…once lived a tragic feckless being called Peter the Frog. Peter the Frog was severely depressed, ever dwelling in the shadow of his long-departed and more talented brother Kermit. His crush, Miss Horsey, and his cousin, Vinny the Pooh, had both gone off to war against the ants, had not been heard of since and there really was no one with whom to hang out. "I could fight the ants!" Peter was known to exclaim, nearly falling out of his barstool. But he never really believed it. How does one even kill an ant, a giant ant, and can they be killed? One night Peter's umpteenth drink went down and he began the long stumble home….

OAK TREE POEM

Among our largest living forms

Passively enduring storms

Massive reoccurring acorns

Oh my God, the oak tree.

      Our kitty has a cold. She sneezes and looks at you as if you might have something to do with it. I say "she" because of her name, Pretty Ribbons. I warned Katie not to name her Pretty Ribbons and at first she conceded and said her name was Hollow Stinking World, which I thought was really sly of her, but secretly she went on calling it Pretty Ribbons. When I was around, she'd be like "Prett – I mean Hollow Stinking World, do you want your nap now?" And if we deemed the answer yes, one of us had to distract it with its mouse toy or a set of car keys (virtually anything works) while the other crept in and pricked her with the medetomidine. This, in combination with the opioids, can generally be counted on to zonk her out for a good half-hour, in the kind of sleep only quarterbacks get. Courtesy of the University of Minnesota's "Research Animals Resources":

"The three components of anesthesia are analgesia (pain relief), amnesia (loss of memory) and immobilization."

Now the animal has a cold and is continually sneezing and running around the eyes and basically grossing all of us out.

"Hollow Stinking World," I say, deliberately, with an eye on Katie, "Why don't you go outside?"

"She doesn't have claws," Katie reminds me. As if it's that bad out there. Please. And it's not like we got her teeth removed. They "fixed" her, true, but that was more or less a favor to her, if you ask me, from what I've seen of cats around the neighborhood. Who'd want those kittens? Mothers would be like, "Go ahead, kids. Pick one out." And the kids would examine them appalled for a minute and then point to the most bearable one and start to cry. It would be a disaster. So I'm glad they scooped her womb out or trussed her up in knots or whatever. There were instructions for her care post-procedure. This one stood out:

"If your pet is chewing or licking the incision, ask your veterinarian about getting a special collar to prevent this."

I was like, "Hey Katie, where's that collar I got you?" I was only joking, but she didn't get it. She never gets it. I might as well drive to the shore and scribble my joke on a beachball and boot it into the water and hope one of the boogieboarders reads it.

The medicinally administered nap was her idea. Fine, it was my idea. But she came around to my way of thinking, eventually. If we give her license, I reasoned, to just curl up and go to sleep whenever she pleases, of her own power, she'll be sleeping the day away before we know it. You could just see, by looking at her, that gaping fault in her character, laziness. It's better, I said, to put her down, maybe twice or three times a day, whenever the mood possesses us, and have her be surprised when she comes to, with a new and well-deserved appreciation for all the outrageous luxuries we provide her.

"It's criminal," I say now, watching her sneeze again on the floor. "Isn't that right, Hollow Stinking World?" She looks up at me with her deceivingly bright eyes. If only she weren't that which she so obviously is. I wish… I wish so many things. It's wasteful, wishing. It's been a potholed and punishing road, but this much I've apperceived. They don't come true, wishes. I wish I had a sports coat! I wish it wasn't President's Day! I wish the Jets would crash in a horse pasture on their way to play the Colts! Because that would interesting, the implications.

From the official webpages of FairfaxCounty.gov: "Five Steps to a Great Horse Pasture":

1.    Soil testing, fertilizing and liming

2.    Over-seeding and renovating bare spots

3.    Establishing/maintaining a sacrifice area

4.    Controlling grazing pattern

5.    Controlling weeds

Apparently the "sacrifice area" is where the horses can exercise and frolic and basically just be a horse. I hadn't expected that. I saw something about "proper drainage" and "Remove waste from the site on a daily basis or before rain" and automatically I pictured a killing grounds. But that's my issue, I suppose. And maybe that wouldn't be a "great" horse pasture, my way. Even so, there seems to be a lot going on there in terms of "controlling." If I were a more venturesome sort, I'd ask if that weren't a potent secondary motive for the whole operations. Anyway, the last thing we need are horses, frankly. We have Pretty Ribbons, and that's plenty. But then maybe they'd be friends, it's possible, some gratuitous pony called HBO and our wreck of a kittycat Pretty Ribbons.

Do yourself a favor and check this out: http://MexicanPonyParadise.com. Go to "My Collection."

Oh you may well have over 200 My Little Pony dolls, Miss "Peppermint Truly," in your cushy little situation there in Sunnyvale, California, with your frighteningly good art and love of the city and your no-doubt amazing Siberian Husky Diesel. But there's one thing you'll never have, and that's manners. Some of us are actually struggling to scrape together just one or two My Little Ponies to boil down and shoot with the same needle we use on Pretty Ribbons without even bothering to clean the thing, because we heard it gets you off. Some of us are so desperate for escape we're living vicariously through Pretty Ribbons in those moments of utter and total calm when the drugs have taken hold… At the very least, then, I can finally take my eyes off the thing and notice the furniture and stuff we've painstakingly organized on the walls without having to continually, obsessively monitor its every move, the preening of its paws, the scampering after reflections and motes of dust, things that can never really be caught, thinking to myself, "Is that not the very illustration of my own existence, in many ways, of my own confusion and will to be clean?"

Alternative names for the pony:

1.    Lord Alfred Tennyson

2.    Fortuneteller

3.    Cart-Puller

4.    Lady

5.    Beach Wrack

6.    Slut

7.    Hocus Pocus

8.    Elliot

9.    Zero, the Horse

10.                       A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

11.                       Metallica

12.                       Cruelty

I am going to end this now. This little bit about Hollow Stinking Ribbons or whatever its preposterous name is. The Oscars are on and the cat has been sent away, so to speak. I prepared a larger-than-usual dose with consideration given to the typical length of the awards, red carpet pre-show included, and enough to maybe, just maybe, afterwards steal a moment for myself, in America, with Katie, in our strongest-smelling pajamas, reduced to prolonged silences by all of the tension and dread between us.

PLAY

Scene: A wall some heads are nailed to, and birds. And bugs.

Characters: Mounted humanlike heads sporting branching bony ornaments (antlers), birds, butterflies, Ryan.

Approximate time: 10 o'clock.

TALKING BIRDS ON RYAN'S WALL (all together)

       "We are the talking birds on Ryan's wall. Cardinals, jays, robins, etc. We weren’t talking before he nailed us up but we’re talking now. Each of us corresponds to a date on the calendar, such as Friday, May 9; Tuesday, September 29; Saturday, March 1. Each of us is supposed to be dead, but we're not."

ANTLERED HEADS ON RYAN'S WALL (in unison)

       "We are the talking antlered heads on Ryan's wall and we too have something to say. Once we were godfearing villagers just doing our simple life’s duty and now look at us if you dare. There are twelve of us. There are thirteen of us if you count Wesley but he was here before. He’s always been here, Wesley has. And his antlers are bogus. Not authentic. He must have thought we wouldn’t notice. At first we ignored him at all costs but now he's somehow been adopted as one of us. Funny to hear him say those words because all of us are talking at once. And those words. And these words. Wesley, will you never shut up? Shut up, Wesley, we mean it. We are sick of you talking when we are talking and talking so much about yourself. Silence. Silence, Wesley. Black decay on your beginning."

TALKING BIRDS

"What if, for a change, colorful straws grew out of us?"

BUTTERFLIES ON RYAN'S WALL (as a group)

       "Listen! We are the butterflies on Ryan's wall and don’t count us out. We are very, very small but you will hear our voice. We take great offense to all of this, frankly. We began as caterpillars. None other present can say the same."

ANTLERED HEADS

       "We began as caterpillars."

TALKING BIRDS

       "As did we."

RYAN (enters stormily)

       "Quiet down!"

(exits)

HEADS

       "Thanks a lot for getting us in trouble."

BIRDS

       "It was the caterpillars he heard, the moths. I would bet the farm and the newfangled combine harvester."

BUTTERFLIES

       "Lies! Impossible! All of you go to bed."

BIRDS

       "Now I lay me down to sleep…"

HEADS

       "No praying!"