Accismus

There is a cat that watches me from the other side of the fence behind my house. It is small and black-and-white, with green eyes and lots of whiskers, like a catfish. This morning, it was watching another black-and-white cat make its way slowly across our back patio. This strange cat was huge and fat and slow moving. It walked over to a bunch of stuff covered in blue tarp, and sniffed and licked all along the edges, slowly. Then, it disappeared behind the tarp. The little cat jumped in concern, and leapt over the fence. It ran over to the tarp, and started meowing. The big cat stuck its head out and looked at the little cat. The little cat’s meows turned to screams. Slowly, and by degrees, the big cat emerged from the tarp, all while the little cat kept yowling at it. They moved into the center of the patio and sat down facing each other. The little cat yowled repeatedly while the big cat silently considered him. Eventually, I banged on the window.

Later, on a busy street corner, a pinched-looking blond woman in a quilted jacket bawled out a nicely dressed little girl. ‘That’s disgusting!’ screamed the woman. ‘How dare you!?! Do you think that man on the train was (unintelligible), is that what you think?’ The little girl was methodically eating candy stickers off a large sheet of wax paper from Dylan’s Candy Shop. She said nothing, and ignored the screaming woman as best she could. So did a swarm of humiliated-looking business men trying to squeeze past them.