Almost Like Baby’s Tapping On The Window

Sometimes I ride with my neighbor’s cat in a basket on my handlebars. He’s a feisty little bastard, the cat, but I sort of love him and like to show him the world. And my neighbor, the cat’s caretaker, Nancy, she’s sweet but deluded, so it was very easy to convince her that cats needed to see the world. The cat’s name is Zee. It’s short for some other longer Z-sounding name, like Zebediah or Zecherian. Or, no, no! It was Zeemanish. Imagine it. But at some point the Zee nickname just stuck—that’s a shock, huh?—and everyone nearly forgot about its Zeemanish source.

(Our more attentive and ginkgo-tea-sipping readers recall my experience with a sweet British man named Desmonder, who was somehow not from India even though his name was Desmonder. Well, just try and tell me that Zeemanish the cat isn’t from India and I’ll punch you in the teeth. I’m not wrong twice about these things.)

Aside from Zee’s adventurous and world-seeking nature, he’s also got one strange and overriding characteristic: he has a very interesting relationship with—how would I say it? A sex partner? A fuck tool?—yeah it’s really that, a fuck tool, that Zee more or less uses to his heart’s content for carnal pleasure.

I call it Baby. The fuck tool, I mean. Zee, neutered for years now, uses Baby as an unwilling and silent sexual partner at any time. Baby’s just a little stuffed animal, and really Zee just puts it in his mouth—bites the shit out of it, actually—while he dry humps the air and makes some really guttural moan-meow sounds, all the while trying desperately to make eye contact with any human in the room. Yes, it is as uncomfortable as that sounds, and Nancy just lets it happen. But then when Zee’s finished, he usually just leaves Baby alone on the floor afterward, just drops this poor little thing and walks away all strutting-like, as though we ought be impressed that he can fuck an inanimate object and leave it behind without a care in the world.

I wanted to teach Zee a little bit about manners, and maybe even a little about romance. So I thought it would be a good lesson to take him to my job this morning. It seemed to fit.

I was hired by an elderly gentleman who had designs on showing his wife that although he was turning 85, he was still young at heart, and full of life. And exploding with energy. And to convey this to his wife, the man decided he would do just that—explode. Out of a cannon, sicko. As in the actual man would get blasted out of a cannon. My job was to make sure his wife was present and had no idea what was about to happen.

The sweet old man had given me a code word so that she would know I was to be trusted. The code word was “billygoat” and I was to say it immediately as she opened the door. I knocked, she opened, I smiled and said billygoat, and she gasped with excitement. She grabbed her jacket, which was sitting right next to the door, almost like she was waiting for any old billygoat that came by, and she was off to the side of the house. Where she got onto her own bike. Yeah, you fucking read that right. She rode with me. The old man knew exactly what he was doing hiring me. And he kept it as a surprise for me as well.

Well of course, as you no doubt predicted (unless you’re a cold-hearted bastard), the whole thing went off without a hitch, the old man flying through the air like a perfect pencil thrown out of the cannon’s mouth.

"Billygoat!"

The wife loved it. He loved it. I loved them. Zee was a little spooked by the cannon blast, but I think he had a good time overall. And I think, who knows, maybe I taught him a little bit about love, too, in the end.

When we got back, Nancy walked out to welcome us home. Zee burst out of the basket and ran, top speed, into the house.

“Whoa!” said Nancy as he flew past her.

“I don’t know what that’s about,” I said. “We had fun.”

“I’m sure you did, he’s probably just eager to get inside.”

“He wants a little piece of that Baby ass, I bet.”

“Oh, would you stop!” Nancy said, laughing. “Crying out loud.”

“It’s almost,” I said, conspiratorially, leaning in, “it’s almost as though Baby’s just sitting there tapping on the window or something. Begging for him to come inside.”

“You’re really strange.”

“I know. But you’re the one with the neutered cat who fucks a stuffed animal.”

“I know it. Don’t I know it.”