East Dallas Times

By Bruce Felps

I mentioned before, didn’t I, that I share a domicile with a cat? Why, yes, yes, I did.

He goes by Bogart — as much as any cat goes by any name — but not by design.

Like most of the pets I’ve had, or rather, who have had me — and lord that just came out kinda wrong — Bogart joined my household off the street.

Naming wrongs

I took him in, and took him almost immediately to the vet — the blessed temple that is Metro Paws Animal Hospital — to get poked and prodded, jabbed and pricked. In fact, he called me a variant of that last word on the way home, and our happy relationship was cemented. 

Anyway, that first day, I didn’t have a name for him so the vet’s office listed him as “Stray Cat.” The examination room vet tech leaned over him, facing away from me, and called him something I heard as “Bogart.”

“Hmm,” I thought to myself, because humans have yet to master telepathic communication and you really can’t think to someone else, “not bad. Pretty decent name and my dad’s favorite actor of all time, so yeah, Bogart works.”

Only thing was Stephanie — think it was her — called him “Booger” not “Bogart.”

Yeah, he still thanks me for my faulty hearing every now and then — and damnit, I cannot find an online video clip of Dr. Johnny Fever using the word “booger” on the radio airwaves but here’s a transcript, which is pretty lame, I know. Sorry.

On the couch … the chair, the counter, the table

Bogart, like his human, has some psychological problems as evidenced by the photo on the left-hand side of the page, and why doesn’t anyone ever say, the “left-foot” side of something?

Bogart thinks he's a dead cockroach.

He also has some particular ways of getting his point across. For example, when he needs his litter box cleaned, he goes over next to it and starts yelling at me. When it’s time for his dry food — the lunch hour — he goes to his dry-food bowl and yells at me. When he wants canned food, he goes to his feeding area and yells at me.

He yells at me a lot, which sometimes makes me think I’m still living with my X-Factor. Good kitty.

The mornings, though, bring a different kind of food demand, which has kind of escalated during the year and a half he’s been under my roof.

Blinded by the morning light

I am not a morning person, much to Bogart’s dismay, which means I do not feed him early enough to suit him. He does his best to roust me from bed, though.

He started by simply doing the cute, cuddly cat thing — and until I have been up for about three hours and pumped an equal number of cups of coffee in to my system, there is no such thing as cute and cuddly from any species no matter how good she looked last night — and crawled up on my chest while I tried to sleep. “Can’t … breathe … fiendish … feline …”

He then upped the ante by moving close to my head, unsheathing his claws, and lightly touching my nose, which, when you’re still three-quarters asleep, kinda feels like Jack Nicholson meets Roman Polanski.  

Then again, maybe he thought I looked like a little angel while asleep and he just wanted to pet me. Yeah, that must be it.

More recently, though, he really amped up the attempts to wake me up. He decided I would bolt from under the covers if he were to take a flying leap off the bed and into the Venetian blinds … and hang there … yelling at me.

Got me out of bed, all right, but not to the end result he’d hoped. Bad kitty.

Red or white

Since starting this little enterprise, people tend to ask me how it’s going, how’s business. I’ve come up with a rather pat, descriptive, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek answer.

“Oh, it’s going just well enough to make me wonder if the cat would taste better grilled or roasted.”

You should see his little eyes get bigger when I say that. Hilarious.

Much more of that, though, and I’m thinkin’ he’s thinkin’ that maybe, just maybe, “Stray Cat” isn’t such a bad name after all.

Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times. For the cat’s sake, hit this button and follow through. Bogart’s down to seven.