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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 17

In Loving Memory
Fup. Store Cat.
1988 — 2007
fup 18 fup 19
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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

"It's a beaver wearing Groucho Marx glasses," Bear said, gazing at a passing cloud. "See how the fake nose billows out – and above it, the two hairy eyebrows? The teeth. See the beaver's teeth?"

Fup couldn't see Groucho Marx in the cloud, but she was only half-listening to Bear, anyway. When he got like this, she knew, he didn't expect her to listen. He simply wanted to let some of the ideas out of his head. Otherwise they rattled around his skull like bees in a jar.

But she had to interrupt him. She'd brought him all this way, to the office space above the Pearl Room, the fourth floor of the City of Books, to show him the view of the Fremont Bridge.

"When I was a kitten," she told him, "my family was friends with a Tabby man who lived under that bridge." She pointed north past the train station to the Fremont's green-gray arch.

"The Tabby's name was Oliver Klappenpuss. He used to show me and my sisters how the bridge was really a giant cat, waking up, stretching its back. Late each night, Mr. Klappenpuss explained, the bridge would let go its paws from the west bank of the river, step down with its back feet off the east side, curl itself up on the water, and go back to sleep for the night.

"Until just before sunrise, Mr. Klappenpuss convinced us, the giant cat just floated there, asleep, curled up in the river. And no one could cross until morning," Fup remembered.

She told Bear, "It would be just about time for bed, and the four of us would be starting to nod off, me and my sisters. Our father would yawn, and say on cue, 'Come girls, it's time to go home. We have to get back before the bridge goes to sleep.'"

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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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