Month: May 2025

Parade for My Cat

If I were to put on a parade for my cat, I’d make sure no other cats were invited. He hates them. His whole body bristles up into furious ball and he screams like nothing I’ve ever heard. And that’s just when the cats stroll through our backyard. Other than the HVAC repairman, I can’t think of anything that Norman hates more. If I were to put on a parade for my cat, I would make sure there were a lot of feathers. He loves feathers. I’d make sure that there were feathers hanging from strings. I’d shoot feathers into the air out of mighty feather cannons and they’d be gloriously quiet. So that many different colors of feathers would drift down from the sky. It would feel like a sea of puddles. (I’d hire street cleaning trucks to come by later to sweep them up, never fear.) I’m talking big feathers! Like peacock feathers and ostrich feathers and albatross feathers. I’m talking little feathers! Like chickadees and whippoorwills and hummingbird feathers. There’d be no dogs at this parade I think it goes without saying, but oddly my cat seems ambivalent about dogs. At least he doesn’t mind watching them walk by peering through the screen door in our front door. You know that Smellovision? Well, I’d make sure that there was just a constant aroma of tuna and salmon and just assorted fish smells. Hey! This parade is for my cat. I recommend nose plugs. So anyway, there’s gotta be some chicken smells in there plus maybe some beef, because he likes all that stuff. And then I’m thinking this parade has got to be on a very sunny day. No rain allowed! So I’ll get the top meteorologists on the case to make sure the date and time means only sun, no rain. Fortunately I don’t think that my cat is big on calendars or even clocks, so probably if we have to reschedule, he’ll be fine with it. But better to be safe than sorry, you know? He’s pretty punctual when it comes to breakfast, so maybe he’s got a thing for calendars too. So, anyway, I’m thinking: centerpiece of the parade is just a whole pile of cardboard boxes and paper bags (arranged tastefully!) because I’ve never met a cat that likes paper products so much. Hey, let’s throw some cardboard tubes in there as well, but preferably big enough for him to crawl inside. That’s the ticket! Also a cat tree. And a comfy chair or three. We’ll clear the roads for miles around, wending our way through the city, so that thousands of people can come out to see the parade. I’ll hand out flags before hand with my cat’s face on them so that people can wave them in his honor. Then after long months of planning and a long day of parading, we’ll take a nap in his honor. Which is what he’ll probably have done throughout the whole parade. It’ll be the best parade for a cat this town has ever seen!

A bunch of books I’ve read lately

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
A bunch of translators get together to collectively translate the latest bestseller by an odd, reclusive novelist. Then dies or disappears or something? It’s all very hazy in my memory of it. An odd, disarming book, that I wanted to like more than I did. Now, so much of my memory of it has already faded. (I read it in a bit of a rush, because it was due back at the library.) Mostly I remember half falling asleep while reading it on the couch. That doesn’t help with memory either.

Inverted World by Christopher Priest
There’s a group of people and they live on a city-sized train that slowly crawls across the countryside, fleeing at a snails pace an environmental, existential horror that follows them. Only a select few are allowed outside of the city/train to deconstruct and then build the tracks that it travels upon. A strange, delirious dystopia. Has some intense, timey-wimey elements to it. I found the creativity in the writing refreshing and delightful.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimnutte
The meanest book I’ve read in a long time. Harsh satire that gets pretty meta by the end. This author can write some pretty hilarious sentences, but you’ve got to wade through some real nastiness to get there.

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
Another train book. This one is an Orient Express that travels across a monstrous Siberian wasteland. Only maybe the wasteland is inside the train after all? I enjoyed the way this story was put together with multiple point of view characters. A compelling read.

Assassin of Reality by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
A sequel. What if Harry Potter but the school was taught by inhuman creatures corrupted by the infinite power of reality-bending magic. There’s no upside to being a student in this school of magic. The magic is basically turning reality into parts of grammar and such. Mind-bendingly weird. I dug it, but I think I liked the first one better.

Somna by Becky Cloonan
A comic book about a woman accused of witchcraft, but maybe she’s actually consorting with the devil or maybe she’s just a little crazy? Witch hunts are no good. It’s a simple theme but the art was pretty great. The story had nowhere left to go.

Gone by Jock
A science fiction story about a spacecraft stowaway in a far future galaxy. A comic book. The art was a bit muddy and hard to follow at times.

They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us by Prachi Gupta
A heartbreaking story about a woman coming to terms with her mentally unstable, abusive father and the way it distorts and corrupts her relationship with everyone else in her family. A tough read.

Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates
Explores the origins of the Western occult tradition. A fascinating look at some historical characters who existed on the fringes of acceptable religious thought and ultimately often paid the price for it. Yates is a fantastic writer of history and she brings some order out of what can often feel like rampant gobbledegook.

The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
Another exceptional historian. Huizinga writes with empathy and clarity about the ways in which the Middle Ages differed from our own. I highly recommend this one.

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman
Sometimes you just want a fun, clever read. This is book four (I think) in this series and I’m happy to keep riding the ride.

Strange Pictures by Uketsu
Japanese murder mystery stories that eventually end up interconnecting in unexpected ways. Pretty creepy, clever mysteries.

The Last Man by Mary Shelley
I hadn’t heard of this book by Shelley until about a month ago. It’s about a plague that afflicts all of humanity. It’s impossible to spoil the ending because of the title, but I think it’s worth the journey. A more mature book than Frankenstein.