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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 95

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

Birthdays. A time to remember, project, take stock in the present. Would Fup trade this life for another? Seventeen years. Would she start over if she could?

Stretch. Breathe. Release.

Ants march, industrious, along a crack in the sidewalk. What for? (And at this hour?) Across the park, a dog collar jingles. As a car rounds the corner of Burnside, its headlights wash the Tech Store windows then sweep back over the road. Block by block, the engine fades.

A woman's voice carries from Couch Street: "I gave him my phone number."

"The guy with the goatee?" A different woman now. "You didn't."

"No!" The first woman again. "The guy in the Argyle vest."

"Oh, Kara!"

Not start over, no. To be so young again, with so much to learn — it exhausts her, merely the idea. "May no fate willfully misunderstand me" — the lines lean into Fup's consciousness, white bark gleaming in the dark forest of memory — "and half grant what I wish and snatch me away, not to return."

But not start over, not if it would mean revoking the relationships and sacrificing the experiences that got her here. To this sidewalk, this life, this summer night. Back in the store, Bear is sleeping. A cricket, not far away, chirps. City lights be damned, a few persistent stars have broken through the sky. Honestly, could she wish for more?

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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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