An Animal That is Not a Cat

What a strange circle. Circle? I am calling three points a circle, but I shouldn't. I don't know how many points it takes to make a circle. I only think I have made a circle because I think I have reached that first point again--but this is unlikely.

You are like that riddle from the Sphinx--four legs, two legs, three legs.
In the morning you were an animal. Four legs four paws four claws. Older than I'd known. Ran in dog years, maybe.
In the afternoon you were one of us. Human, that is. And that's something I can admire.
In the evening you were a mess. One leg shy of one of them, on leg over one of us. It is another sort of thrill to remember footpads and faux pas. But only dogs that forget they are dogs try to be dogs again.

And I only describe you as a dog because it is the first animal I can think of that is not a cat. It may perhaps be better to call you a bird, but that animal has already been taken in my mind, several times, and I do not have room for an aviary in there, you know. Better to say dog and mean an animal that is not a cat.
Though to be clear, dogs can be quite catish as well. And that is why I mean only an animal that is not a cat, and not a dog.

~

I'm glad to see your eyes around, even if I don't know what to do with them.

~
A thing, some things, many things. But never all. There is this strange clutter that follows you, this collecting. As if you must prove that everything else in the world exists. But everything else in the world already knows it--you needn't say it as if you're breathing them, ex nihilo, into existence. You needn't collect; you needn't trouble yourself with the lives of these things at all--they will outlive you. Odradek will keep winding itself past the halls of your house.

~

Have you ever been killed by the guards to the doors of your Law? That shit's fucked up. But it happens. It is a smothering. It is a drowning--perhaps by one's own collections. One's own hysteria. I don't know. But it happens. And it's dreadful. And dreadfully beautiful. And don't you say that shit can't happen because it ain't real--it's real enough. It's head real--that's real enough. And don't you say that shit's all fun and games, because it's not. They may be your guards, but they've been ordered to fuck you up. They'll beat you into a world of bent limbs and the backs of eyelids--as close as you can get to the Law. To nothing.

When the collection, collecting, borrowing, extracting, takes every last ounce from you, it leaves you in debt.

~