Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Send not to ask
On Tuesday at about 4:30 pm, long-time, and much loved, Webdiarist, Claude, breathed his last in this world as a result of a lethal injection administered by his treating vet. Atypically, he went quietly. In a prescient piece of subterfuge, he managed to get out this message which washed up on the Editor’s desk today.
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| SEND NOT TO ASK It’s not to the point to talk about para – what’s that thing where humanes really are out to get you? I suppose I should be used to it by now as a 19 year-old diabetic cat. Felix domesticus they call us. Well, it’s my domesticus and I’ll relieve myself where I like thanks very much. Fat and Rude keeps talking about something he calls the green needle and he was talking to a bloke who knows a bloke who’s a taxidermist. Apparently they’re a dying breed as well. Never been in a taxi myself. I know they’re out to get me. Just because the old legs don’t work quite the way they used to, my tongue has developed a mind of its own and my tail’s gone dinosaur on me (controlled by a brain even smaller than the one in my head) doesn’t mean I’m ready for the scrap heap. I can still hold my own – take those tiles that tried to take me on the other day – shat all over them then pissed myself laughing. I’ve started collecting vegetable peelers. Lovely colours – pity cats are colourblind. Where was I? Ah yes. Mess. Can’t stand mess. I’ve been cleaning off all the detritus the humanes keep on those things they call their desks. You’d think they’d clean up. Mmmmm biscuits. And I can still get to the keyboard when they aren’t looking. Just in case though – you can’t be too careful with these humanes about - I Claude, cat extrordinaire, of this realm, give devise and bequeath my furball collection to the Macleay Museum within the University of Sydney, the institution which, these many years, has provided my veterinary services and a constant supply of insulin, students to claw, pass on cat scratch fever to and generally torment. It has been an approach I have always taken to birds. Funny, I’ve never seen a male vet student. If they get me and put me in that basket of no return, I’ll be back. I hedged my bets a few years ago when I got too slow to catch native wildlife and became a Buddhist. Next time, I’m going to come back as a cat. Mmmmm – fillet steak – wonder what they’re up to. Sleepy time. Oh no, there’s the cat basket – I told you they were out to get me. Donne like a dinner.
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Into that good night
No more fur everywhere (no more making Fat and Rude look like a silver-backed gorilla). No more shredded upholstery. No more yowling in the middle of the night. No more humanes cleaning up unspeakable messes. No more force-feeding of honey between viciously sharp teeth.
No more purrs as recognition of Malcolm Duncan's status as a good and faithful servant.
Requiscat in pace, Claude (and forgive me the unavoidable pun).
Vale Claude
A long and full life, sad nonetheless it reached its end. My thoughts are with your humble servant who attended you through life. May the afterlife mice be catchable and the laps warm. And let's hope whatever new kitten strides in to give your former servant a new training in obedience is at least half as erudite as your good self.
He was OK for a bloody cat
old friends and bookends
I hope for Claude's friend Malcolm B's sake this is a literary death. The real deal is not recreational for all concerned.
The unstinting efforts of my own cat to constantly clear my desk, usually in my presence, reminds me this "clean" fetish is an article of faith amongst the furry brethren (and sistern).
But the writer hazards a guess that the quietness at the end could relate as much to substances in Claude's Churchillian bloodstream. Claude cryptically makes reference to this himself, in his reference of a "green" needle. Surely allusive of imbibance of Absinthe.
But we must adjourn on this solemn injunction:
"Cats do not have owners- they have staff."
Malcolm, rejoice!
Like myself, you have experienced the sublime euphoria derived of bare toleration.
Mourn not for Claude, for he has adjourned to a better place and now dozes nestled within that great Lap in the sky. Mind you, one will surely miss his sheer alliteracy.
No more Whiskas and offal for him; he is surrounded by vast mounds of Crayfish, and the memory of his Operation of a previous life is behind him, as he frolics new-made in pursuit of all that female pussy again within his clasp.
In his new world he sleeps on the bed and the two-legs curl fetally in a straw basket five sizes too small in the coldest/ warmest corner of the room, mice have no holes from which to retire to further taunt from the twilight and birds are wingless tasting like roast chook. All dogs are blind, toothless and made of prawn meat and the fish cannot retreat to the depths of an empty pond.
Would any person recall a feline from such a world for return to this vale of tears?