Meowmemoirs: A Feline’s Day.

5 am. Wake up from purring slumber on preferred bed linens: a pile of clean clothes that has, much to my benefit, yet to have been properly put away. Stretch. Kitty yawn.  Delicately prance over to closed bedroom door and commence a beloved daily ritual, meowing incessantly while pawing and scratching at the tiny space between the bottom of the door and the hardwood floor. It brings me immense pleasure to wake other members of the household this way.

6 am. Have succeeded in officially waking up the lady and provoked her to get out of the bed. She clumsily opens door, uses a few explicatives and begrudgingly goes to kitchen to feed me. The plink, plink, plink of the food pellets being poured into the bowl excites me each morning and I must meow and spin in circles like a rabid rodent until I am finally allowed access to the fresh goods. I am, however, once again disappointed to learn that while this food may be mockingly shaped like delectable little fishies, it tastes like gravel crap. Again. Perhaps tomorrow things will change.

6:15 am. Back to bed.  Using a darting maneuver, have tricked the lady into letting me into the bedroom for morning nap. I’ll hide under the bed for a few moments before making a strategic move to the comforter on top.

8:30 am. Lift my head slightly and slowly open eyes to see the lady waking up and getting out of bed. Good. Close eyes.

11:45 am. Awake to loud clanging noises outside in the alleyway. Beeping. A clamor of glass.  An engine roaring and more beeping.  It is all an incredible nuisance and I am losing much needed cat sleep. Just one of many inconveniences I deal with daily.

1 pm. Awake. Stretch front legs, back legs, back and a little flip of my tail. Hop like a gazelle off of the bed and strut regally into the kitchen to take a look at the rabbit food. Pathetic.

1:15 pm. Bliss! Find a treasure: discarded plastic bottle cap good for sliding around the floor for at least an hour.

2 pm. Cap flies under bookshelf, never to be seen again. Confusion followed by armchair nap in the sun.

5 pm. Awake. Must test food once again. Yes. Same.

5:15 pm. Nap. Creative location: inside closet on neatly folded sweater pile.

8 pm. Awake. Spend some time with the lady. Rub up against her ankles while she sits at the white table staring at a glowing screen. She switches between saying sweet things like, “the little baby cat” and then suddenly pulling her legs away and cursing when I take a few innocent swipes with my claws. Sensitive woman.

9 pm. Nighttime nap. Curl up in to pretzel-shaped ball next to the lady on couch.  Purring.

11 pm. Awake to the lady moving into the bedroom. Meow. Panic as she goes to close the door and I depend on my well-honed darting skills to achieve entry. Failure. Again. Deep disappointment and longing. Must seek revenge by throwing up on the floor and rolling around on any and every item of black clothing that will easily attract white kitty fur. Goodnight. 

+ I recently spent a weekend with a childhood friend of mine who possesses the innate ability to make me laugh harder and longer and more desperately than any known person on earth. She brought up a ritual practice of ours from years ago which I, for reasons which are presumably anchored in embarrassment, had since forgotten. After discussing a specific instance representative of our strange and artistically lofty adolescent ideals, I took a moment to think about why we did such a thing in the first place. We were in our senior and junior years of high school on a Friday night with another disappointing array of nightlife activities to choose from. Thus, we organized a kind of off-stage improv comedy event involving the two of us, another boy our age and his elementary-aged little brother, an innocent youth ripe for exploitation. We devised a list of ad-libbed performance settings including a coffee shop, a motel and, of course, a Wal-mart superstore. Each “scene” would be filmed by shaky home video camera and would involve a series of mildly comedic storylines such as, “scorned girlfriend catches her man on a romantic coffee date with another woman” and “small child tries to book room at motel without aid of an adult”. The night was more or less a filmmaking success and we effectively accomplished the original, ever-present goal: killing a few otherwise eventless weekend hours. I can’t say any of the theatric participants had any intention of pursuing movie-making, however, we delighted in simply documenting silly behavior in our frequented, mundane locales. The ordinary was suddenly and magnificently transformed into our own cinematic playground in which we could inject nonsensical plotlines and brief moments of counter-reaction to cultural norms. I suppose we had our fingers on the pulse of (scripted) reality media. We were visionaries - revolutionaries - spilling coffee and wildly slinging shopping carts. Middle America heroes for the evening.

The following story took place last night at a bar/restaurant in Santa Monica. I write it in order to officially condemn female drunkenness and agree with many men in one simple, mantra-like statement, “bitches be crazy”.

Megan at my side, drink in hand, I jovially make my way to the back of the restaurant and push gingerly on the Women’s restroom door. I’m greeted by a hazy-eyed woman standing next to the only stall door. With the balance and poise of a toddler in heels she leans toward me and speaks.

“Some bitches have been in there foreeeever. Three of em’. I’m fuckin sick of it-“

She reals back and slams an open palm onto the dilapidated wooden stall door. 

“Oh my gawwwwd, get the fuck out of there.” She repeats the palm-slapping maneuver, rattling the door and causing the three pairs of visible stilettos to scurry around on the tile floor laden with toilet paper.

I naturally inch away from the heated scene, backing toward the far wall just outside the door, whispering to Megan, “just back away”.

Squealing voices all shout at once from inside the stall.

“Who the fuck is banging on the-“ “Fucking psycho” “Oh my god, what the fuck!”

I cower and huddle closer to Megan as stilettos scramble and a toilet flushes. Now, rather than confront her nemeses, the toddler woman rolls her eyes and slowly swaggers unassumingly out of the bathroom. Megan’s and mine’s heads pivot steadily to the right, our wide eyes following the woman as she disappears into the crowd of chattering bar patrons. 

Suddenly and erratically the stall door flies open. Our heads snap back to see three long-haired, bleached teeth, sparkling women burst out of the stall looking like hungry wolves with foaming mouths and exposed fangs. 

“What the fuuuuuuck!” The scream is so loud and so terrible that I literally loose my breathe. I know what is inevitably coming next. There is no one else within site. Megan and I stand in direct view of the incendiary trio, our mouths gaping and hearts palpitating; guilt by default.

“YOU BITCHES!”

Megan and I immediately shake our heads and do our best to deny perpetrating the crime. However, our voices don’t seem to be functioning properly. I think of my youth and my favorite movie, "The Little Mermaid". It's as if Ursula the Seawitch has cast an evil spell on me. My prized speaking voice has been sucked out of my body and held captive somewhere deep in the ocean. I'm paralyzed. The only audible sounds are coming from the accidental enemy-party. Shrieking and stomping and cursing.

They sling stupid pink drinks in all directions and point and shake their fingers at us. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and “You little fucking stupid bitches”

Suddenly another woman appears in the doorway, her hands outstretched like a boxing referee separating the fighters.

“Whoa, whoa whoa, everyone calm down please. Can someone please explain to me what’s going on” She's heavily winded and her head hunkers down, not looking at either party.

“Yes, I need to make a serious fucking complaint right now. My girlfriends and I were in the stall together and these girls starting banging on the door and shouting at us to get out. They kept fucking banging like crazy people while we were still in there.”

My pathetic attempts at denial are futile and the scene seems to be slowing down like a dramatic cinematic moment. I see wet toilet paper bunched up in the corners of the stalls. I study the pointy stilettos stomping the ground. The restaurant employee standing between us looks into my eyes with disdain while the women further their diatribe.

“And me and my friends spend a lot of fucking money in here. Birthdays, parties, birthdays. Like a lot of private events and we spend a lot of fucking money. This is totally unacceptable and I am seriously pissed off-“

I’m finally able to desperately interject a sentence, lacking any sort of eloquence, “It was not us”.

“What the fuck ever, those bitches are lying. I swear to fucking god…” 


Yeah. They probably do have a lot of private events here and stuff. 

The bar-lady proceeds to somehow wrangle the women into the hall while we sheepishly slide around the carnivorous pack into the bathroom. The restroom door swings closed, muffling the shouting and leaving Meg and I in an eerily silent white room that makes me feel like I am an astronaut that has just been to another planet, seen and interacted with alien life-forms and is now being contained in a de-briefing psycho analysis chamber. Meg goes into the stall and we have absolutely nothing to say to each other. We’re two victims in a state of post-traumatic restroom. (ha). 

The rest of the story involves some more adamant denial along with many innovative uses of the words “fuckin” and “bitches”.  Ironically, the blond ended up being a friend of a friend of a friend we had planned to meet at the bar. I’m uncertain if she ever realized the convoluted connection, and much to my relief she and the wolves promptly marched out of the bar once we emerged from the back hallway.  Naturally, I conveyed the story to a small audience and received comedic acclaim.  Thus, it all may very well have been worth it.

hand rendered cards

drawerings. clooney and pitt. 

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25, single and living alone:

an (unabridged) list of reasons to enjoy

+ if i so desire, i can do any or all of the following when at home: wear a blue sweatshirt/blue sweatpants set to bed, decorate and redecorate the same stupid 3 foot x 4 foot area of my apartment until rightly satisfied, watch television shows of secret obsession such as project runway and (the shame) dateline: real mystery

+ forgeting that the cell phone exists for hours at a time. finding it hidden under a pillow and checking for missed calls feels as anxiety-free as a quick glance at the microwave clock when i have a completely open schedule 

+ eating more thai food than i should while sitting on the couch

+going to bed at 7 pm or 4 am or 11 pm or midnight

+ reading, truly reading, and perhaps even welling up with tears when encountering particularly beautiful writing

+lighting incense, cooking and drinking wine, patty griffin playing while i glide around the sizzling kitchen. bliss. (and, i think, universally not understood by men).

+ drawing with an ink pen while sitting on the ground over a giant pad of paper. some of the drawings are bad (some oh so bad) and must just simply be disposed of and never seen again. only I will know.

+ thinking about men and feeling that they are good and nice to have around every once and awhile, but the thought of one actually penetrating the sweet mystery of my self-development at this point is, well, soooo not happening.

+discovering exactly what sort of things i most love (without the influence of another creature) in the following categories: dogs, movies, books, music, careers, friends, sounds, smells, websites, passions, toothpastes, home electronics, grocery stores, coffee preferences, water temperature, shoes, bras, workouts, sports, lamps, fruit, fonts and walking speed.

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book design

self identity 

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Selected pages from firm biography, Entertainment Fusion Group.