Me: “Tweak, did you know that there are cats who live outside?” 

Tweak: “Live? Out… there?”

Me: “Yes. Outdoors. On the other side of doors.”

Tweak cocks her head toward me from the windowsill where she’s been tracking the mating ritual of two robins.

Tweak: “Someone has to go outside to pour nurdles in their bowl? Why would you do that to yourselves?”

Me: “No, no. These cats don’t have a ‘someone.’ They have never eaten nurdles.”

Tweak: “This is bullshit.”

Tweak turns back to the robins in the bush. The male leaps up one branch higher, the female down.

Me: “I would not lie to you, Tweak. I tell the truth so I don’t have to keep track.”

The male has brought the female a gift in his beak – a leaf. Or a maggot.

Tweak: “So they’re homeless?”

Me: “They’re not homeless, they’re house-less. They live between things.”

Tweak: “Were they born in barns??”

Me: “Sometimes. Certainly they were not nuzzled into the world by the kiss of a midwife onto a bed of Valium-filled Krispy Kremes like you, princess. No, feral kittens are born mewling and twisted, wrenched from the uteri of cat rapes, dropped wet and kicking behind dumpsters and under front porches all across this great land, raised on a steady diet of Taco Bell, locusts, and intimidation.”

Tweak: “What happens when it rains?”

Me: “Then we forget about them.”

The male robin leans over to present his squirming gift. The female lets the maggot fall to the earth.

Tweak: “Are outdoor cats… special? Inbred? Got one eye in between the other three?”

Me: “They are typically very healthy, although they tend to cuss like sailors.”

Tweak: “Your mother was a bilge rat.”

Me: “Your father had the pox.”

Tweak tucks her feet under her and watches for the next bird show.

Tweak: “Yo, ho, home.”

—
16 August 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”