Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 199

In Loving Memory
Fup. Store Cat.
1988 — 2007

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Fup watercolor courtesy of reader Linda McDougall. Click here for a larger view.

Bear

Zooey

see Fup's photo album

Desperate for shade, they've gathered under the park's playground equipment. Here in Portland, the temperature has been almost (or over) a hundred degrees now for how many days in a row?

Bear summons enough energy to announce, "I think my brain is melting."

But Bear's brain truly does appear to be melting, to judge by the look on his face. Oreo follows his distressed gaze to the corner of Davis Street, where — this would explain it — a cat is waiting to cross. "Remember how I said I needed to tell you something?" Oreo reminds him.

Cheeks collapsed, mouth ajar, Bear manages a nod.

"There's a new cat in the neighborhood," Oreo says. The cat in question crosses Davis and scampers toward the playground.

"Fup?" Bear mumbles.

"Does she look like Fup?" Bagheera asks.

Same small white diamond on her chest, same white patch on her belly. Same pink nose, white toes. Hair darker around the shoulders (check) and lighter on her back legs (ditto). But the green eyes clinch it, and something else about her face, starting with two familiar black lines jutting from her eyes like eyeglass temples. And she's wearing a blue tag even — even the same color tag!

"Now that you mention it," Oreo grants him, "I do see the resemblance."

The Trip to Kahani

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Fup's Picks

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
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?
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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