Morning Dog

by Oleg Clark Kagan

     This morning I opened my eyes, put on my glasses, and noticed the cat observing me from the bookcase.

     “Hello cat,” I said. It sort of seemed like that wasn’t enough, so I stuck my tongue out through chapped lips and blew a raspberry. Ray ignored the fruit.

     He was probably waiting for a full performance of T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” sung in falsetto accompanied by the morning breeze, and hummingbird chirps. All this, even though he knew that the breeze was hungover from a late night carousing with hurricanes, and the hummingbirds were away on a Disney gig. Clearly, he didn’t care. Cats are like that.

     Anyway, I didn’t really feel like amusing the cat. Heck, if my sleeping was enough to keep him enthralled, the struggle to get up would surely leave him reeling.

     The phone alarm began to quietly holler shaking Ray’s placid exterior. It was nice that he didn’t have the upper hand anymore. Reaching for the phone I thought, mornings are stupid, and threw the by-now shrieking iPhone across the room. It refused to change its tune, which annoyed me.

     “Those things are indestructible…” the cat conveyed telepathically, “…like the proletariat.”

     “I don’t need none of your Marxist bullcrap right now, cat,” I hissed. If Ray had been a dog, he would have sulked off at that point. Unfortunately, Ray is all cat.

     “Oh, so you think the class struggle is some kind of hoax?” He began.

     “Don’t start, Ray…”

     “Don’t start? I’m just trying to help you! You’re the one who has to cast off the warm blankets of social equality for the toil and drudgery of working for the man! Capitalism has you trapped…” His eyes narrowing at the hated word.

     “Don’t you see?” He trailed off gravely. The alarm was now protesting my horizontal orientation at full force, bullhorns, signs and all; even the stilts guy was there, passionately calling for my rise. Also, I had to pee.

     I swung one leg over the other and rolled off the bed onto the floor. Not exactly what I was intending. The sound reminded me of the time we had to haul the mourning dog three blocks to the pet cemetery. The thud of my body on the parquet floor sounded just like Skipper’s body.

     It was a soggy, purple and orange Kentucky morning. My friends and I were setting out for the hunt with Skipper, the family hound. Suddenly Skipper passed the ghost. The ghost was having a “fat” day and didn’t want to be seen. Skipper didn’t actually give up the ghost, but the ghost thought otherwise and became humiliated, floating off to the attic for a pick-me-up. Suddenly, the hound remembered his mother who died from an overdose of incense at the office of a holistic veterinarian. These were not appropriate thoughts before a hunt and Skipper spoke up about it. We weren’t angry, everyone has moments when the past comes back to haunt them. Just the day before Pappy had passed the ghost and remembered how his best friend had kicked the bucket. It was the sound of Jeb’s steel-toe boot against the bucket that got to Pappy; ruining a perfectly good bucket…So we had to delay our hunt. Three days later, Skipper died and we had to carry him three blocks to the pet cemetery and heave him into a hole.

     The cat meowed into my face. Bonkers! I had fallen asleep on the floor. I sat up and scratched myself. The iPhone was quiet. Everything was quiet. I looked at the clock and experienced a sinking feeling. It was ten twenty-two. I was really late for work. The cat was staring at me. I had to pee really bad.

     “Dreaming you were a Horatio Alger character, huh? Who do you think made your bootstraps, huh? I’ll tell you…the workers!”

     “Get a job, cat!

     “I have no marketable skills, stupid.”

     “Well, you’d fit right in with the hippies at those independent bookstores.”

     This was a plain mean because Ray had applied for a job at Dutton’s before they closed but liability issues got in the way; lack of opposable thumbs or marketable skills went unnoticed, however.

     “I hate you,” He declared.

     “I’m late for work,” I retorted, hoping to throw him off.

     “You work at a library!” The cat was getting testy, “Oh no, books won’t get shelved!”

     “Hey! That’s not all I do. If I’m not there, who’s going to tell the homeless people to get off their cell phones?”

     “Good point,” He allowed, “what are you going to tell Hannah when she asks why you’re late?”

     “I don’t know…Traffic?”

     “Did you dream about Skipper again?”

     “Yeah…”

     “He was a good dog…”

     “I know,” I paused, giving the single tear time to roll down my face, “I know.”

     “…For an anarchist.” Ray added.

     When I got to work, I explained what happened and all was forgiven. Ray subsequently got a job writing a humor column for Nuestro Mundo.