There is a cat… a calico Tom... with whom I have become fast friends.
He bears the good old-fashioned name of Foulques, is yellow, young, dashing, of soft claw and satiric eye.
Foulques and I first met when he wished to pay me an uninvited visit. A firm refusal accompanied by a virtuoso-level spine stroke cum ear scratch surprised him as much as his exceptional good grace in clearing off surprised me.
When later I told Foulques of my wonder at his gentle manner, he related that he too could not help wondering about that kick that never came, about a firm refusal borne in a sweet caress, about the personal story behind it all.
Somehow, though I never cease to speak of my Foulkes, Karine has never met this remarkable feline. Yet, Foulques & I, as do Karine & I, share much besides un penchant fort for scratching and rubbing; perhaps the stars are crossed in this.
Foulques and I have become the tenderest of confidants. The strong jawed calico freely recounts the stultifying dynastic complexities of being scion of Feline Mercury, the Cat House responsible for delivering interspecies communications. The natural great-grandson of Behemoth, Foulques listens with perfect sympathy as I, Peter Pan’s bastard, confide my own existential frettings and fumings.
And, if truth be told, Foulques, whose interests range from fossil fish anatomy to flapping butterfly wings, is no more made for delivering messages between species than I am for shacking up with Wendy.
I raised my eyebrows high, then, at the slender Feline Mercury heir’s serieux as he thrust a press release detailing Friday’s dire doings inside the Intergalactic Interspecies Assembly at the Catacombs.
“Read, mon ami! Please.”
“Aux ordres, mon capitaine!” I murmur, sketching a vague salute.
I often call Foulques “Captain”. It’s his poise, air of command, I suppose.
Under a headline, “Assembly resolves human descent imbroglio”, I read,
After many months of wrangling, presentations from an interspecies team of geneticists sitting on the Intergalactic Distinguished Scientists Advisory Panel today showed Assembly members that humans, previously thought to be descended from simians, are, in fact, descended from felines, specifically, cattus cattus.
The finding was much anticipated.
Cats are a more developed order of primitive bear, the experts confirmed, which explains certain prehensile characteristics in humans as well as that species’ pseudo-bipedalism, that is, crawling often but not consistently.
The presentations brought about a much-feared political crisis as Immediate Replacement Committee activists seized on the confirmation as fuel for their drive for an early replacement of humans as the Earth Dominant Species by cattus cattus: on or before January 1st, 2016.
The current Intergalatic President and Secretary stand for what has come to be called a “Gradualist”
approach with no fixed dates. The policy has been much criticized for foot-dragging in recent years, though its proponents have claimed Gradualism amounts to enabling humans to hang themselves with less fuss and expense than the Assembly could do through more direct measures. They point to global warming and the oft-multiplying, and always murderous, Isms scything down millions and reducing the morale of survivors. Such facts, however, have done little to blunt recent criticism of Gradualism, especially of its architect, the long-serving premier, Feline Secretary for Earth Affairs Mimi, whom many see as excessively silky in her dealings with other species and, especially, humans.
Legal experts said they were not able to comment on the radical Assemblytabby’s assertions at this time, but insiders nevertheless say the Immediate Replacement Committee has a very strong prima facie case against Mimi’s essentially laissez-faire policy.
Assemblytabby Châtonnet and her faction have been challenging not only the fluid Gradualist replacement timetable, painstakingly hammered together with other responsible species by Secretary Mimi over some 30 years of sometimes tense negotiations, but also and, especially, human bad faith.
In a raucous scene just before Secretary’s Question Time, the firebrand Assemblytabby Châtonnet pointed to Donald Trump, a human “presidential candidate,” asserting, to wild applause from other members, that “If that human has not shaved out his ears to hide where he comes from, I’ll take up deep-sea diving.”
The former lead singer of the Bremen Town Musicians, now better-known as a celebrity marsupial chef then submitted a wildman bill to replace humans by jihadi-style ambush in the event of a Trump win.
Many ordinary Assembly members saw the Tabby’s action as an effort to force the government into a compromise with Immediate Replacement proponents and the bill was only narrowly voted down in a voice vote following a floor blitz by government Claws and a show of fangs by Assembly President Calypso, Secretary of the Canine Union. Calypso, a retriever, is known to be a firm ally of the Gradualists, as well as a long-time ‘good friend’ and companion of the now-beleaguered Secretary Mimi.
Taking the floor in the wake of the bill’s defeat, the long-time Feline Secretary and veteran intergalactic lobbyist for Earth affairs, coolly reminded the Assembly that the original mandate from the Extraterrestrial Organization for Higher-Order Being did not call for the elimination of the human species. Thus, she declared, before the session was recessed by presidential motion, the bill, had it passed, would have been a dead letter even before it had left the dispatch box.
I raised my head from the paper and looked a question to Foulques.
He asked me if I’d done reading?
I nodded.
He swore loudly, hardly able to contain his indignation.
“Par les crocs de Béhémoth, mon ancêtre, par les tetons de Bastet, mère nourrice de l’univers, mon ami, I have heard some things unhearable today! Yes, I have!”
The excellent Tom then informed me that the session had actually ended with a secret speech.
“Just for you, because you are concerned, despite your noble self, I scribbled down the text, mon ami!” Foulques yanked a soiled paper from his person and, in preamble, remarked that Mimi took pains to warn the Assembly that the Intergalactic Implementation Oversight Board required a long tutorship. No corner-cutting allowed!
Foulques guffawed, observing that Mimi literally growled her speech from the government mats – “Must be all these years of ‘good friendship’ with Calypso!”
He brought the paper comically close to his nose and again observed dryily that the sly old Secretary had taken special pains to ridicule Assemblytabby Cunégonde –
“I wonder why?”
He smirked and began reading:
“‘Comtesse Cunégonde and her political kittens think you are naïve,’”
Foulques mimicked Mimi’s pitch and looked slowly around.
“‘But you are not. Are you? Are you not? If the ambush fails? What will you do? Say you were all in heat? Purr soothingly as the jackboots kick you across whole continents? Say that you are really sorry and will retire to Bremen? To humans, you will say this?
You must surely know, all of the feline race and our species-friends besides, that just because cattus cattus, our own esteemed species, has acquired the grace and patience to calm and restrain the individual human, we have not made humans a sane species, nor, and especially, a less-twitchy fingered, more thoughtful species.
Look around and ask yourselves, Fellow Beings, What manner of brute amok this human species is! What are its works?
Look about you, Tabbies and Toms! Is this uniquely tough species – some have called them, with justice, “Big Uglies” and the Oversight Board has confirmed that only Blattaria Dictyoptera, today much esteemed colleagues, whom we call ‘Cockroaches’, has been less amenable to corrective action –
Are such beings, then, likely to go down under a few hisses and scratches, even from a fired-up 30-pound Tabby?’”
Foulkes paused in his reading.
“She looked directly at Cunégonde when she said it and got plenty of snickers, mon humain si cher. The Comtesse is huge, especially since this marsupial-chef thing of hers. But I wonder if Mimi didn’t go too far. Laughing at fat certainly won’t sit well with the American delegation these days!”
He returned to the paper.
“’Would a sane species even consider such a specimen as Donald Trump to clean the village sewer traps, let alone to ‘lead’ them?’”
“The secretary hissed this!” Foulkes broke in on himself. “You could feel her disdain like a cold wind! Brrrrr!”
“’No, never!” Mimi thundered. ‘”Be aware that the Gradualist and Immediatist sense of disgust is shared, friends! Be clear now, today, that our aims also converge, even if our ways and means may not always shine through to the more junior among you.
Foulques paused, “Here’s the nub of the rub.”
“’‘Gradualist’ means ‘effective and cheap - in money and fuss’, not ‘soft’!
You must know, Fellow Species, that our experts are unanimous in saying a Trump presidency will shorten the replacement transition period as many especially tiresome humans disappear and others die in the fog of incompetence. In all cases, do not…’”
– Here Foulques mimed Mimi looking out over the Assembly members, her long, thin fangs flashing like knives, claws of both paws extended
“’… Do not, species allies and friends, Toms & Tabbies, mistake our firm purpose!’”
“Almost before the words stopped echoing in the chamber, mon cher,” Foulques said, “The Secretary had tipped President Calypso the wink. In the blink of an owl’s eyes, the sly dog proposed, seconded and won a snap vote to shut down the Assembly sine die.
Mimi scuttled from the Assembly even before stunned members knew the speech was over and the vote taken.
The biggest security bulls I’ve ever seen came from nowhere to harry the whole lot of them out of the chamber.”
There was a long pause as I considered the deep blue of the sky above Pére Lachaise.
When, finally, I lowered my eyes, Foulques’s warm gaze met them. He put his paw in mine, squeezed gently.
“Mon ami,” the scion of the Behemoth clan cooed, “Why do you not join me for a Fall tramp in the South? The mousing is incomparable at this time of year. I feel sure you will find the wine even better and even more plentiful there than here.”
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