Ask Erm

After absorbing far more political rhetoric than a person should be forced to consume, I happened to walk by one of my kitties, Erma.  I looked her in the eye and asked, “Erm, who would you vote for out of this quagmire of rhetorical candidates? Her tail sweeping in long, slow arcs she paused on the kitchen floor staring at me as if I had asked a question beyond her realm of thought process. She couldn’t fool me though as I know she knows at least as much as the average voter and certainly understands more than the average candidate about life in the real world.

Erm gazed at me with crossed eyes for a few seconds then rambled off on the simple fact that she had no clue who anyone should vote for. “Not a one of them does anymore for us cats than feed us stale cat food out of a bag! Hell, you have to plug your nose every time they open a bag of it. You know what they say about a bag of shi…” Her voice trailed off before coming back with another addition to the thought. “Speaking of that and plugging your nose, the more they try and dress up sh.. the worse it gets. Perfumes, chemicals and thickening agents all slipped through the money cracks in the EPA and FDA. The big dog gets the hormone injected bone, while we get the research leftovers.”

Obviously Erm was getting riled, her tail twitching as her voice began to rise. “You know what really ticks me off are the thousands of cats purring and rubbing on these fat cat politicians thinking they are going to do something for them, then turning on each other as directed. Why would these fast talking schmucks do a thing for any of us cats when their paychecks come from pet food corporations? Think about it…they even own the researchers that declare all this stuff good for us, and they haven’t even cracked a bag!” Erma’s sister Edna happened to stroll by to get a drink of water and Erm took a swing at her out of pure frustration. Even her outrage was in the wrong place as it is with most of us human types.

Erma recognized her escalating anger, so she managed to get a hold of her inner Erm and went back to sitting all prim and proper while Edna walk away a bit wary and perplexed. My wise cat went back to her analogy of the situation explaining how we were all being lied to and pitted against each other to create a smoke screen for those lies. “I should have known better than to strike out at Edna, but sometimes she is so stupid. I had to teach her how to catch a mouse if you remember”, she reminded me. “If you give her a piece of cheese she is your friend for life, no matter the fact that the cheese is as fake as the cat food in the bag.” Her tail was twitching again, so this time Edna who is experienced at staying out of harm’s way, gave Erma a wide berth on her way back from the water dish.

I could see all of Erm’s points on things as I too have wrestled with the whole gamut of lies perpetuated by Internet trolling and email forwards proclaiming everything from bad birth right to how many Muslims it takes to light a fire.  Sadly, the truth is, not many. The smoke is so thick that not even a cat can see through it at times, one match would ignite the black damp into an inferno of hatred.

Erm must have picked up on my thoughts, you know they have that sixth sense, because she began to speak again, more thoughtful this time. “I see commercials for cat food telling of its’ real salmon authenticity or it is ‘Made from Real Chicken’, and I would bet my last mouse on it being some product designed in a tube with just a few guts thrown in. And they call it fit for kitty consumption? But, somebody is getting rich on it so the lies go on!”

She was headed toward a yowling fit I could tell as her eyes widened to compliment her obvious tail twitching anger. “They think that because we are quiet and aloof we will stand for this, well they are wrong! We know who hates cats and will do everything in our power to get noticed. Cats will unite to keep our own districts where we all got along fine instead of them lumping the black cats in one and the white cats in another. Or the poorer, matted kitties kept separate from the Persian green eyed, privileged types.” Erm was really thinking now about all the injustices of society.

“The candidates are good at that gerrymandering so that they get exactly the voters they need in their districts, to vote exactly as they need them to, but to tell any of us how the cat ate the prairie dog seems to elude them. I want to know what they have to offer me besides squeaky toys; where is the filet of chicken?” She went on to say, “I want the facts, pure and simple.  Us cats don’t want to hear about aborted babies and Mexican’s, or how rich someone is. Sure ISIS is scary, but what about putting us cats into the best position for getting the mice instead of poisoning them? We are starving in the alley’s!”

She paused long enough to study my eyes by looking somewhere past me in her cross-eyed state, then pronounced she had enough conversation for one day and needed her nap by the fire. She turned on her tail and padded across the kitchen to get a last drink of water, her brain was drained from all that thought. Then she jumped up in the chair and curled up with her sister, the one that she had just taken a swing at five minutes before. Ah, to say what you really mean and get things off your chest is far better than beating around the bush, which is for mice and politicians.