Mitzy’s urgent, expressionless face.

Mom followed logic to the basement and fought the water while Mitzy slept somewhere, everywhere, dreaming of an empty heaven.

My Mindy, my boy, and I have two sister cats: the Tomboy and the Newt.

The Symbiotic Sisters, Part I

When Newt talks, it comes out in a shivery, super-cute squeak. She’s mortified. She tries to never talk, not ever. And most of the time, she doesn’t need to talk, not with a spokesperson in the house, a Tomboy whose every effing exhale is a word.

The Symbiotic Sisters, Part II

Once or twice a month, Tomboy perches on high heights — the buffet cabinet, the big radio, the fridge— and all the talking stops.

What comes next is difficult not to watch:

• Her head bobs.
• Her belly bulges and compresses as rhythmically as the bellows of hell.
• She makes the reverse-gulping sound of corpses as they murmur their gases.
• Her eyes become the wild, walleyed eyes of medieval torture art.
• And then…
• When the moment is just right…
• She speaks in the tongues of cats primeval and pukes a waterfall.

Tomboy watches it fall, fascinated, looking at the spectacle like it’s a gift from someone else.

The puke lands in a splash. Mindy and I shout, “Why?!” My son cheers. He imitates Tomboy’s bob and belly work, hauling burps up out of himself, then he calls, “Newt! Hey, Newt!” though he doesn’t have to call.

Newt’s on the way already.

In fact, Newt is here, already chowing down on the fruit of Tomboy while Tomboy watches, fascinated again, her tail wrapping cozily around her, a picture of the serpent as he barber poled up the shapely ankle of Eve, etc.

Contentment.

My Mindy says, “Newt has the itchiest head in the county.” Newt’s head is the only place she wants to be scratched.

You scratch her belly, her back, her flanks, her shanks, and she’ll whip her head from side to side and up and down, saying, “See this whipping, nodding thing? Scratch it. If I whip something else around, scratch that. Until then, this. Chop chop.”

If you don’t scratch her head in time, she turns her hands into candy-cane hooks, then hooks your hands and pulls them up to her itchy chin, crown, and cheeks.

Tyrant of Itch.

In sum, Tomboy talks and pukes. Newt itches and…what else?

She flops.

You’re in the kitchen. You leave the kitchen, look through the dining room, all the way to the living room, and you see Newt sitting in the middle of the room.

Middle is key.

If she’s near the piano or a chair, she’ll rub her flop energy against the piano or chair and not flop.

But when she’s in the middle of a room and there’s nothing nearby to brush against, all you have to do is lock eyes with her, and she’ll flop to the floor.

It’s the most clumsy-graceful, beautiful thing. She rolls her head forward and her body rolls after it into a fall that perfectly resembles the fall of a crescent moon after you try balancing this crescent on one of its points.

Newt’s fall looks dangerous because of its suddenness, but it’s a stage fall, completely controlled and safe.

She uses her belly and fur perfectly, producing only a soft thud, the sound of a heart’s thump at the sight of love, and it works every time:

Whoever pushes her over with their eyes drops everything, overwhelmed by Newt cuteness, and goes to her, happy to scratch, happy to take orders from her whipping head and hooking hands.

In other words, I love cats more than anyone, and so do you.

Therefore, without further ado, and with a poor excuse for a transition, here’s this:

It’s a book!

It’s a coloring book!

And it’s chock-full of pure psychopathy clothed in adorable fuzzy onesies…

Cats!

Enjoy.

P.S. Here’s a sneak peek…