Or, what can happen when you give a cat a can of tuna in front of Trader Joe’s. About 85% of this story actually happened. 🙂

~

We started out strangers, but after I bought Bath-sheba a can of tuna, I learned all about her.

She spoke through her servant, a human creature named Herman. Herman had spent many long years in service to Bath-sheba, and as such he cared more for her than he did for himself. This was obvious in his unkempt hair, second hand clothing, and the careful way he opened the can for her and laid it before her with a dip of his head.

Herman opened his mouth. He said, “Bath-sheba thanks you kindly for her tuna, madam.”

I nodded. “I’m glad to help.” Bath-sheba gave me a look from gold-flecked eyes that let me know the conversation was not over, and some mystic power compelled me to linger.

Herman picked up one of the many crumpled parchments of sheet music that lined the floor of Bath-sheba’s domicile. He began to sing from it.

“She flies over the city, you know! One night they left the window open and when the moon came out, she flew over the skyscrapers… along the train tracks and the alleyways and the interstate. You say a cat doesn’t have wings? She doesn’t need wings to fly!”

Uneasy with the idea of Bath-sheba flying by my fourth-floor apartment window and spying on me while I couldn’t sleep, I said, noncommittally, “Wow.”

Herman conducted an invisible orchestra with his left hand, as the power of Bath-sheba possessed him fully. “And she flew over the trees and the people and all the dogs in the world couldn’t chase her,” he sang. “She flew around the Space Needle, and over Pike Place Market, and the Great Wheel!”

He clapped his hands in climax, and then the time of Bath-sheba’s speaking passed, and Herman settled down on his haunches on the bare sidewalk, staring blankly at the sheet music in his hand.

Having partaken of the tuna to her heart’s content, Bath-sheba groomed her whiskers knowingly.