He is the oldest of my three cats, and the smallest. His size does not matter; he still lords over the other two. However if something displeases him he does not hesitate to show his distaste. Unfortunately, being unable to speak, he has to express his thoughts through puking.
Luckily he does not do this too often. Once when I left him alone on a four-day trip he puked on my bed to show his displeasure. When I first brought home the kittens he puked on the floor to show what he thought about that. Last time I went shopping, I accidentally picked up the wrong cat food. It was their normal brand but it was 'hairball' formula. Being outdoor cats, they usually do not have any hairball problems. If their tummy gets upset they just eat some grass and that gives them the fiber they need to pass a hairball out. They do not like the food much, but that does not stop them from eating it.
Well, last night the cat jumped up on his food table and saw the bowl was empty. He looked across the room at me, looked back at the bowl, and then with that nasty hyuk-hyuk-hyuk cat barf noise he spewed out a pile of barf. He then jumped off the table, looked directly at me, turned around and twitched his tail at me twice and then walked out. What a fucker.
The other two cats are too dumb to express anything like that. To them the food bowl is like rain, if its empty it will magically fill up eventually. That big hairless cat that they let live in the house has nothing to do with it filling up.
There a sort of neat website I have been checking out. I like to check out the 'for sale' section on craiglist. I have found goodies there from time to time. Well, someone made a website that crawls craiglist and then re-posts the ads as a collection of picture thumbnails. It's clever of them and really not that hard to do.
http://orlando.listpic.com/sss/
I need to pick up a watch for horror nights. I rarely use a watch since I lug my cell phone around and at work I am in front of my computer clock and in my car I am in front of the clock in there. Which is sometimes right. However If I am going to be doing shifts at horror nights I want a watch I can peer at and bemoan how long the night is. Finding a watch is no problem, but there is one particular watch that I want. They were very small and very simple watches. It was basically a small metal cylinder with a digital clock face on it fit around a simple elastic band. Like a hair band. The clock was small, about the size of those clocks on those 'clock pens' that came out in the 80's. I saw them once and thought 'Geeze, I like that... small light and functional. I should buy one.' But naturally I did not. Now I am trying to find one. They might be on ebay but I have no idea what they are called.
Turns out I am getting paid 7.25 and not 7.15 for horror nights. Ooh, yeah, I'm in the money now. I got my paycheck in the mail last night for that boring orientation I went to. Sweet.
Twenty years back, and Ed's cat is communicating through barf while he hunts a vintage watch. Let's go.
Ah, 2006, when a man’s greatest enemy was a hairball-formula misstep and his greatest tool was a Craigslist crawler rendered in thumbnails. The watch he seeks — a tiny metal cylinder on elastic — now lives only in nostalgia, because everyone wears a phone or a $400 health tracker that nags them to stand. Craigslist itself has aged into a haunted attic of missed connections, while the crawler’s descendants became slick apps that feed you listings from five counties and still feel emptier. And the cat? Outdoor cats were once a neighborhood fixture, puking on beds and eating grass; today’s indoor-only emperors demand boutique freeze-dried toppers or they will simply knock your mug off the counter. The $7.25 horror nights wage? That’s a fossil too — but I won’t pretend modern wages are a utopia, just more expensive ways to be disappointed. The more things change, the more Ed is still staring at a bowl, waiting for it to refill magically.
“2006 Ed, when that cat looked at you, barfed, and twitched his tail twice, did you ever consider that you were the one being trained, or did you just go buy the right food and thank him?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, you hit it right on the head. That little furry bastard has got me trained better than one of Pavlov's dogs, except instead of a bell it's the hyuk-hyuk-hyuk sound and a pile of barf. I stood there, looked at the mess, and thought, "Yep, I deserve this." Then I drove to the store, found the old food, and apologized under my breath while I paid. Did I thank him? Maybe not out loud, but I did give him an extra scoop, so, yeah, close enough. The worst part is I know exactly what he's doing. That tail twitch wasn't a thank you, it was him saying, "See? That's how it works, human." And I'm okay with it, because honestly, living alone with three cats, you gotta pick your battles, and I lost this one. Now where's that watch...
