"Look, Mary, I'm a killer", Dangerfield said.

I should have known she has cats. This morning, a picture in the email of the long hair on his own pillow, on her bed ("he let's you know it's his pillow").

Then she writes about cats plural, and jokes that they've had a "meeting" this morning, and, as at your typical recovery meeting, they kept getting up to get a drink of water (like we get up to get more coffee, see).

I've adopted cats, on occasion, or allowed them as house guests when they appear to be homeless. I usually name them "Rhuebella", "Mumps", "Measles", "Diphtheria", "Miasma" or some such. ("Time for din-din, Some Such!") I owe amends to them all. And to the women, most of these cats had.

Cats are fun sometimes. I like to poke my head around the corner, make eye contact, and then quickly withdraw. A second later, I look back and they're usually hyper-alert: the predator, I mean. Again I disappear, and then look again and the cat is ten feet closer. It's a short game. I poke my head out one more time and I'm pounced upon or swiped at.

I lived with a cat once that could hold a grudge for days. I'd have thrown it off the kitchen counter, or set it unexpectedly in flight with my foot (not a kick, I'd get my shoe under her belly when she was lying in my path, and lift and lob into the corner ferns).

It used to be I'd walk into her house and stop a moment, wondering if I was in trouble or not. Because if I was I could expect her to surprise me. She would leap as high as possible and swipe at me. It was always at an unexpected moment of course. (She didn't hide in the fridge like Kato, but would have.) And then it was over. She wasn't mad any more, and would come sit in my lap. Or try to. Get away, dammit, you got me on the neck that time you know! Toss her toward the TV.

In that situation, she'd just turn on me. The fight was back on. I'd go to my room, or get out of it somehow. Then, as I say, the grudge remained. Come to think of it, I don't know if I ever entered that house and really had to think, whether we were all right today.

My email life and real life have intersected now. I waited three months to ask this woman to coffee, (she's new to Recovery, came in on her own!), then asked for her email address instead, once I had an excuse. I don't know what I was thinking, but I was thinking it backwards.

Really, I want to get to know her in person. Letters are nice but even sober I tend to become an E-Lothario. So in my first email (accompanied with a picture of the puppy of course) I mentioned that we ought to go around the corner after the Friday meeting to a coffee house. Then I sort of went on, and on, like I do here.

She wrote back that she likes letters and she is so tired of getting forwarded jokes. Now we've got this odd dance going, switching from in person to online to in person. That's great, except I've got a sickness where I keep track of who owes whom an email. And in my week of Saturdays, just passed, I was in the internet abyss (you know? like when you end up googling your ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, etc.) and she was about two minutes late replying to me. I wanted instant gratification of course. Just an LOL, and then a little more autobiography.

So. She has cats. I'm allergic but it's not the sneezing and wheezing that bothers me so much as having an itchy nose all the time. And of course, if I get on the cat's wrong side.

Women should have dogs, not cats. Big labs. Or whatever Mimi has. Big happy dogs that can make a loud WOOF to warn a burglar away.
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Gawd. I've been asking this for twenty years and feel like a broken record. But why aren't there more contract killings on women's cats? Or rather, there must be, you know, how do the culprits get away with it? I'm not asking because I would do such a thing! I just know felinicide must be under-reported.

Wait.

Wait again.

He says I've already done it in my heart.

It would be so wrong.

But anyway here's what you do. (It's really so obvious, I mean I've even seen it done before, and by the owners themselves.) You overfeed and underexcercize them. Pamper them with love, displaying to all your friends what a hopeless sentimental cat-lover you are. Ask God to bless them, too, since they're your enemies, these cats, and he'll pour hot coals on their heads, so to speak, to try and make them change their ways.

Then suddenly switch, and start playing with them a lot, especially the "surprise!" games, because you are a cat lover and very concerned that they need get lean and mean again.

It's slow, I imagine. Kind of like killing a plant with poison from an eye-dropper (ha! The Ginger Man did that for some reason. Just plain malice. It was the landlord's plant.)

I am getting so far ahead of myself it's scary.

Let me pray about this a moment.



Before the Supreme Court, no less).

The problem solves itself. If I fall in love with this woman, I obviously will hold no malice towards her cats. Thanks for visiting.