Three Years of the 10-Kilo Lint-Covered Breast Implant And so we start Year Four. Three years ago today, I had a successful carnivorous plant gallery, a delightfully weird house, and no cat. In fact, I was reasonably comfortable that for the first time in 35 years, I had no significant feline presence in my life. If I needed a cat, I thought, one would present itself, right? From my lips…
Category: Mandatory Parker
Mandatory Parker: “Cannonball!”
The Dangers of a Cat That Produces His Own Event Horizon We’re coming up on three years since a certain brown ball of spite walked up to me and decided “You’re cool. You’re feeding me every day until you die, capische?” It’s to the point where I’m copying the great Jeff Somers and singing to my cat: I’m still working on the lyrics, but “Paul’s Big Brown Tumor,” to the…
Mandatory Parker: "The Villainies of BlackCat and The Fake Shemp"
Parker Meets His Nemeses, and the Nemeses Stare Back Two months after finishing the big move, and life has stabilized for the Lint-Covered Breast Implant. It’s been a long haul consolidating two households, with more work still, but at least we’re no longer tripping on boxes in random places and wondering where the hell we’re going to put dishes and clothes. For the most part, Parker has adjusted remarkably well,…
Mandatory Parker: "Lead The Follower"
In Which A Lint-Covered Breast Implant Shows Us Who’s In Charge The last few months haven’t been terrible or traumatic for Parker the Lint-Covered Breast Implant. The word to best describe his situation is “harrowing.” His life over the last two years was a study in simplicity: get up at 3 in the morning, scream to be let out, dodge pillows, wait until dawn, scream some more, get an early…
Mandatory Parker: "The Ice Beast Emerges"
The Lint-Covered Breast Implant Faces Winter…Alone It’s not newsworthy to note that winter finally hit the greater North Texas Area, and the Toad Ranch in particular. It’s January, and unless plate tectonics got a lot more active in the last few weeks, Dallas didn’t move to the antipodes without warning. (This doesn’t stop the fussbudgets standing just inside the doors in North Dallas grocery stores: they’re just accosting everyone coming…
Mandatory Parker: "From Brat Summer To Manul Winter"
The Lint-Covered Breast Implant Faces the Cold…Again. Winter is less than a week away, and Parker does not care for it in the slightest. Mind you, “winter” in North Texas is a matter of perspective. Aside from a prominent frost last month, we still haven’t had sustained freezing temperatures, and the warmth of October and November means that only now are trees changing color and dropping leaves. We have less…
Mandatory Parker: "And A'Roving He Will Go"
Life is Terrible For the Lint-Covered Breast Implant Before Parker hopped up on the porch of my old art gallery two years ago, I had never spent significant time with a Siamese cat before. Persians, sure. Main Coons, a Himalayan, and plenty of Domestic Shorthairs of all sorts of colors. The closest I had been to a Siamese, though, was thanks to a neighbor when I was in high school,…
Mandatory Parker: "The Latest Quantum Cat"
You think your cat is unique? Well, do I have a story for you. The automatic assumption about cats is that these are unique individuals, with their own unique perks. It’s easy to understand why: most people never travel far enough to see a truly huge number of cats, so just as Newtonian physics handles most day-to-day encounters with gravity without invoking Einsteinian theory, a typical person views all of…
Mandatory Parker: “Understanding the Substance Behind the Metaphor”
Exactly HOW did Parker get the nickname “the Lint-Covered Breast Implant? As with many other things concerning cats and the Interwebs, my cat has several names. His given name, as is now well-known, came from his habit of haranguing me as soon as I wake up to discuss the bonus situation. This can be pronounced and emphasized in different ways to get across distinct messages, everything from “you’re the cutest…
Mandatory Parker: “In the Beginning”
The origin story of the Lint-Covered Breast Implant Dog people always mock us cat people about our situations. We don’t plan and organize to get a cat, they say. The beast just shows up, right about the time you’ve reconciled yourself that another cat in your life is going to be at someone else’s house. Sometimes they fall out of the sky, sometimes they come up through the floorboards, sometimes…