The day I brought the kitty home I had a temperature of 102 degrees. The drive to the humane society had been an act of rebellion against my better judgement: I was a little dizzy, a little nauseated, my throat swarming with antiviral armies wielding spears, javelins, occasionally catapults.

But I had been sweating in bed for three days. The sixteen year old in me moped to the kitchen and whined. “Oh my god, get out of the house.”

The ten year old in me perked up. “AND LOOK AT KITTENS.”

So I popped two Dayquil and took my adult body on a feverish adventure. I knew what I wanted. An orange cat, male, two or three years old at least. I would name him Milo.

More photos of Sashimi Bun: here.

(From The Big Book of Chilling Ghost’s, by Annie Mathiowetz, age 8.)

Once there was a kitten that loved to play on graves!

One day she was walking on the graves like she always did when whack! Something was pulling on her!

“Meow!”

She was very scared. She cried and cried for help, but every house was asleep! So that was the end of the cat, or . . .

“Meow!”

Was it?

She finally freed herself and she still didn’t learn her lesson!

The very next day she did it again!

And the next day there was blood on the grave! But it wasn’t the kitten’s! Then the next day she saw the blood began to rise!

She went out and chased it all around the yard! And she finally caught it!

But the blood didn’t stay on the ground! It began to sink with the kitten on it!

The kitten tried to free herself but couldn’t! Not this time. She cried, she howled, but no one heard her!

“Meow!”

And no one ever saw the kitten again! They searched the graves in every graveyard, but all they found was the blood that took the kitten in!

So the next time you see blood on a grave you better not walk on it!

R.I.P.

(Image taken at the Mpls/St. Paul Zombie Pub Crawl. Full album: here.)

“You still have my Halloween decorations?” I cried.

This weekend, Paige and I decided to decorate the apartment for Halloween. We pulled out the cardboard box she’d set aside for us: skeleton lights, skull lights, pumpkin lights. A rubber spider on a string. A wicker witch I’d purchased in my questionable tastes phase. A red light bulb, some clay pumpkins we’d made and painted as kids.

“My Halloween tree!” I hooted.

“Tra la la la, decorating the Halloween tree,” I sang from the living room floor. “Tra la la la, little ghost ornament on the Halloween tree.”

“You need to settle down,” Paige said.

Okay, I confess: the above kitty is new, purchased a couple of months ago at Michael’s. (Like, in August. I walked through the inappropriately early Halloween section on my way to the frames and was blinded by its beautiful purple light, enchanted by its wee dumb eyes. I stopped in my tracks. “SOLD,” I said to no one in particular.) And I still need a paper jointed skeleton for our door. We’ve netflixed Tales From the Crypt, season 3. Who’s coming over for cider?

But most wonderfully, every time you sit down and open your laptop, warm things come out of nowhere and get all snuggly-like.

It’s actually very possible to be productive this way — assuming you aren’t so distracted with enchantment that you are compelled to document the experience.

“Jack,” I’ll say. “Jack Jack.” I’ll check the food and the water. I’ll pet his glorious dark ruff, pull the tail that looks like a duster until he chirps and glares at me with gold-piece eyes. I’ll sleep in the space you usually sleep and turn off the light at the same time we do every night. But he is not so easily fooled. The other kitty, the dopey one we say loves me, is purring devotionals at my feet, all warmth and fuzz. “Jack,” I say, “Jack Jack.”

This is how we speak to them: purely in names. But I don’t know if he even hears me; he has buried himself in a pile of your clothes in the next room. He is wearing your underwear and has barricaded the door. He’s smoking your stash and fucking up your recycling; I hear the paper bin crash. All of the neighbors will know you are gone tonight.

Howl! Howl, howl!

Pipsqueak, or, name TBD

“So . . . what do you think?” I asked an hour and ten cats later. I was holding a five-month-old scrawny male, with grey spots and a siamese nose. He’d been one of the first cats we’d picked up, and drooped into our arms obligingly, falling asleep within minutes. We’d wondered aloud if he’d been drugged.

Jurvis gave me his overwhelmed, “I can’t make decisions right now, please, please don’t make me” face.

“Daisy is pretty, and calm . . .” I said of the marmalade-colored, older female. She’d been hiding under a bed until a few minutes prior. Now she sat in her cage, looking sad. When I tried to pet her, she let me, and continued to look sad. We’d picked her up for a few minutes, and she didn’t resist, sad sad sad.

“Yeah.”
“But. Maybe . . . too calm? Too fragile?”
“Yeah . . . it’s true. I’m worried Jack would murder her.”
“Yeah. We need a cat that’s both playful and cuddly. Hmm . . . I mean, this kitten has been nothing but nice.”

Jurvis smiled, and poked at the sleeping kitten’s belly. It stretched in my arms and looked up at him with big eyes.

“My favorite, though, is Sissy.”

Sissy sneezed adorably in the next room.

“The one with the upper respiratory infection?”
“Yeah, so. I guess we can’t take her.”
“Right.”
“But, she’s the cutest.”
“Cuter than this guy?”
“I like how her eyes take up half her head.”
“Ah.”
“But they said we shouldn’t introduce her to another cat with an infection like that.”
“Ah, yeah.”
“Pity, because she’s totally the cutest.”

A woman whose shift was nearly over perked her ears. “You want Sissy? I bet you can have Sissy.” She stood up from her folding chair and hobbled over to a front window.

“Erin!” she screamed to the sidewalk below. “Erin, did you tell these kids that they couldn’t take Sissy?”

Erin hollered an intelligible response.

“She’s sick! Sissy’s sick, Erin!”

A car door slammed.

“So they can’t take her, then? Erin? Erin!”

She looked back at us in frustration. “I can’t hear a word she’s saying. Why don’t you run down and talk to her.”

She hobbled back to her chair.

“Marco is very sweet and cuddly,” I offered.
“Yeah?”
“But he’s eight. And ignores other cats. I worry he’s too old for Jack.”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . I guess I think . . . we should get this kitten, here.”

“Are you sure?” The woman asked. “I’m writing down his name, in your forms. There’s no turning back. You want this kitten?”

Jurvis and I looked at one another helplessly, neither of us willing to say no.

“I can’t make this decision,” he said.

I turned to the woman. “Yes,” I said.

In this manner the issue was decided.

The kitten purred and purred and purred.

“Jack’s on fire!” Jurvis shouted.

I sat on the couch, a forkful of drunken noodles frozen in front of my mouth, watching as our blazing kitty ran towards the windows. We’re always yelling at him when he jumps on the table, and he knows that the windows, with their long gauze curtains, are a proper sanctuary. He’s allowed in the windowsills.

Well, now the curtains are on fire, I thought. The flames are crawling upwards and licking the ceiling. The entire apartment is burning down, and you haven’t even registered it yet. What will you save? Laptop? Camera? Striped socks? What will it be like to lose everything? To escape tragedy? Will you need the emergency ladder, stashed under the bed? Do you even know exactly where that is?

“I got him,” Jurvis was saying, face smooshed against the windowsill with the cat smothered in his arms. Jack — never one to be tackled, patted down, or generally prohibited from movement — mewed plaintively in his grasp, and the entire room reeked of smoke and scorched fur.

“Oh,” I said. “Hey, uh, good.”

But part of me still thought I was standing outside right then, covered in charcoal smudges and gazing upwards.

The one place he’s not supposed to be.

This isn’t actually very convenient either.

Jack goes on a tear every night between eleven and one in the morning, playing parkour with the furniture and curtains. His favorite thing to do is “the running slide”: this mostly occurs on the wood floors between rugs, but has also been known to happen on the coffee table (he gets a head start from the kitchen) — resulting in laptops, beverages, papers exploding in all directions. His pet peeve is objects resting on surfaces, and also, his own tail. He will chase it for much longer than is generally considered dignified, mewing like a banshee. Our lower neighbor’s pet peeve is all of the above habits: almost every night our floor thunders with his pounding.

I’ve never met him, but twice I’ve dreamed of going downstairs and knocking on his door to apologize.