August 27th, 2008
“Son of a bitch, you’re running up the meter!”7 comments
August 20th, 2008
"Hey bro, remember me? You wrote that story about me in the paper."3 comments
August 13th, 2008
“It’s the Californians, man, the Californians are the worst.”13 comments
August 6th, 2008
The middle-aged man I picked up at Vendetta is in a hyperactively verbose lather ...0 comments
July 23rd, 2008
When I step into the obese old woman's apartment5 comments
July 16th, 2008
The obese old woman at Fred Meyer has a bad hip and a wheelchair...8 comments
July 9th, 2008
“...I need to take a shower first and wash all of this blood off.”6 comments
July 2nd, 2008
“So I’ve got these two women in the back of my cab who just refuse to get out...”8 comments
June 25th, 2008
“My friend’s getting divorced, and he’s really drunk,” says the bartender...8 comments
June 18th, 2008
There’s nothing like a good Friday night, and I’m referring to the money.3 comments
[May 11th, 2005] I really, really love cats. I once brought my most gregarious cat along in the cab; he hung out in the back window, charmed my passengers, and earned me a gentle reprimand from my boss. I once made a blood delivery to a hospital only to find a wet, cold tabby outside the blood-bank door; she lives happily with my ex-boyfriend now. And at the moment I'm looking at a scrawny stray scrounging behind some dumpsters by a bar on Northeast Sandy Boulevard.
I'm waiting for my passenger, listening to the cat crying, and wondering if I have time to go see if he's OK. I don't.
My passenger opens the door and gets in. Big, burly Mexican guy, shaved head, tattooed knuckles, two gold teeth, pants hanging off the ass-right out of Central Casting, this guy. Except....
I tell him about the stray, and he says, "Oh, he's fine, I feed him all the time. I have four at home." So do I. He tells me their names, he shows me their pictures, he talks about his kitty cats like they are his children, which is how I am, too: It's embarrassing. Him too, his friends tease him.
He tells me he's gotten into fights with people because he saw them abusing cats. His voice takes on that tone reserved for animals and small children; he is gushing about his cats. He tells me about eccentric behaviors, funny incidents and absurd cuteness. For a normal person, this would be like seeing someone else's vacation pictures, but I am eating it up.
I love it when people are 180 degrees different than what you expect.
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RECENT COMMENTS ON “I really, really love cats...”
On the 180 degrees thing...Me too!And to think after glancing at the headline, I anticipated that this story was going to be about some bored beastly bastard purposely swerving to flatten felin...
