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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 76

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

Sometimes when it rains like this it's better to just stay inside. Better than trudging through wet leaves, dodging puddles, getting mud all over your belly that you'll only have to clean off later. There's no relaxing out there until you find shelter. You can't bask in the sun. You can't even reliably hunt: the mice are hiding in warm basements; the birds have flown south; the bugs are gone to who knows where, not here.

Rain drums on the roof. On a blue blanket folded into a cardboard box-bottom in the store's back office, Fup buries her eyes in the crook of her leg. Still she can see the glossy sidewalks, can smell the sopping earth. In the half-sense of not-quite-sleep, a boy crouches beside the playground slide under which she keeps dry, a goldfish tail wiggling between his locked lips.

"Let go," Fup urges him.

The boy shakes his head. The fish tail flaps and shimmers.

"Let go," she repeats.

"Jason!" a woman's voice calls, and the boy at last relents. He opens his mouth, and the goldfish darts away, speeding out of the playground over the park's muddy lawn.

"Jason?" Fup hears the voice again, and when she looks there's Lisa, poking her head into the office, not finding Jason, and disappearing back into the store.

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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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