Me: “Why do you pull your hair out?”

I bend over to pluck a white tuft from the carpet.

Tweak: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Me: “Really. What’s this? And this?”

I harvest another hair spiral from the couch, the chair, my cornbread.

Me: “It’s like a Dr. Seuss book in here.”

Tweak: “Oh, the places you’ll vacuum.”

Tweak rolls onto her back and chews at her belly like it owes her money. She raises her face, victorious, a rugby player in a scrum who’s just found the ball. Or possibly his spleen. She spits a white puff onto a red blanket.

Me: “You can’t even spit. Wipe your mouth. You look like a prom date.”

Tweak: “Why don’t you get creative with all this product I’m donating to the cause? Weave orphan blankets on Pinterest or something.”

Me: “Or sell it on Etsy. Glue it to a Twizzler and call it a pipe cleaner.”

Tweak: “Attach googly eyes and market them to meth head babies.”

Tweak rolls back and forth on a red blanket, excavates a bowl of hair.

Me: “You know, most cats are content to sit still and shed passively.”

Tweak: “Most cats are pussies.”

24 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

BOOM!!

Tweak: “Now what?”

Me: “M-80s.”

Bowie-dog crawls under a dresser. Tweak tilts her head so much that disdain drips out.

Tweak: “Are people dying?”

Me: “I can only hope.”

Tweak: “Is it humans attacking or ‘War of the Worlds’?”

Me: “Ooh! A Tom Cruise missile… One for me, one for Katie Holmes.”

BOOM!!

Through the window…

“Woo-hoo!”

“Dammit, Jesse!”

“Hold my beer.”

“FIND MY FINGERS!”

Tweak: “Give you guys opposable thumbs and you blow them off.”

Me: “M-80, M-81, whatever it takes.”

BOOM!!

Bowie-dog whimpers; Tweak narrows her eyes.

Tweak: “Let’s go find his fingers.”

Me: “That’s not his finger.”

Tweak: “Let’s go find his cruise missile.”

22 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Me: “Ugh. Why are you always here, here, HERE?!!”

Tweak: “This is where I sleep.”

Me: “Show off.”

I flip the pillow over and flop onto my back in an attempt to find coolth. Tweak, hot, next to me, and as immovable as an undeveloped twin, rotates one atom to the right.

Tweak: “Wait… you can’t SLEEP?”

Me: “Look at this face. Is this face asleep??”

Tweak: “That face is on fire.”

Me: “I CAN’T SLEEP!!”

Tweak: “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Me: “Of course not. You sleep like it’s your job.”

Tweak: “That, and being pretty.”

I grumble out of bed to fill up my ice water. Tweak follows me and climbs up to her food station because she can. She looks into her bowl like it has AIDS.

Tweak: “This bowl is half-empty.”

Me: “That bowl is half-full.”

Tweak: “It’s not the right half.”

I roll my eyes and pour in a handful of nurdles.

Tweak: “Maybe you can’t sleep because you roll your eyes.”

Me: “Maybe you can’t eat because I’m gonna sell you for medical experiments.”

Tweak: “You would never sell me. Because then you couldn’t sleep.”

Me: “Tweak, you ARE a medical experiment.”

Tweak: “Go back to bed.”

Me: “You coming?”

Tweak: “Of course. It’s my job.”

21 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Tweak: “What are you doing?”

Me: “I’m rolling up my yoga mat.”

Tweak is sitting on tuffet in a Meatloaf Pose, a motionless lump of judgmental peace.

Tweak: “It looks like a burrito. What do you fill it with?”

Me: “Sweat. Hope. Spandex.”

Tweak arches her back into a perfect C-shape, then flops on her side. She bends her head downward over the edge of the tuffet and licks one paw.

Tweak: “What is this ‘yoga’?”

Me: “It’s a Sanskrit word that means ‘unity’ and also, ‘Those are really nice pants.’”

She flicks her tail once, twice, then stretches her hands out over her head extending her body to three times its normal length. Her vertebrae are taffy.

Tweak: “Why do you do yoga?”

Me: “Because gravity is a bitch, and I don’t want to be one.”

She twists her spine from neck to tail like someone unwrapping a caramel.

Tweak: “I don’t see the point.”

Tweak jumps off her tuffet, lands like Nadia Comaneci on the wood floor, and attempts to seduce my yoga mat by squirming her fur all over it.

Me: “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

Then she flounces down the hall for a nap. My yoga mat is now a Chia burrito.

Tweak: “Namaste, bitches.”

20 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Tweak: “What’s that?”

Me: “You know what this is.”

Tweak: “Come on, just say it.”

Me: “Cream. It’s cream.”

.

Tweak: “Can I have some?”

Me: “You know that answer to that, too.”

Tweak: “GIVE ME SOME CREAM!!”

Me: “It makes you throw up.”

Tweak: “So it’s like online dating?”

I stir my coffee.

Me: “Desperation makes you mean.”

Tweak: “How come you can have cream and I can’t?”

Me: “Because I have thumbs.”

Tweak: “How come you can have thumbs and I can’t?”

Me: “For online dating.”

I stir.

Me: “You want some cream?”

.
Tweak: “I’d love some.”

19 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Me, hollering through the back door: “I bought you a toy!”

Tweak, muttering from somewhere in the house: “Why?”

Me: “Because I’m an American. It was only four dollars.”

I put away the groceries and set out, excited about my gift, to locate Tweak. I find her wrestling with a plastic bag, surfing down the hall, and kicking at it like maybe it was full of monkeys. Or cocaine.

Me: “See?” I ask, holding up a green and yellow frog. “Isn’t it colorful?”

Tweak: “How would I know?”

Me: “Also, it crackles.” I wiggle the legs back and forth to demonstrate.

Tweak: “Like this bag, you mean?”  Tweak rattles her legs against the plastic in mockery.

Me: “Just let me take it off the cardboard. You’re going to love it.”

I remove four robust twisty ties that are strong enough to have held an actual frog in place. During a crucifixion. I accidentally drop one and it skitters across the hardwood floor like it’s escaping a predator. Tweak leaps up and murders it.

Me: “Look at this cute frog!”

I toss the frog on the floor. It crackles and plays dead. Tweak is still punishing the twisty tie for crimes against amphibians by molesting it into the shape of a 3-chambered heart. She rolls onto her back and holds the tie up with her hands to declare victory and inadvertently rolls on top of the frog. It crackles. She jumps back.

Tweak: “Where did you buy this?” She pokes the frog with one toe.

Me: “Meijer.”

Tweak: “Do they sell milk?”

Me: “Of course they sell milk, but you can’t have any.”

Tweak: “But you could toss me the milk ring.”

She tips the frog over. It crackles and dies. Again.

Me: “What am I supposed to do with this frog?”

Tweak: “Kiss it. Maybe it will turn into a good idea.”

30 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

Tolerating Tweak – “Frog Cracklin’s”

Illustrations by Susie Winnie Morrison 

Me: “It’s getting kind of hot in here.”

Tweak: “Have they promoted you to Admiral yet?”

Me: “Admiral Obvious? It’s way too hot for seamen humor.”

Tweak has melted into a leather chair, legs in front, head sideways over the arm, pink belly exposed like Colonel Sanders on a drunk.

Me: “I thought you liked heat.”

Tweak: “I like WARMTH. This is Stygian.”

Me: “Have you been reading again?”

Tweak: “Only the phone number for the ASPCA.”

Tweak slides off the chair, sprawls on the hardwood, licks the floor.

Tweak: “Isn’t there a button on the wall that makes it cooler?”

Me: “Yes, but it’s expensive. Do you do any tricks for money?”

Tweak: “Don’t YOU??”

Tweak rolls on her back, legs spread in four different directions like a pinned biology frog. Or like a hint.

Me: “Bowie-dog’s coat is much heavier than yours. When she’s hot, she just pants.”

Tweak: “That dog couldn’t find her ass if her tongue was stapled to it.”

Me: “I used to have a cat that panted.”

Tweak goes still. All the oxygen leaves the room. The earth rumbles.

Tweak: “There were no other cats before me.”

Me: “I’ll turn on the air.”

28 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Tolerating Tweak – “Cat on a Hot Tin Rough”
Illustrations by Susie Winnie Morrison

+++

Me: “Tweak! What did you eat??”

I am in bed. Tweak is sitting on my chest breathing at me.

Tweak: “Whatever nurdles you poured in my bowl. They’re shaped like X’s and pain.”

Me: “You love those nurdles.”

Tweak: “You feed me like a tic-tac-toe game.”

Me: “Your breath is terrible.”

Tweak: “It’s a game nobody wins.”

She yawns a cavern of death. Dreams die.

Me: “Maybe you should brush your teeth.”

Tweak inhales the nighttime from my mouth.

Tweak: “I also ate your soul. Maybe you should brush your soul.”

+++

14 June 2014, Tolerating Tweak — “My Soul Needs a Breath Mint”

Illustrations by Susie Winnie Morrison 

Tweak: “What’s wrong with her?”
Me: “Storm.”

It’s 4:00 a.m. I am lying on my back in bed. Tweak is lengthwise along my right side like a job shadow. On my left, on the floor, is a locomotive.

Tweak rolls just enough to knead her claws into my armpit: “But what’s WRONG with her?”
I fold a corner of blanket over my shoulder so she doesn’t draw blood. “The thunder frightens her.”

Bowie-dog is huffing like a freight train on the floor. She has scrabbled her body as close to the bed as possible. Her head is under a dresser. She is panting like the little engine that hates me.

The lightning flashes. My lips tickle. I open my eyes to see Tweak’s face six microns from mine. She is silently inhaling the night from my mouth.

Tweak: “She’s weird. All that breathing. Can’t you do something?”
Me: “No. I’ve tried. 11 years I’ve tried. There’s nothing for it except to let it pass.”

Tweak climbs down my abdomen and plants a foot into my bladder. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”

18 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak.”

Tolerating Tweak — “Panting the Storm Out”

Illustrations by Susie Winnie Morrison. 

Me, checking the weather on my phone: “I don’t know what to wear today.”

Tweak, licking the white fur on her front leg: “Yeah, that’s a real problem.”

Me: “You don’t understand. It’s hot and humid outside, but my office at work is freezing.”

Tweak, rolling onto her back and nibbling the future of a hairball on her belly: “I don’t know how you can stand the pressure every day.”

Me: “If I wear shorts, It’ll be cold when I teach. But if I wear long pants, I’ll be sweating the rest of the time.”

Tweak, chewing her toe: “It’s like Sophie’s choice.

I pull out a pair of black shorts from the dresser, set them on the bed. I reach into the closet for long pants, turn back to find Tweak in rapid S-contortions, having a furgasm on my black shorts.

Me: “I guess I’ll wear long pants.”

Tweak: “You’re welcome.”

17 June 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”

—————–

Tolerating Tweak — “Furgasm”
Illustrations by Susie Winnie Morrison