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Indiespensable
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Fup. Store Cat.

Chapter 38

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

Fup, Bear, and Cesar snack on canned tuna high atop the newsletter truck. Cesar and Bear built the sheltered rooftop deck over the winter. Previously, riding with Oliver in the newsletter truck had meant suffering the stuffy, hot backseat, but this summer the cats are traveling in style.

Four men have gathered on the sidewalk at this, the last stop of the day. While they ponder the menu, gathering loose singles from the pockets of their cargo shorts and quickly calculating budgets, a woman in cut-off jeans proceeds immediately to the truck's window counter, asks for the second Bridget Jones book, hands Oliver exact change, and turns back up the gravel path to her house.

The remaining four, nervous with indecision, resist Oliver's desperate attempts at eye contact. Just a few minutes of good reading light left in the air.

"All I'm saying," Fup says for the fourth or fifth time (one of these times she's going to start believing it, perhaps), "is that Clara never gave Portland a chance."

Bear says, "I didn't stay, either, the first time I came to visit you in Portland."

"I told you to leave," Fup reminds him.

Cesar laughs. "She sent you back to Chicago before you even knew what Bento was," he adds.

From below, they hear Oliver latch the window, finally, and a moment later the truck lurches forward, without its accompanying music. Another perfect summer day fading to a close.

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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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