Let’s face it, folks: We live in some dark and troubled times. Israel and Palestine. Russia and Ukraine. Worst of all, my wife Larissa left me and decided – I don’t know why – to take the kids. Ha. Silly kids. They should be with papa. With daddy. In these times, it’s up to each of us to look inward towards the light. To be the change we want to see in the world. And that’s why I’m pleased to publicly announce that today I discovered I can fit my cat’s whole head in my mouth.
Now let me be clear: This is not a perverted thing that I do. Nor am I doing it with the end goal of harming my cat, Dorothy Pringle Princess. It’s merely something that materialized one day, as I was sitting home alone in my new studio apartment. The lights off. Freshly signed divorce papers at my feet. I was having my usual dinner: a bowl of microwavable ramen noodles, sans water, and ketchup, when Dorothy Pringle came and sat down next to me.
Needless to say, my first attempts were unproductive. It required practice and patience. It required a lot of free time. Which, fortunately I had, since my kids told me they wanted my wife’s new friend DAVID to be at their sporting events instead of me. So it was me and Dorothy Pringle’s sweet little Godzilla head against the world.
My ambition to fit my feline friend’s head into my mouth was not met well with others. My mother called and told me she was going to look into having me declared incompetent. My co-workers looked askance at me when they saw me doing mouth widening exercises in the breakroom at lunch. And I was taken off several projects by my boss because I “kept bringing the cat thing up to clients.” The world is bad right now! The world is fucked up! That’s why I had to bring up the thing with the cat’s head to the clients. It’s because the world is bad.
One day, Larissa phoned me to let me know that: “If the cat thing is true, I’m suing for full custody.” Well, that was what pushed me over the edge: I laid back on the filthy, unsheeted air mattress that now constitutes my bed, said: “Come here, kitty, kitty. Kitty, come here!” And then, I grabbed Dorothy Pringle, and with a force I’d never known before, stretched my mouth out like the mouth of a snake and I fit my cat’s whole head into my gaping maw. It was triumph, my friends.
But sadly, not a triumph meant to last. A few days later, I was arrested and imprisoned by the ASPCA. I didn’t even know they had the jurisdiction to do that. From there Dorothy Pringle – much like my children – was sent to live full time with Larissa. So, as I write this from my jail cell, I’m here to pass on a message of hope: The world is dark. Conflicts arise. Marriages end in acrimonious failure. But we always have goals. Every cat has a sweet little head. It’s simply up to us all, in our small way, to stretch out our mouths.