What I did on my weekend…

Adventures in Cat-Sitting, a Play in One Act

PETERMBALL Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx , , , ,

Peter sits at the table, trying to work. He is grumpy and irritable after being woken two hours early by a deranged cat yowling at the bedroom door. The Cat jumps on the table and sits on the computer keyboard. Peter moves The Cat.

Peter: What do you want, cat?
The Cat: Feed me, mortal.
Peter: Dude, I fed you ten minutes ago. You ate. There is no more food.
The Cat: FEED ME.
Peter: No.
The Cat: I stare at you.
Peter: Totally cool with me.
The Cat:I stare with mighty stareness.
Peter: Huh.
The Cat: FEEL THE WEIGHT OF MY DISPLEASURE
Peter: Got it. Trying to work.
The Cat: I savage your toe.
Peter: Fuck. Shit. Rack off, I was using that.
The Cat: FEEEEEEEED ME!
Peter: TRYING TO WORK.
The Cat: Holy shit, there’s birds in the yard.
Peter:They’re chickens. They’re there every day. You know this, because I pull you away from their pen every morning.
The Cat: I savage the chickens for food!
Peter: You’re starting to piss me off.

The other cat, hearing Peter move through the kitchen to rescue the chickens, emerges from his hiding place.

Other Cat: Food?
Peter: No food.
Other Cat: Cool.

Other Cat disappears in a method that’s mysterious and probably involves the city of Ulthar beyond the river Skai. Outside there are chicken’s panicking.

The Cat: FOOOOOOOD!

Peter goes outside and saves the chickens.

The Cat:Seriously d00d, feeed me.
Peter: No.
The Cat: I bring you offerings.
Peter: Dude, I have no use for crickets.
The Cat: Then I shall eat the offering and bring you another.
Peter:Whatev’s man, just do it outside.
The Cat: Fuck that, d00d, you don’t learn the lesson about feeding me if I don’t eat the cricket on your feet.

Peter removes the cat. Peter removes the half-eaten cricket.

The Cat: Offering!
Peter: I don’t want it.
The Cat:It isn’t for you. This offering goes to mighty Cthulhu, that he may rise from sunken R’yleh and lay waste to the world. Then I shall eat your eyelids, for I hunger and they look tasty.
Peter:Whatev’s.

Peter removes the cat. Peter removes the half-eaten cricket.

The Cat: Doom.
Peter: TRYING TO WORK!
The Cat: Ai! Ai! F’tagn!

Peter removes the cat. Peter confiscates The Cat’s copy of the Necronomicon as a safety precaution.

The Cat: Feed me.

Peter removes the cat. Peter barricades the cat door with a waste-paper basket.

The Cat: Ouch.
Peter:Opposable thumbs, dude. Don’t mess with the guy who has ’em.
The Cat: No fair!
Peter: You can come back in without offerings if you fuck off and let me get some work done.
The Cat: You will pay, mortal. Oh yes, you will pay…with your eyelids.

The Cat dissappears to plot revenge. Peter goes to work in peace.

Other Cat: Food?
Peter: Working.
Other Cat: Cool.
Peter: I reward your understanding with belly scratches.

Bad Ideas and Cat Fights

PETERMBALL Journal , ,

Last night, because Jason Fischer is a bad influence, I wrote out the notes for a Blaxploitation-esque story set in the 70’s version of the Miriam Aster universe. I then put it away because I realised there’s absolutely no way of writing it without being horribly offensive or utterly driven by pastiche.

Such are the dangers of not having any deadlines looming, major or minor. Fortunately there are days when I stop myself before doing stupid things and today seems to be one of them. The notes go deep into the “write this when you can afford to get punched in the face” file, at least until Jason lives up to his threat to kidnap me and go all Kathy Bates until I write the damn thing (if anyone hears about Jason acquiring a pet pig, please let me know).

In other news, there are twenty-four days remaining before I am free of cats. Or, more specifically, the cat, since there are two felines in the house and I only really have issues with one of them.

See, as a general rule, I kinda like cats because they embody the essence of cool. They are aloof and self-contained and are quite willing to put up with having their belly scratched because I’m the person who lays out food. They make me work for their attention and I can respect that, because generally I’m self-involved enough that I only really want to pay attention to other living things on my own terms*. One of the cats I’m house-sitting is a totally chilled dude in this respect; he’s very low-maintenance and doesn’t much care what I do as long as he gets fed. He also seems to grasp that when I’m asleep I’m not really up for a) playing, b) serving as a hot water bottle, and c) getting up to feed him.

The other cat is…needy. We do not co-habitate well, especially since he doesn’t seem to grasp that I don’t particularly want to play when I’m sitting at the laptop. Nor am I particularly enthused when he digs claws in after jumping on my stomach, largely because I develop a rash whenever he breaks the skin. He doesn’t seem to understand that clawing at my bottom lip while I’m sleeping is going to result in a very grumpy human, not that I’m not fond of having things sit in my lap that aren’t in possession of RAM chips and a wireless internet connection.

Today I’m trying to convince the mad cat that sacraficing crickets at my feet will not endear him too me. I seem to be losing this battle. Ordinarily these are minor irritations, but after seven days of antihistamines I’m starting to get a little grumpy with it all.

*this here, btw, is the reason I make a terrible friend, housemate, boyfriend and employee. 🙂

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

PETERMBALL Journal , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day –  and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps.

1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this).

2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which pleases me greatly for reasons that may or may not become apparent if you’ve read Horn. Brisneyland is part of the forthcoming Sprawl anthology from TPP.

3) My sister returned live and well from her trek over the Kokoda Trail yesterday. Notable primarily because my parents didn’t send me crazy with phone-calls when there was news of trouble in the area, and because she returned bearing coffee beans ready for my caffeinated consumption.

4) My doctor continues to taunt me by having me come in for appointments where he doesn’t remove my stitches, thus prolonging the wait until I can finally *wash my damn hair again*. To be fair, this is largely because he took all the stitches out last week and I immediately started bleeding like a stuck pig, but my head itches dammit and the ease-of-care was half the reason I shaved my head a few weeks back.

5) The yearly rejection counts holds steady at 7; the yearly acceptance count rises to 1; the number of stories ready to go out into the world is about to rise by 2. These statistics do not support getting to 100 rejections by the end of the year, but I’m about to dissappear and house-sit for the month of July and I plan to get a *lot* of writing done while I’m there.