Cucumber Salsa
I am a cat. I think like a cat. You can only understand if you cat.
If you think like dogs, go away. I’ll cough up a hairball on you. I’ll poop out the ball of yarn I ate yesterday in the living room when you invite your date over for dinner tonight. Or maybe I’ll puke up the lizard I just ate under their chair before you bring out dessert. I warned you.
If you understand cat, continue.
The captor giant calls me “Cucumbers.” Do you know how terrified we cats are of cucumbers? It’s a cruel joke I tell you.
As with all great musings on the wonder of self-awareness, my story opens with an ontological truism. “I am a cat.” Please don’t interpret this to mean anything other than what it says. I am not a dog. I am not a penguin. I am not George Clooney or the Dalai Lama. I don’t care what you think it means. I am simply a cat.
However, as stated above, I am also a dog. Dogs do not possess any self-awareness. We dogs only have conscious awareness of spite and grudges against captor giants. Therefore, my story lacks statements of self-awareness, except for the first line of each stanza, which is purposely written to screw with you. The opening sentence of stanza one is to confuse you, oafish giant, into believing I’m a bushel of cucumbers. The first sentence of stanza two is to remind you of my infinite superiority to your kind. Why should I care what time it is? I only woke up from my cat nap (and lost two lives) because the giant tried to murder me with the roaring hairball collector. I don’t care what units of measure you use to divide your puny lives by. I have nine lives, well, seven now, which is still six more than you have. The first sentence of stanza three is absolute fact. Giants are unaware subjects of space aliens, and they would do well to use post-colonialist criticism to liberate themselves.
My story is a cycle. It begins with me outside of the giant’s giant box, and it ends with me outside of the giant’s giant box.
The giant lured me inside with nibbles. I begrudgingly entered the giant’s giant box. It manipulated me into bestowing physical affection upon it in trade for nibbles. Physical affection is a deceptive practice engaged in solely for the survival of our species. All giants who understand cat agree to abide by these terms. Those who violate them incur retaliatory spite and grudges.
If an animal 6000 times your size beckoned you into a giant box and then wouldn’t let you back out, you’d think it was going to eat you, too.
I’m really just a bushel of cucumbers. Cucumbers soak up nutrients from the ground and do absolutely nothing. I already consumed all the nutrients the giant traded for scratches, so I have nothing to do again but nap.
I already explained the first sentence of stanza two. I am superior to you giants. I have no reason to measure the passage of time with a discrete unit of measure.
I’m being held against my will inside the giant’s giant box. Without food, I will die. Life is meaningless and death is always beckoning.
I don’t remember the last time I ate a mouse. As explained above, I’m a dog, which means I don’t remember anything except for spite and grudges against captor giants. So even if I had seen a mouse before, I wouldn’t know what one was.
Oh, look! A mouse! I will catch it.
A moose dressed like Laurence Fishburne told me there never was a mouse and that it was just a synthetic representation made by the giant to taunt me and make a fool of me. How am I to know the difference between a shadow and the real thing if I haven’t studied Plato? I can’t even read.
I give up. I still think it’s a mouse, but it tastes just like the curtains I sharpened my claws on last week.
The aliens abducted the giant again for who-knows-what this time. It happens every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at approximately 7:27a.m. Eastern Standard Time, excepting federal holidays.
The hole in the giant’s giant box is open now. It’s the same hole the giant lured me through (in stanza one, line two, implied in the space between sentences one and two) for nibbles. I’m free!
I can’t find any mice out here. Without food, I will die.
Meow.