How to do the wrong thing right

In a few weeks, I will begin my 15th year authoring this column — every Texan’s favorite fountainhead of gay wisdom, sage “advice” and ludicrous insights into the universe’s meretricious mendacity. Nothing I write may be exactly hands-on helpful, but it sure is always a hambone mouthful. Fifteen years, impressively, makes for a mighty big bulging Santa’s sack of cock-based questions; thus, with only a precious few more days still remaining of this millennium’s testosterone-engorged teens — to be replaced by the whoring ’20s — I think we’ll just close out this year with a column from dearest Howard here that sidesteps penises altogether. Girl, wha..? Yes, sweet readers, the time has come, alas, to wash our sticky fingers of who’s bigger, who’s longer, who’s a multiple shooter, whose jizz is junkiest and, my own personal favorite, “Miz Thang, mine be bigger than yours floatin’ nekkid in the polar bear pool!” Ready? Let’s get cat scratchin’ right to it.

There’s that smile. That’s it. So, take a fresh deep breath now, bois. Exhale slowly, uh huh, and we’ll all exit 2019, cleanly, with cuddlesome Boo and Roo (my pair of 19- and 15-year-old pets, respectively). As you know, I’ll occasionally reference my elder cat, Boo, and am always appreciatively surprised by the concerned inquiries I receive regarding his ongoing, steadily debilitating “seniorhood.” (In people years, Boo is 104!) Rarely, though, do I bring up the nepotistic topic of Boo’s younger, adopted brother, Roo. It’s high time I correct this sibling injustice, first mentioning that Roo is not of this planet; rather, in the shrieking words of my housekeeper — whom I one day walked in upon chasing Roo down the hallway with a severed hand in his mouth — “Your new kitty not like other cats!”

Few more prescient words were ever uttered. Despite that severed “hand” being only a water-filled Latex glove snatched up by a bubbles-infatuated, infuriatingly curious Roo from the kitchen sink (which, nevertheless, did not diminish Yolanda’s truth one whit), Roo most definitely is not your average felidae cattus. For starters, he does not age… to say nothing of mature. At 15, Roo remains now the exact same irascible kitten that he was at age 7 months when I first rescued him, stumbling upon him in a cage at the pet supply store where, short of a pardoning miracle, he’d been sentenced to death come closing time: Diseased, deaf, scrawny and ugly as a proverbial mud fence, Roo’s contribution to evolution had unfortunately expired. As a pimply-faced cashier guffawed to me as I cuddled the shivering, doomed creature in my hands: “That one they found living off spider eggs and snails at some condemned apartment building over in Deep Ellum. He’s awfully affectionate, I guess, but, ha! I mean, just look at him — Barbra Streisand’s abortion! We’re only allowed to keep ’em 30 days. SPCA oughta known from the start nobody’s gonna adopt this ratty turd. A whole month, totally wasted here. Not a single taker. I’m just hopin’ his replacement tonight has better show appeal. It’s pretty rare when you can’t even give ’em away. But duds happen.”

As do miracles. Saved from the gas chamber with scant hours to spare, Roo’s days of retrospection now metamorphosed into just an eternal, heavenly holiday: The skies are always sunny, the glass is always half full. Should Cruella de Vil show up at my door soliciting a specific, Abyssinian orange cat fur for a new dazzler touring coat — “I’ll pay you any price, dahling, just name it!” — Roo would leap straight into her arms. He never met a stranger. Roo believes everyone loved him. Perhaps, indeed, he may have dimly realized just how close his own call with The Reaper really came, for his turnaround was breathtaking to behold. A testament to what good nutrition will do, within only days Roo’s fur started growing back; within months, even his hearing returned — where previously he wouldn’t stir from a nap with even the vacuum cleaner running next to him, suddenly he could hear the pop of a Fancy Feast tin from 40 paces! Roo ate voraciously, never left a crumb in his bowl nor gained an ounce. His orange coat began to shimmer, luxuriously, like sunlight off a velvet eel. Wiry and sinuous, the best one-word definition of Roo is “scrappy.” And if only the imperious Boo would take to his new, younger brother, life in our sky aerie would parallel paradise.

Alas, instantly, they became fast-and-furious foes; rather, whilst Boo spent his days deviously plotting this scrappy little epsilon’s untimely demise, Roo worshipped the very air Boo breathed. Roo had no concept of pecking order, nor that within said order his station was of a lower caste than Boo’s. Roo always played dominant, tackling Boo from behind, clamping the spine of his neck within his jaws, as though his alpha bruh was the urban equivalent to little more than some Serengeti wildebeest calf: It sent Boo hissing ballistic. But clearly, Roo had not been raised by fellow felines during his rough-and-tumble first half-year of mean-streets/condemned-apartment dwelling.

I’m guessing a passel of opossums had taken pity on little abandoned Roo and his subsistence-foraging of spider eggs and slugs, for during his first initial few weeks at his new high-rise home, the only method in which Roo could fall asleep was by scooching up against my living room sofa’s pillows, his furry little butt up at the top, his head resting beneath at the bottom, the tip of his tail curled down under his whiskers, oddly emulating opossums’ innate, gravity-defying ability to snooze dangling suspended in mid-air via their tails wound to a tree limb. No wonder poor Roo’s own tail was stripped bare of fur; undoubtedly, his fear of becoming a juicy little midnight morsel (for whatever toothsome creatures lurked beneath) far outweighed whatever reluctant reservations he harbored about plummeting, repeatedly, all night long to the ground below: One sticks by one’s protectors, resultant mental incapacitations be damned.

Having never been cursed by the burden of intelligence, Roo dottily settled, truce-like, into his new jackpot life with Boo; nevertheless, with the two of them together, I never knew what I’d wake up to find — gifted dead birds in my bed or Roo prancing about (a la Uncle Fester) with a 100 watt lightbulb wedged in his mouth. Idiotically fearless, often I’d awaken to a flash of Roo scampering by moonlight (16 floors above ground!) the entire length of our outdoor balcony’s two-inch-wide railing, feverishly snatching at moths! Closed doors and/or cabinet drawers never impeded Roo in the slightest. He could (and can, still) open anything! Once, I woke up to what I swore were humming noises emanating from a room down the hall, as if a child was singing lullabies to itself. Flicking on the light to my (previously shut) office, there stood Boo triumphantly perched atop the Japanese tansu, guiltily peering over its back where, stuck tight as Max’s Christmas-stealing master inside a Whoville chimbley, gurgled Roo cheerfully to himself, unconcerned as an amoeba: You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch/Your heart’s an empty hole/Your brain is full of spiders, you have garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch/I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot long pole!

What can I say? When you take on a cat, they’ll run herd over your life. Inevitably, “cat people” always seem to hear and heed this following advice too late. Hopefully I’ve caught at least one or two of you in time; please, listen closely, fellow puss lovers: Never ever feed your housecat canned tuna! I implore you, for the jig’s sure up then, people: What innocently starts out as just a special treat will, overnight, metastasize into the feline version of hardcore heroin addiction. You might escape it if, by luck of the dice, you accidentally served precious Tabby a tin of tuna canned in oil (cats loathe oil-preserved foods — at least my cats won’t touch it); however, you’ll sure roll snake eyes if, innocently enough, you opted for serving solid white albacore Bumblebee packed in spring” water instead: Welcome to Crack Pad Sallie’s!

To put it kindly, this past year has been a dicey one for my cats: Last Christmas, I was forced to remove Boo and Roo, well into their senior years, from the only home they’d ever known (albeit, temporarily, while it underwent renovation). Hell, just the displacement of Boo, at full-bore dotage, would probably do him in. So WTF? They both got all-you-can-eat Bumblebee daily, plus fresh gulf shrimp and Alaskan king crab legs on ocassion. Spoiled they were, but something sure worked, because here I now sit, returned back home again with both my antediluvian boys miraculously safe, warm and living — grizzled, old bony Boo cozily lapping his favorite treat of melted, room-temperature vanilla Ben & Jerry’s from a cupcake pan; Roo munching, contentedly, the holiday-red marzipan cap off a slaughtered popcorn Santa — wishing you all a very merriest hat-in-the-cat Christmas, where the fireplace hearth crackles, hospitality’s no sin; 2020, girl, come on in!

— Howard Lewis Russell

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