My Catdog

My favorite shoes’ laces have been disappeared. Raspberry suede half-boots with thin ties you can’t get just anywhere. They lie undigested in Louis’s intestines, by now the lower intestines, and if I am lucky, they will be spotted yet in some organic free-form in the sad lost world of a grey grit bin. If I am lucky Louis will not throw-up undigested bits of kibble, or sick green foam, or stop defecating, as did a neighbor’s feline—a lovely but daft tortoiseshell with a habit of ingesting earplugs. Small soft foam has no business in the nether regions of a domestic, especially feline, especially when habitual. Two different doctors, several visits among them, the unacknowledged find eventually in an x-ray, and one major surgery at last performed: over a thousand dollars and down yet another life. She is less cheerful, now.

My Louis must have been a dog in one of his past lives—cat people would say he is evolving rather than dog lovers who would argue contrarily. He is always chewing cords and strings. My knitting is not safe. Nor leather straps on expensive bags. All personal belongings with leashes, strings, tabs, and doohickeys are delicacies. At night he sleeps in the crook of my arm and licks me. Biting on occasion. He is deadly beautiful.