Tomfoolery + Impulse

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My fat tabby Doyle watched as I poured hard kibble into his bowl. Litter crystals clung to the fur on his feet and I knew I’d be rolling in them when I went to bed later. He looked at his bowl, and then back to me, and I looked at him.

“No,” he said flatly, and turned to crawl back under the comforter. I pulled the blanket back and stared at his flat, disgruntled face. He had long eyebrows, a short mustache, and a pinched nose that did nothing to improve his sour look.

“What do you mean no?”

“I demand wet food, Kenneth.”

“I just filled your bowl.” He plopped down with one leg high in the air.

“It brings me no pleasure.”

I almost argued. Instead I picked up the bowl and went to the kitchen. I ran water over the kibble until it became soft, stirred it with my pinky finger, and put it back on the ground. He sniffed at the bowl and sneezed into it.

“This is not wet food.”

“And my names not Kenneth, yet here we are.”

We stared at each other.

“You’ve got food in your bowl.”

“It brings me no pleasure.”

Before I could argue, I noticed another cat outside of my backdoor. He was smaller than Doyle, but that wasn’t much of an accomplishment. The grey cat wiped one paw down the window, leaving a dirty streak. Asshole. I shook my head no at the cat and turned back to continue my argument with Doyle. The grey cat sat up and placed both paws on the window again, but this time he pushed, and the door creaked open. I yelled at him to stop but he pushed further and slipped in the moment his head could fit through. The plastic door caught on his hips and he wiggled aggressively until he shook off the door and sprinted inside. He left muddy tracks in his wake across my tile floor and old area rug until he stood next to Doyle.

“We demand wet food.” The pair said in unison. I set the bowl down in front of the new cat and he, too, sniffed at it and then sneezed.

“It’s cold” He said and moved it to the side with his dirty grey paw. “We demand hot food.”

“Yes, hot food!” Doyle cried before I could deny either of them. The new cats voice was higher than Doyle’s and his nose was more pinched, nearly between his orange eyes. His grey fur was dirty much like the rest of him, and it was a short, even length all over his body. His tail, however, was nothing more than a stump. He’ll be Dirt, I decided. Dirt and Doyle both watched me as I stood on the edge between the living room and the kitchen. I picked up the bowl and scraped into something more microwave safe and let it heat for a minute. The smell was putrid, a moist combination of corn flour and fish, which I attempted to whip into an acceptable paste and set in front of them. They both sniffed it this time, Dirt even licked it, but then they sneezed into each other’s faces.

“This brings me no pleasure.” Doyle said, and I couldn’t blame him, it certainly brought me no pleasure. I looked over at my open pantry. It was relatively bare, with multiple bags of potatoes that were beginning to grow into each other and packages of somewhat fresher powdered potatoes. Among those sat a tin can of baked beans. I opened the can into a new glass bowl and set that into the microwave to cook. Doyle and Dirt watched patiently, but Dirt had moved back into my living room, his stub tail lazily rubbing the mud from his butt into the area rug. I stared at the stain until the microwave beeped. Again, I whisked the beans and set them down in between the two cats. Doyle stood and sniffed in the general direction of the bowl, taking a tentative step before rolling onto his back.

“Would you eat this, Kenneth?” Dirt asked, and I admit I was partially offended.

“Yes, I would eat this, it’s baked beans? What do you— you don’t even live here. Why won’t you eat it? It’s hot food.”

“It brings me no pleasure.”

“Well what would bring you pleasure?”

“Ham!” Chanted three more cats from my window sill that I hadn’t seen come in. They were all in varying stages of distress, from small matts in his fur to one being completely hairless in his midsection. The last one was a creamy off white. His lower teeth stuck out in front of his top and he had no whiskers.

“I can’t afford wet food, what makes you think I can afford ham!” I ask them all, as more cats push through my back door. They’ve broken the screen out of it now and they climb over each other to crowd my living room, I can no longer see my floor. They stand on top of the table and the bannister, they knock over the beans and howl for ham. I pick up and set down cats in a desperate effort to find Doyle among the masses. He is sitting above the other cats on my bookshelf, having knocked off half its contents onto the floor. “I’m on benefits!” I plead, “It’s too expensive to feed you exclusively wet food, or ham! Just give me some time and I can get you either later!”

“We are cats!” The chorus of felines chant, “We cannot comprehend capitalism, welfare, or your financial limitations! HAM!”