Treading.net

Felis silvestris lybica

George

Last week, a new study revealed that domesticated house cats are descendants of Felis silvestris lybica, a subspecies of wildcat found in the Middle East.
DBF IM’ed me this exchange:

DBF: So it looks like George and Gracie may be part of a terrorist sleeper cell.

DBF: I believe it. They sure sleep a lot.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Note to Al-Qaeda: George is inept. He can’t be relied upon to do anything right, much less declare jihad. In fact, he’s such a fraidy-cat that he was shaking from his rabies shot last weekend. I wouldn’t count on him.

I would think Gracie, the killer kat might be your best bet. Leave it to the females to get the job done.

DBF attempted to fly to Vermont last night, but his plane got delayed from taking off. During his hour and a half delay, he penned this rather genius email:

I’m sitting on the tarmac, waiting to take off…an hour and fifteen minutes late…again. This time, the cabin crew that’s coming in from a connecting flight are held up because there was a brawl on the plane between a few men and security quarantined the plane. So we’re here waiting for the crew to be allowed out of the plane and onto ours. Lame. I think Jetblue makes this shit up to keep people complacent at getting fucked over by their incompetence or something.

I think I mentioned on the phone…there’s a seriously morbidly obese woman carrying a huge stick. She has quite the tragic front-butt. she’s wearing a lime green Nautica tent/poncho/
tarp/t-shirt…which is ironic since she probably can’t even find her own feet with such a mammoth reverse-posterior. I don’t know where she’s sitting, probably in the back, but she HAS to be taking up more than one seat. There’s a couple kids across the isle from me I’d like to feed to her.

I had an aisle all to myself for a while till this disgusting douchebag moved up to sit near me from the back since there were free seats. After inhaling a sub sandwich and dropping ham in his lap, he’s now watching TV, occasionally snorging back snot loudly, while chewing his nails and flicking the guck and nail bits in my general direction. Hate him. Great, now he’s actively reading what I’m typing. DOUCHEBAG!!! He’s got a totally fake orange tan and is wearing ankle socks.

Now they’re saying 20 more minutes, which is what I’ve been hearing before I even got on the plane.

OMFG, get this fricking plane airborne. Never thought I say that. [DBF hates flying.]

Adults with braces are creepy. I rode the train home standing next to this woman who A: looked Amish or Mormon B: had braces C: was butt-ass unfortunate in the makeup and hair skills dept. and D: was shit fucking insane. She kept pulling her lips back and grimacing her braces at the people on the train, all the while having this expression that either said “I’m about to go flywheel loose and start licking the floor” or “OMG, I just took the most grevious dump in my grannypants” or both, I’m not a mind reader.

Uh oh, the toddler across the aisle is starting the apeshit stage. He’s staring at me too. If I was a real man, I’d offer the mom ten bucks for her kid and tell her it was because whale in the back of the plane was in the mood for some ribs. Baby-back, bitch.

The stewardess-dude is shaking his head like we’re all doomed. He has braces too.

Great Jehovah’s ball-sweat…the Stewardesses have arrived! Oh great, now they’re all chatting. Alright…off goes the laptop.

This morning I woke up to find both of the cats sprawled out on the bed with me: George smushed against my head, as usual, and Gracie near my feet. The three of us had a groggy, simultaneous head-lift when the alarm clock flipped on WNYC at 8 AM. George’s head collapsed back into the bed, as if to say, “Too…early…for…StoryCorps…”

We’ve had George and Gracie for about a year and a half now, but it wasn’t until last night that we realized we had a champion mouser on our hands.

Of course, I’m talking about Gracie (aside from the opportunity for hilarious photo ops, we expect very little from George). Beneath her super-soft, beautiful smoke grey coat and big blue-green eyes, lies the heart of a ferocious killer.

Last night, DBF and I were playing with George and trying to capture more airborne pictures, when we heard a crash in the bedroom. We thought Gracie might’ve accidentally jumped onto George’s food bowl, so we didn’t investigate. A few second later, Gracie comes padding into the living room where we sitting.

DBF: "Oh, Gracie’s got a mouse."

Me: (Jokingly) "Are you sure it’s not real?"

DBF: "No, it’s one of the little toy mice."

(Pause.)

DBF: "Oh my god. It is real."

After I screamed and scrambled into the corner of the couch, and DBF told me not to scream at Gracie, we watched as she tormented the mouse, which was petrified, but not dead. She’d set it down. It’d run around a bit, and she’d trap it and pick it up again, only to repeat several times. After it seemed like she wasn’t going to go in for the kill anytime soon, DBF trapped the mouse and we threw it out on the street.

This incident reminded of the time, several years ago, when Scooby (R.I.P.) came bounding into the kitchen from the backyard, and set a dead gopher at my feet. He was wagging his tail, so happy, until I realized what it was and screamed. After my Dad explained to me that it was wrong to scream at him for what was essentially a gift (not to mention a good thing that he was eradicating the backyard of gophers), we tossed it in the trash and rewarded him with a treat.

So that’s what we did with Gracie after we threw that mouse on the street, where if it’s not as good as dead, it’ll at least run and tell its mouse-friends to not mess with our apartment, in which resides a ferocious almost-killer kat.

One final snap before we had to take the harness off him. The red dye was turning him pink.

George is imagining his own little tropical oasis. He pictures getting a golden, sun-kissed tan, and perhaps a certain Puerto Rican pop star rubbing Coppertone on his belly. But while he waits for his water bowl to morph into the Caribbean Ocean, and the voice of WYNC’s Brian Lehrer to turn into the sweet whisperings of Señor La Vida Loca, he’ll settle for this modest patch of hardwood floor in a small one-bedroom in Brooklyn.