I NEED THREE CATS AND TWO DOGS AND UNLIKE EVERYONE AROUND ME SEEMS TO THINK, THIS DOES NOT IN ITSELF MAKE ME INSANE.

I dreamt last night that I had become a criminal and was carrying a gun. I was driving and thinking about how now I was free of all of societies rules and could just rob to get my money, that I was leaving all my family and friends behind to travel from town to town just doing whatever the fuck I wanted. I won?t bore you with any more details than this, but suffice to say the point of someone feeling alone is the THESIS STATEMENT that I am going to meander around for a while.

Being alone, PBS?s Nature told me this morning, is the worst thing for a wolf. I live with a dog that is about as near to a wolf as you can get, a Siberian Husky with clear blues that tend to scare some people, and know just how much she has to be a part of any goings on in the apartment. If we have guests over, she has guests over. If we are eating, she is sitting at our feet expecting to be treated. Most of the time she stays in the same room as us, curled up sleepily on the floor, or chewing on something or coming up to us with a tennis ball in her mouth that she wants to fetch for awhile.

Aloneness is unnatural with Humans, as well


DIGRESSION: By the way, if this non-hamster prose is boring you, don?t worry, this writing will be all about you in the end, not me, the writer, and we all know that you specifically are the center of the cosmos.

Return to Thesis Generated Prose.

I have been thinking a lot about this since one of my cats died, leaving behind his brother who he has been with since he was born. Science convinced me that I should raise them together so they had someone around to ?talk cat? with. So they would not be lonely, like a kitten who cries at the door whenever you have to leave them alone.

The dog has created the same concern in me since the day she came in the door and licked me and M.?s hands to say hello, then promptly chased the cats into the dining room. Dominance in another trait she gets from being a near wolf. If someone does not dominate her, she will assume that she is the dominant one. I seldom pull rank on her, of course.

We used to take her to a friends house to play with her two huskies three or four times a week. Whenever we even started going the way toward the house, Ruby became a pulling machine, her every muscle straining against the leash, jerking your arm out of socket? making you grab the leash with two hands, like they say to do with Huskies, because they are stubborn and wild enough that sometimes if they don?t agree with your opinion, they will go with their own. And getting to her Huskies buddies to play as fast as possible consumed her? When she sees another dog while she is out walking, she always tries to go play with them. As much as possible, I let her. But since her breed just runs off in front of cars and shit if you let them off their leash, the dogs leashes get all tangled sometimes. And you never know if the other dog owner will get all freaked out by this ? like the dogs, I could care less whether I have to untangle the leashes of a couple dogs, but some people I have run into here act like they are going coronary on me over this.

I have come to the conclusion that we need another dog, as well as two kittens (two because a kitten will have too much energy for Buk, who will be 12 years older and more mellowed -- though I usually prescribe to the philosophy that anything over two cats is a form of madness). M. Won?t let me get them, of course? though she in reality wants more animals bad enough that I think if I come home with a couple kittens some afternoon that she will take one look at them and hold them dear forever more, even though she insists that she will throw me and the kittens out into the street.

The modern dilemmas of this life are endless. Still, better to be subtly trying to work ones way through one situation at a time then impose a black and white world over all the pretty, pretty colors. If I was a black and whiter, I am pretty sure I would be white, and this would have cost me over a hundred women and countless fun and crazy times? as well as headaches, drunken embarrassments, O.D.?s, etc?

So I guess I will have to conform enough to leave both of my animals a bit lonely. The thought is terrible to me. A gut wrencher. Like the other night when I was watching the news, and a light hearted report came on about cows getting released on the highway after a semi accident. They showed all these images of beautiful animals lounging in the grass serenely chewing their cud and what not. Laughing, the reporter ended his spiel with, ?The cows were on their way to the slaughterhouse.?

My love of animals makes me, as I wrote recently, a reluctant carnivore. This report made me envision the half-pound of hamburger in my refrigerator as one of the gorgeous beasts. I guess I could look at the positive side and say, ?Well, Mr. Pain, perhaps your animals ? both of whom you rescued from being ?put to sleep,? are a hell of a lot better off than those cows.?

Jesus H. Cross!!!! This is why I hate people who are ?positive thinkers.? That is so intellectually lazy and socially irresponsible that I won?t even consider positive thinking anymore. Pumping oneself up with a mental sales pitch, or trying to give some nice mental spin to something like lowering the quality of life of some very beloved animals, is vacuous cheerleading in my way of thinking. To ignore the pain in the world and try to be the Prince who never feels his people?s wounds, would make you a potential Buddha who would never end up under experiencing ?nirvana.?

Well, the thesis statement may have seemed to have gotten away from me in this entry? let me just add then, as way of summing up this atrocious pudding of words, that loneliness is at the heart of this work, mine, yours, the dogs and the cats?. So there, you fucking English teacher in my head with a knuckle busting ruler, I got back to the thesis at the end?

Steal from me and you will be cursed in such a way that your hands turn into worthless, jelly fish like appendages that sting your intimates. Or sued or something bad like that...