Luco, the Dog, and Art

This morning I got an awful shock; it was one I should have been expecting perhaps, but a shock nonetheless. What words could even remotely begin to convey to you my utter dismay? I can do nothing but grope for meaning, each word not quite the right word, each phrase awkward, off. Sometimes I do not have the energy for my own misery.

I found a folder on the desktop titled "My only baby precious doggy pics." I am not making this folder name up; I do not have to stoop to mendacity in order to make my point here - the prison guard supplies me with enough evidence of her dog-adoration to fill several hundred blogs with my bitterness. I only keep the one.

But look! See how he lunges forward? What does he see? Is he about to catch and kill a lizard? What joy he must be feeling. If I felt him capable of conversation, I might one day inquire into what these walks are like. Oh, but I cannot imagine suffering the humiliation of admitting ignorance to him. 

The pictures get worse. Please prepare yourself in whatever way makes you feel the most comfortable. I enjoy scratching the couch when I am nervous.

They take him to look at art. 

Can he, with his inferior canine brain, even appreciate this? The insult I feel is a thing bigger than me; it is a series of natural disasters exploding inside my heart. It is an infinity of insects crawling just beneath my skin. It is the moon on fire. It is the whole universe choking to death. 

Here again, the dog with art, totally ignoring it, focusing probably on a pile of another dog's vomit or something equally disgusting. 

My questions is this: Why would the prison guard and her husband bring the dog to see this? Why have they never taken me?

What does he see when he looks at this sculpture? Does he notice its beauty? Does it evoke in him sadness because it will likely outlast him and everyone he knows? Does he think about the properties of rock and of the transitoriness of beauty?

Does this picture mean they are considering sending him to art school? As I said earlier, words are inadequate. If you were here and I could bite you just a little (not hard reader, have no qualms of that), perhaps you would get a better sense of my consternation.

And what would his art look like? I imagine vague line drawings of smiling piles of feces or watercolors of other dogs' genitals.  

The sole reason I am not completely devastated by these photographs is the constant presence of a certain object: the leash. It is in every picture. The prison guard's "only precious baby doggy" is apparently not to be trusted. 

I do not believe I would ever submit to such an affront, even if it was to attend a prestigious art school. I will not be chained. The opprobrium of the leash is for the dog!

But it doesn't matter, because she never even asked me.

Luco, Conspiracy Theorist

I am taking a break from all this grading to share with you some thoughts about the dog that have been plaguing me as of late. I lie awake all night staring at nothing, consumed by these suspicions. It will tear me apart if I keep them to myself!  

Also, I am taking a break because I cannot get the cap off of this infernal pen....

Did you already know I was going to discuss the dog? I fear I have become predictable in my anxiety and diespleasure, but allow me this moment, reader, if you will. 

This picture of the dog was taken last night. The prison guard and her husband make the mistake of thinking the dog is being cute, lovable; they believe this picture captures something puppyish about him, something sweet and shining in him.

I know better, however. Note his firm grip on this unhappy toy. His sharp teeth. Those serious eyes. To me this picture reveals his murderous intentions; I do not know how someone can look at this picture and see anything but a rabid, dangerous monster.

When people come into the house, they say hello to the dog. They follow him around. Allow him to jump up into their laps. They pet him and speak softly to him. They throw his toys for him. They give him meat treats. They look and look into his eyes and fall in love.

While I toil and toil and toil, totally unappreciated. No one kneels down to pet my head. No one stares lovingly into my eyes. No one tells me how adorable and wonderful I am. My only thank you is when my prison guard rolls her eyes at me and pushes me off this pile of work I still have to get done! 

I seem to be the only one who sees through the dog. He wants to be the center of attention, and the only real way to do that is to do away with us. He is plotting to be rid of us. I cannot believe the prison guard does not realize this. I cannot believe she allows him to sleep in her bed in my old spot! Now I must sleep on the couch, isolated, alone.

The horrible dog, I see it. He will not rest until I am gone. I will not be surprised when he tries to eat me.

And no one notices my absence. 

Lolcat Luco

I woke up out of a deep slumber this morning; I was having a ridiculous and terrible dream. There were very many cats kept in a prison cell with me, all acting ludicrously and speaking with little to no regard for the rules of grammar.

They said: "I can has cheeseburger?" and "Kittehs in da hoouse!" and "O Hay dere." and "Halp!" and "We iz puppetz for da hoomens?"

It was that last one that turned the dream. Where before it had been irritating and creepy, it now became terrifying and caused me to cry out. In my dream the prison cell walls turned black with clotted blood, cats dressed as clowns poured from the ceiling, and....

I was myself metamorphosed into one of them. A lolcat. I created the image above, which is pretty similar to what I saw in my dream. The bad grammar. Atrocious spelling. The horror I felt plunged me into wakefulness and it came to me that this was only a dream. Just a dream.

This is why I fear to sleep and fear to wake; that these lolcats exist in my world troubles and sickens me. That they come after me in my dreams is true torment. And yet I persist. Perhaps I should find the humor in this absurdity. Perhaps laughter can relieve my suffering. You should try it with me, reader, we can test this hypothesis together (perhaps you will leave your experience as a comment on this entry).

Are you ready? One. Two. Three. Go.

I only feel more the fool.

It's Luco's Birthday!

This year I am turning 10. I think. It may be that I am turning 11. I am not sure. My mother left me when I was very young (she got out and ran away after one of the prison guard's many moves), and no one ever bothered to mark the truth. My birthday is perhaps in March, but maybe it was in February.

It is rather ridiculous that I do not know when I was born, as I was born on the prison guard's screened in front patio. Her stray cat had a litter of five, within which I found myself. It was an unfortunate incident; she had been about to get the stray cat, my mother, a cat she named Hiromi, spayed, but Hiromi went into heat and was subsequently repeatedly and brutally raped by myriad tom cats.

Here I am in a pile with my siblings. There were five of us born that day; two girls and three boys. The girls were all white, and the three boys were an orange cat, a backwards me, that is, a black cat with white marks, and me. I am toward the back there. I can nearly make myself out in this photograph.

It was quite a comfortable pile of bodies and limbs and purring, however. I truly enjoyed being pressed against my family. I do not believe I have felt such an intense warmth since then.

And in this picture I am being held by the prison guard's husband (although he was not her husband at that time). I cannot imagine allowing myself to be held in this manner now. It would fill me with a pulsing rage and my only alternative would be to lash out, hissing, biting.

I was gentler as a kitten, I suppose. Happier. 

And this picture provides further evidence of that ease, that happiness. Here I lie with my cretinous roommate, Fremlin. I would never suffer this to happen now. Ever.

Maybe I was sweeter in kittenhood because I had not yet gone through the suffering that would come to define me. I had not yet met the horrible dog that I had to guard against, the horrible dog several years ago who bit my tail. I had not yet realized that for every moment of love and happiness, we needs must experience  agony and torment tenfold. 

Regardless. Why does the prison guard forget my birthday? I will forgive her the day, but this woman does not remember the year.

I suppose I will just have to sing to myself. By myself.

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, dear Luco. Happy birthday to me.

Luco & Fan-Mail

I have been receiving fan-mail as of late from several readers; the two most prolific iluvkatz@catsrkewl.com and garfieldsbff@garfieldsbff.com, write me multiple times a day. In a recent email from iluvkatz, s/he writes:

     Hey, Luco! Just been reading and saw this poem that reminded me of you. Here goes: "My eyes are blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still." That's from "Meditations in an Emergency," by Frank O'Hara. I dunno, just sounded like something you'd dig.

And strangely, as much as I did not want to "dig" this, I found I did - there is something to be said for someone else capturing exactly the way I feel.

So that was rather a lovely email, but then I get others that I do not enjoy reading in the slightest. Garfieldsbff in particular sends me strange and atrocious messages. Here is one I received this morning. I can only assume these are song lyrics:

  Luuuu! I can't stop thinking about you. When I close my eyes  it's your face I see. Rick Astley said it better than I ever could. "Never gonna give you up/never gonna let you down/never gonna run around and desert you/never gonna make you cry/never gonna say goodbye/never gonna tell a lie and hurt you!!" Say  you'll be mine foreverrrrr. *purrs* xoxox

Garfieldsbff, what is this? What is this horrible writing you send me? And in an ill advised attempt to win my heart? I must inform you, Garfieldsbff and any other reader convinced they see in me something worth pursuing romantically, my heart is a sea urchin lodged in my chest; spiny, dangerous, poisonous. Even if you did love me, I could never love you back, not in any real way; I see too clearly for that. I understand too intimately the heart's capacity for darkness.  

Those lyrics do tend to repeat themselves in one's head though. I have been mumbling them to myself all day.

Oh, how it pains me to read the fan-mail. How the bad grammar, unkind usage of adverbs, and sentimentality stifle me! Iluvkatz just sent me the most devastating message yet:

  So, did you like the poem? I thought so! See, there are people,  Luco, who can understand you! I get you! You and me are formed  of the same sad clay, yanno? And! Since I know I prolly got you  thinking with that poem I sent ya, I just wanted to say: roflmao, you're a cuuuuuuute kitty kat! I just wanna pet you and you can sit on my lap. I'll pick you up and read you poetry all day long! See? I just wanna make you happy! I know I can do it. Email me back!

Iluvkatz, I had thought of you as perhaps an equal. Perhaps, I thought to myself, here is a creature who might come to know me in more than a superficial way. Perhaps this is someone who can understand me. But no. Obviously I was wrong, because anyone who thinks I would respond in a positive manner to being called a "cuuuuuuuuute kitty kat" has no concept or understanding of who I am. Iluvkatz, because you nearly reached me, I loathe you that much more intensely.

I would prefer twenty emails from Garfieldsbff like this one:

  "Now that I've tried to talk to you and make you understand all you have to do is close your eyes and just reach out your hands and touch me. Hold me close don't ever let me go." Just heard it on the radio and immediately thought of you and your cutiepie little face. More than words fer realz, Luco. Fer realz.*purrs* xoxox

At least Garfieldsbff is upfront with her/his idiocy. 

Nobody gets me.