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.”