Cranky Frankie

I began writing Lazerbeam Sandwich on September 4th, 2018. Having finally published the damn thing last night, my biggest concern is about the (now) sole lie I told. My author bio described how I had no children or pets, an isolated point of pride that was true when I wrote it. Then on December 8th, the day before she began chemotherapy, my mother (Harry) texted me a little before noon.

“Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Coming in with your Christmas present.”

I couldn’t understand why she felt the need to inform me she’d be bringing an item to the never-used upstairs bedroom that houses all her gifts-to-be. Harry poked her head through the opening in the slatted, wooden door guarding my “office.” Then she extended a crate with a black and white Persian cat, the first animal I’d call my own pet. (Animal companion if you prefer.)

“I got you a cat!” Harry said.

“AHHHH!” I replied.

“What are you gonna name her?”

“Frankie!”

We’d been debating getting a cat as a means of helping our psyches in advance of Harry’s treatment. A few days before she presented Frankie to me, Harry had gone to obtain some medical marijuana and told me FedEx might deliver two packages that I should not look at, never mind bring in the house.

Of course, I returned from grocery shopping and saw two gigantic boxes getting soaked by the snow melting off the awning. Harry got back and her excitement about buying toffee-flavored THC cookies dissipated when she noticed the boxes I’d set in the living room.

“So, your Christmas present is ruined, huh?!” she asked, upset that I’d brought in the boxes.

“They left ‘em by the side door,” I replied. “But I didn’t look at the bigger box. I only saw the Chewy one. I can’t believe you bought Harley so much fucking food!”

Harley is Harry’s friend Mary’s bulldog. Harry went right along with my foolishness.

“Mary always buys in bulk, so I figured it’d be a good gift.”

“How nice of you.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

It’s been a week since Frankie arrived. (Her name was created a few years ago after I bought my girlfriend, Sue, a stuffed bobcat puppet at the Walden Pond gift shop the same day we saw Paul McCartney. Sue brought him home—Frankie the Puppet, not the Beatles bassist—and told me, “He looks like a Frankie. I picture him wearing a leather jacket and chain-smoking Pall Malls. I think he always gets mad and says, ‘Oh, fuhchrissakes!’ in a New Yorker-slash-Italian accent.”) Frankie—whose name was approved by Sue—was now an animate cat too (gender change to boot).

Except the second Harry opened her crate, Frankie ran behind the couch, since having been caught not pressing her face against the heater behind said couch only twice. She hisses whenever I tap the hardwood floor and attempt to coax her out to play. (And no, I’ve definitely not said, “Come here, bay-buh,” in a mock southern accent after consumption of a gin and tonic or two.) The lady Harry purchased Frankie from told us to move the couch out from the wall a bit, and even offered to stop by the house to make Frankie more comfortable, a generous offer Harry declined. Frankie would be out in no time, we thought.

Now a week later, I traveled to the grocery store to get some turkey-flavored Fancy Feast—Frankie wouldn’t bite when I left a plate of tuna by the foot of the lamp at the edge of the couch—in hopes she’d let me pet her or use the comb Harry also gifted me to pretty her up. 

I realize the risk involved in using this inaugural blog post to make myself look like a Crazy Cat XY-chromosome being (fuck you, gender pronouns!), but Frankie’s already succeeded in being a slight distraction from Harry’s first week of chemo, a small victory over ovarian cancer. No, I haven’t been able to send friends photos of me holding Frankie while sporting a shit-eating grin; the best recent photo of such behavior involved me holding an animatronic cat named Sprinkles at a vegan ice cream parlor in Rhode Island. Google tells me that Time—but not Morris Day—will ensure hugging my cat happens. Your eye-rolls are absolutely warranted.

But I guess the moral of the story is: Buy my book! At the rate this relationship is going, I’m gonna have to purchase grass-fed sardines and organic cashew milk before my little girl purrs for me.

Fuhchrissakes! *pppa-whhew*