The Saga of Sampson:
My cat is home. I'm still reeling from the relief that he's safe, slightly smelly, but home. The story of this is long, involved, and complicated, but subversively funny. Maybe it's just long, involved, and complicated. I've been writing it all day, so, well, yeah. This is the story:
It hadn't really hit me yet that Sampson was gone and I probably wasn't ever going to see him again until this morning. Every morning, whether or not I've really missed Sampson, I've whined to Foster that I miss my cat. And every day Foster's would say; "Your cat's probably having babies somewhere."
"Sampson is a male cat," I would respond.
"So he's knocking up some other girl cats." As he said it today, I started slowly crying. Fat, wet, sad tears. "I shouldn't have said that," Foster mumbled, but I wasn't mad at Foster. I just missed my kitten for the first time, and felt deeply sad. (This sounds so simplistic. It was. I can't think of interesting ways to describe grief. It just is - like a heavy weight or a hollow feeling. There's no fancy way to describe it.)
I slept through the rest of Physics. Like a dead person, I talked to Foster about his page's graphic (it is quite hot), mumbled and stumbled through the hallways. And in my stumbling, ran into my brother. He shoved a scrap of paper into my hands.
Three found ad's from the local newspaper. A cat with a brown flea collar. Not sampson. He doesn't have a collar. A pack of pokemon cards. Not sampson. He is not an expensive fad. A male grey tiger cat. Found on my street. Sampson.
I keeled over. I started laughing. Foster told me not to start crying, but I was laughing so hard that I was sobbing. I spent the rest of the school day glowing.
---
In English class, I started to talk about Sampson. I doubt I could've talked about anything else, it really was what'd made my day. I was still sort of perturbed - why hadn't I been worried about my cat? I mean, Sampson disapeared Sunday. It took me until today to shed a tear over him. And I had realized early on that I probably wasn't going to see him again. (whether or not it was rational of me.)
"Gilbert was classic" I sighed to no one, as people were milling about, "When he died, I was inconsolable."
"Gilbert was classic," chimed in grade-school friends.
"Do you remember the time we all slept over, and we were downstairs watching television really late at night. And we turned on the TV and there was this girl with huge glasses! And we were all so scared we changed the channel," said one of the girls.
Now, not only did that have absolutely nothing to do with Sampson or the late Gilbert, but damned if I remember that episode from my childhood. Maybe I was brainwashed. Or maybe that girl was on crack when she told me that story. Cause it's just strange.
---
I relayed the information to my parents during lunch, and emailed friends letting them know the cat had surfaced. When I got home from school, my father had written me email:
Margaret,
I called the number you gave me - no one home I left a message.
I got a call from Mystic seaport - you are on the cruise. (this is cool, i'll talk about it later.)
Dad
So, I gave the number a call. My nextdoor neighbor answered. What a stupid cat, I thought. If you're gonna run away, you can do better than that. How stupid of us to not realize he was so close. Nagging in the back of my head - my father must have called our neighbors. Then again, I wasn't part of the Search and Rescue team so I couldn't be sure what anybody had done. What stupid neighbors, I thought; they must know he's our cat.
I snatched up the cat carrier and fired up the Cat Mobile. And drove to my neighbor's house. And stood outside stammering because my neighbor didn't have my cat.
And didn't know what I was talking about. Moreover, his father wasn't home, and I was sure I had talked to an older man on the telephone. My neighbor was perfectly kind. (Surprising: I always thought he wasn't too nice. He was genuinely kind though. He's only a year older than I am, and I always figured half as mature. This was a nice revelation.)
He gave me a phone and I fished out the ad from my purse.
"Hi, This is Margaret again. Uh, um. Where exactly - what number are you on ****** street?"
"Margaret! You know us! The Sieburgs! You used to babysit for us."
Oh. Oops.
"You're just stressed about the kitten. It's ok."
I wasn't stressed. I did, however, really want my cat.
I apologized to my neighbor, and drove to the Sieburgs' house. I picked up my cat, who smelled like potpourri and air freshener (yikes...) and listened to cat stories for half-an-hour. Apparently he really likes tuna, and got along fine with the dog. They let him out every day, but he kept coming back. They had almost given up hope. (Funny that this cat was only gone for a week. I was talking to my friend Tim, whose cat was gone for 40 days to the T. All this trauma over five days... )
That, I think, is the story.
---
According to edit pad, I just spent 5,200 characters telling you about my cat. I'm trying to set a record: most characters devoted to As Pointless As Possible Entries. Oh, well, pointless entries make me happy. I wanted to write about my cat so damned badly that I couldn't think about anything else. Plus, I ruled off all the other topics:
Music. Too easy. If I'm afraid to say anything, I talk about music. Its safe, its non personal, and it could be interesting. But I haven't much to say. I'm not a musician, and I'm generally just wrong about music. I get facts messed up, I get genres confused, I just don't do such a hot job. And then, I'm becoming reluctant to post my taste in music online. I'd rather people got to know me through my writing than a list of CD's I own. Plus, it's too easy. Writing about music is always my knee jerk reaction to fear.
Other people. Stupid. It's always a little tempting to blow off steam in an online journal, but I'm determined to be responsible. (I wrote a whole college essay on the responsibility that comes with an online journal. I think its real - you have to be careful. Words can be unforgiving. When you put your journal online you have a new responsibility.)
Religion, or any other Not In My Life topic. Books, movies, etc. Same thing as music - stock topics. The stuff I write research topics about until my head spins with different views and angles. The stuff I write about to sound cultured (never consciously, I don't think I'm that arrogant and insecure.) I don't know enough about anything to talk about it intelligently here. There's another thing too: I used to get frustrated when I didn't catch literary references. When I hadn't seen a movie, when I didn't know of that band. It drove me crazy. Maybe, if I avoid discussing my stock topics, I'm pandering to a lowest common denominator. No easy answers.
Menarche. Ovulation. Menstruation. Sex. All the stuff in my deep heart, but I'm sort of embarrassed to talk about. Damn my puritan heritage. You know what I wrote about my bed a few days back? About virginity? I had a similar tirade written in my handwritten notebook. And I let my friend read it, and she snarked when she found it. "Whaddaya mean you're gonna post this online?" "Oh, I'll hide it. Password protect it or something," I said (defeatedly). Now I don't really care, and I'm not afraid. Less afraid than I used to be. I'd rather embarrass myself than other people, quite honestly. (so, that makes this a legal topic. But really, I have nothing to say right now.)
Other journals. Stupid. See what I said about other people. Tossing in the internet? Stupider still. It's tempting, it really is. It's remarkably easy to forget there's a human sitting there on the other end. And that human's having just as hard a time expressing his or herself through his or her journal.
This journal. Another stock topic. Boring if you don't write an online journal. Probably kinda boring even if you do write an online journal. Fun for me though.
What does that leave? The saga that is Sampson. Maybe I just need a more interesting life. Well, I have other stories. Random thoughts. Stuff that doesn't fit into my normal categories.
---
I was talking to my friend Sam about Becca and I's word list (one entry back. I'm too lazy to link.) He seems to think "Kiwi" is a good word. I don't like kiwi. You know why? Cause it's like a word trying to be symetrical and failing. It's a disapointment to symmetry.
Should I pursue a path so twisted ?
Should I crawl defeated and gifted ?
Should I go the length of a river,
[The royal, the throne, the cry me a river]
What about it, what about it, what about it ?
Oh, I'm pissing in a river. - patti smithI used to have issues about posting lyrics in my journal. I used to say "Why should I let someone else say what I should be trying to say for myself." Well, I don't know if that's always so true. Maybe they can say something more eloquent. Or say nothing at all.
Diaryland is really conducive to herky jerky journal entries. I knew I had to type out tonight's entry in edit pad so I could see the story, double check grammar and spelling. It still doesn't feel right (I wish it were funnier.) If I had written this in diaryland, I wouldn't have been able to see the whole thing until I posted it. And I would've had to muddle through it all again, editing over and over again.
I think my list of People to Marry was funnier while it was all male. It's genetics I'm heterosexual! It's not by choice!
I take everything seriously online. Sometimes I think its funny to pretend to miss a joke. (I love analyzing humor. Keeps me busy and hopefully thinking.) Two of my friends gave me a hard time about my "Crush on The Calculus Teacher" journal part last night. "He's married!" they shouted. (I said that, didn't I?) Was I joking? I know I've gushed about him before, but I'd never really said "I am so very much in love with my calculus teacher." Was the joke that people took me seriously? Was I serious? I want to keep people guessing. Especially myself.
I will tell you this: I fall for a disproportionate number of Math Guys. Something about numbers is really sexy...
2000-01-07, Really long entry... about my cat.
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