TFWMZ13_2017-04-01

"Dressing Up The Kitties" - Short Story by Joseph Wilson AKA
Fishspit
How and why did life get so complicated . . . so difficult? Mental
illness and booze have ravaged me since age 13. But I remember . . .
god I remember. Younger days . . . maybe it was age 4 or 5. I’d go to
see my cousin. She was the same age as me. She lived on a farm. I’d
go stay a while. And there were always plenty of cats on that farm.
Some were wild . . . they killed the rats. And a few were tame. The big
mama cat would have her litter . . . and when I came to the farm, Faye,
my cousin, would take me out to the smoke house where they’d be.
She’d gather up some kittens and tell me, “Fishspit! We’re gonna
play house!” Then we’d take ‘em to the back porch where Faye had a
lot of milk . . . and a bunch of the prettiest little dresses she’d made
herself. The mama cat didn’t mind. Sometimes she stayed in the
smokehouse and snoozed . . . other times she’d follow us to watch the
little game of playing house.
Faye would get them little kittens all drunk and sleepy on milk. They
then were putty in her hands. They’d get wobbly . . . they’d get sleepy.
Then she’d pull out her little dresses and bonnets and other
accouterments and start dressing them up.
And I was her husband of course. We’d have 7 kittens. They’d all be
girls. She insisted. Even the little boy kittens were girls . . . them little
boy kittens . . . sleepy on milk . . . dressed up in Faye’s little dresses.
Well! I had to provide for our children. So she’d send me out to my
uncle’s garden and have me pick grapes, and beans, and peaches, and
just about anything. I was a farmer you see. I was a good provider. We
ate the peaches and Faye read English lessons to her children. Her
mother was a school teacher . . . so she’d use her mother’s text books.
But since Faye couldn’t read, she’d just open a text book and make
things up. Things she’d heard. She’d tell the kittens about George
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