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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 75

In Loving Memory
Fup. Store Cat.
1988 — 2007
fup 18 fup 19
Click here for details on our specially designed Fup. Store Cat. T-shirts!
Fup. Store Cat.
Fup watercolor courtesy of reader Linda McDougall. Click here for a larger view.
Bear
bear 		Zooey
zooey

see Fup's photo album

Ages ago it seems now (has it really been only five years?), back before the Pearl district morphed into a mecca of art galleries, cafés, and kitchenware boutiques, a careless cat could meet a fast end in its southernmost streets. One ill-advised crossing and she might find herself under a massive, industrial tire.

Now these blocks are a haven of crosswalks and stop signs. Gone finally are the construction trailers and backhoes. Parking, and with it much of the dangerous traffic, has been banished underground.

Bear motions for Fup to continue through the cat door that isn't quite a cat door: this ten-inch, rubber-flapped portal at the base of a new condominium tower. "Trust me," he says.

"You first."

He nudges the flap open with his head, leaving room for Fup to pass underneath. "After you, I insist."

One step, two, and three along the pliant metal flooring. When the flap shuts behind her, the path goes dark, but Bear urges her on. Four steps, five, and... ...and the floor simply drops away.

Down she goes, barreling in a rush downdowndown through the dark as one long, loud exhale escapes from her lungs and comes out sounding like "Ahhhhhhhhh!..." Until, back from nowhere, the floor reaches up and eases Fup into a sliding finish, ten feet short of the bright open end of the chute. Seconds later, Bear glides to a stop just behind her.

"Let's do it again," Fup tells him, still gulping for air. "How do we" — pant, pant, pant — "get back to the top?"

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The Trip to Kahani

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Read the press release.

Follow the links to more Fup adventures
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Fup's Picks

That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are That Cat That Changed My Life: 50 Cats Talk About How They Became Who They Are
by Bruce Eric Kaplan

"All these cats lead exciting and varied lives wholly independent of the human race," notes the editor in his Introduction. Well, duh. Scant attention has been paid to the role of community in modern cat culture, so what a relief that here, finally, fifty articulate felines set the record straight. Funny, sad, occasionally shocking, but never less than true, these brave monologues reaffirm our interdependency in ways that choreographed public displays such as Paws Across America never can.

Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs
by Amy Hempel

In "Dog Kibble," Tasha Baxter's verse exhibits a brutal economy of words: "Life is never meaningless," her villanelle announces, "there is always food." Here and throughout this collection these authors demand your attention, as if to bark, "You can send me to my room for yelling at the neighbors but you cannot silence what woofs in my heart!" Among the selections nominated for Best American Writing by Pets 2000 are Bob Barker Barry's sordid and hilarious hallucinogenic escapades with Lynda; a tragic, posthumous prose poem by Marrow Irving; and Sadie Louise Lamott's "Spoon River Sadie Louise," a wildly metered exploration of the cross-cultural dynamics within a household occupied by dogs, cats, birds, and small children. The sheer intellect of these collected pieces will renew your faith in dogs.

Is Your Cat Too Fat?Is Your Cat Too Fat?
by Bronwen Meredith

Too fat for what? And what business is it of this Meredith person's anyway? Bronwen sounds like the kind of lady I wouldn't like at all.

 
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