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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 25

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

Those entering the Winter Carnival grounds from the east pass beneath a giant banner announcing the Carnival's 100th anniversary. Great big cursive letters spell out the special centennial theme: Turn Back the Clock to 2001.

"Welcome to our hundredth anniversary carnival," Fup tells a saddle-shoed girl whose family, unaware she has stopped, continues along the gravel path toward the contest tent.

She tells Fup, "My brother says you can't have the hundredth anniversary of your carnival until you've had ninety-nine already. It's impossible."

"Not at all," Fup assures her. "Cats do it all the time, this sort of thing."

"Really?"

"Oh, my, yes. It's just a matter of distance and seeing things a certain way. Imagine how much fun it would be to have your hundredth birthday party when you can still remember exactly how it feels to be seven years old!"

The girl's father calls from up the path, "Sarah Ann! You have a cat you can talk to at home and we only have an hour for the carnival. Come now and catch up with the rest of us!"

"Please ignore him," Sarah Ann tells Fup. "I'm sorry."

"No worries," Fup replies, "but listen: it's often nice to celebrate something that's very far away, isn't it, like old anniversaries? Special things are worth celebrating because remembering them makes them stay alive."

Sarah Ann agrees that this is true, so Fup continues, "But if you spend too much time with your brain turned far away, toward what's in the past or people in distant places, you miss out seeing what's very near. It's not easy to see far away and close all at once. And there's plenty to celebrate right here, don't you agree? Why wait a hundred years?"

"And my cat thinks this way, too?"

"Almost certainly," Fup says. "The whole 'nine lives' story – it's got nothing to do with medical science. It's just a way of looking at the world."

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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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