told her. “I mean, yes, I did. It’s not your imagination.”
He thought of how kind it was for her to mention it, and then he noticed how oddly satisfying it felt to be patted down by a wing.
Meanwhile, the parrot was still talking. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I have seen a cockatoo in my time, but I’m not dating anyone now, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She grabbed a passing appetizer, dumped the caviar back onto the tray, and ate only the cracker. “A cliché, I know, but fish eggs make me bloat.”
“It’s the salt,” the pig told her. He’d hoped to say something more interesting, but just then the band started up.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing called out for a fox-trot, and, as if a switch had been thrown, the party came to life. Here was the hare in cat’s pajamas dancing with a chameleon, whose costume changed with every turn. The ugly duckling cut in on a swan. A trio of mice lowered their sunglasses, and as they scoured the floor for partners, the parrot turned to the pig and held out her claw. He accepted it awkwardly in his hoof, and so began what the reporter would later refer to as her days of swine and neuroses.
Hello Kitty
It was the stupidest thing the cat had ever heard of, an AA program in prison. Like you could find anything decent in here anyway. But if it would get his sentence reduced, well, all right, he’d sign up. Dance the twelve-step, do whatever it took to cut out early. Once he was free he’d break into the nearest liquor store and start making up for lost time, but between now and then he’d sit with the sad sacks and get by with a little aftershave. The only thing he wouldn’t do was speak at one of the meetings.
As a rule they were strictly dullsville. Yammer, yammer, yammer, but every now and then someone would tell a decent story. This mink, for example, who’d swapped his own pelt for a bottle of Kahlúa. The cat didn’t know you could survive without a pelt, but apparently it was possible. Not pretty, that was for damn sure, but it could be done, and this mink was living proof. It helped that he had a sense of humor about it and told his story with a little pizzazz, complete with sound effects and different voices. When he came to the bit about his wife mistaking him for a beef tongue, the cat laughed so hard he fell out of his chair.
“Thank you,” the mink said at the end of his little speech. “You’ve been a terrific audience. Now don’t forget to tip your waitress.”
After the meeting, the alcoholics congregated for treats washed down with burnt coffee. The cat was just going back for a second cup when he overheard a mouse talking in a low voice to the bullfrog, who served as the prison chaplain. “He might be amusing, but I don’t give that mink a snowball’s chance in hell. In here, all right, but out in the real world, he’s a ticking time bomb.”
The cat didn’t know what this mouse was in for, but he was willing to bet it was something boring: fiddling with his taxes or mail fraud. He wouldn’t know a good time if it slapped him between the ears, but here he was, ragging on the hairless mink: “Refuses to take his recovery seriously,” “A classic example of a dry drunk.”
Give the guy a break, the cat thought. The poor bastard is permanently naked. His wife left him, his chop shop was confiscated, so who the hell cares if he starts drinking again? It beats wasting time with the likes of you.
The cat didn’t say any of these things, but he thought them, and it must have shown on his face.
“Do you have a problem?” the mouse asked.
And the cat said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.”
Sensing trouble, the chaplain moved between them and held out his webbed hands. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, “let’s just take this down a notch.”
“I’ve got a problem with certain rodents,” the cat continued. “The kind who think that unless you’re as pompous as they are, you’re going to wind up on the trash heap.”
“Is that so?” the mouse said. “Well, I got a problem with cats who try to take someone else’s inventory before they’ve taken their own.”
He was a spunky little thing, you had to give