And Then There Were Thirteen

Every day's a little longer, every day's a little warmer, and to top it all off, Holy Hannah, it's Friday!

Can ya beat that?

Once again, in my pointless need to understand what's going on before it even happens, I consult my iPod's playlist in the hopes that, if I listen intently, perhaps while squinting, the future will be revealed.

For the Girl by The Fratellis
White Lines by Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mell and the Furious Five
Rollerskate Jam by Plantlife
Just Dropped in (to see what condition my condition was in) by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition
City of Night by Pink Martini*
Changes by David Bowie
Since You've Gone by The Cars


Hmm.  I've been seeing this for a while now, and unless there are strenuous objections, it appears that this will be the last fortune-telling iPod playlist.

Like so many things, that's the way the iPod shuffles.

Sometimes, you don't see it coming.  And sometimes you do.  Take last night, for example...


With less than two minutes left in the game, the mood around the TV had grown somber.

Dolly Gee Squeakers, formerly of the Humane Society Squeakers, sips her gin and tonic nervously.  Trailing for a good part of the game, the Michigan State Spartans, Dolly’s favorite to go all the way in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, seem to have forgotten their offense back at the hotel.

The cats in the living room – lined up on the back of the couch; sprawled monorail-like on its arms; perched, vulture-like, atop the TV, lean forward apprehensively. 

Orangey McStripe the Third squeezes a fourth lime wedge into a neat glass of gin.  “They came to play,” he purrs, insinuating, somehow, that they had not. 

Dolly Gee glares at him, takes a drag of her cigarette.  Tapping its ash irritably into an ashtray shaped like an artichoke, she blows the smoke toward an open window.  “Have you tried the guac?” she purrs.  “Woof made it.”

Woof, a black and orange cat with extra toes and a notched ear, abruptly leaps from the couch, tears out of the room and straight up the sheers in the next room. 

“This,” Liza Bean whispers into my ear, lifting her tiny, striped chin toward the windows, “is why we are forced to shop at second-hand stores.”

From the TV is the sound of the buzzer.

The Michigan State Spartans have lost. 

And the Louisville Cardinals advance.

Seven cats stand.  They nod at me, nod at Dolly Gee.  Woof, Dolly’s best friend, rubs her nose against Dolly’s cheek; and one by one they slink down the front stairway and out into the night.

“I’m going to bed,” Dolly says quietly.  “Thith hath been very dithappointing.”

I consider the can of albacore tuna hidden in my sock drawer.  I had wondered, when I bought it, if it would be opened in celebration.  I lean down, lift Dolly’s fuzzy little chin.  “They had a pretty good run,” I say softly.

She nods ruefully, leaves the room slowly, tail dragging.

The albacore tuna will have to wait for another day.  

*  What a beautiful voice this woman has...