There Once was a Man Who Loved Cats...

There once was a man who loved cats, a retiree of sorts, with sad green eyes and a hollow stare, who sat on his porch for long stretches of time shuffling cards and sorting bingo chips while the cats came from all around to seek him out: Abyssinians, Aegeans, Persians, Ragdolls, Exotics, Brazilian and British short-hairs, Siamese cats, Savannahs, Niebelungs, Tabby cats, Calicos, Oreos... People walking by or children passing on their way home from school could not help but pause to take in the scene and count the numerous breeds and colors.  This was perhaps just another "quietly desperate" fellow - one who had lost his job  in mid-career because of a certain "incident" that shall go unmentioned here,  involving a breakdown of sorts, accompanied by shouts, curses, tears and delusional thoughts. But to see him now, the man was quite calm, mellow, docile, beyond serene, sipping his lemonade and making unbroken eye contact with visitors to his porch be they humane or feline. In lesser numbers, the humans sought him out as well - for advice - as someone who had failed and suffered magnificently - as if speaking to a person who had electrocuted himself or fallen from a great height and lived to tell...Attempts were made to resuscitate the poor man's career, but he resisted, biding his time, enjoying the strange publicity that revolved around him and his cats. Standing guard over his cats, especially at the time of day when the young ruffians were about, he would shake his cane at the worst offenders and feel old before his time.

Randomness Happens...

Time is ticking before the big event, and there you are, brooding upon the drama and uncertainty surrounding the possible outcome....you mark off the upcoming "golden moment" on your calendar that theoretically will alter the status quo, disrupt the dominant paradigm, chart a new course, change things for the better, usher in a new phase of existence, make real communication possible etc. etc. So you roll this future contingent over in your mind, map it out step by step, imagining a thousand possible permutations of the same event, including what you plan to say and how that special person or persons will respond, but somehow it never goes as planned. Maybe it's that one chance you have to meet up with a potential soulmate or kindred spirit...you wait for your cue, anticipating violins playing or confetti and balloons falling from the ceiling; you look around for a sign, but by then it's already happening. You're talking to that person, making full eye contact.  Pleasant banter ensues, relaxed body language, laughter, smiles, nodding of heads, culminating in a shared and lasting mutual attraction, but then when the moment finally arrives, you find yourself becoming tongue-tied in mid-sentence, another person intervenes, the conversation stalls, someone faints, a stranger hands you a bill and suddenly you're out the door back in the shadows because the sequence that was supposed to unfold fails to materialize... Or perhaps, alternatively, the impending encounter is one that is fraught with tension, controversy - because the necessity of the case makes it more of a confrontation than a happy rendezvous...you are making an intervention so to speak with someone who annoys you, someone you typically try to avoid, whose very being grates upon your nerves...but you consider that you alone have an opportunity to change the dynamic and bring this person on board, to mitigate their rough edges, to pacify their vexing stridencies. There is no guarantee that such a ploy on your part will succeed, that the person will be permanently moved, altered, transformed for the better. In fact, the odds are against you; it's a long shot, but one with the same kind of what-if appeal that drives certain people to read - and sometimes lose themselves within - long romantic novels...On such a day, for whatever reason, perhaps the mild weather, perhaps because her morning tea was so unexpectedly delicious, Fiona - having  mulled over this dreaded  "event" in her mind, scoping out the sequence of awkwardness as would likely transpire - was, now that the day have arrived, strangely calm; she felt a sudden burst of serenity overtake her. She felt magnanimous toward others, even accepting of those most likely to annoy or offend her (which was most people). She was not one to suffer fools gladly and yet for some reason,  lacking her usual cynicism regarding the sad state of the world, a trait she no doubted inherited from her famous aunt - the notorious Katherine Bourgeois-Pain, she now found herself inexplicably giving in to strange feelings of docility and acceptance. When the familiar plebeians passed her way, she barely flinched; distracted shoppers, one-track-minded pedestrians, coquettish girls, well-dressed matrons, delivery boys, androgynous melancholics, slow-moving old men, aimless college students on extended summer break taking all-day lunch breaks- all failed to incite any kind of reaction - and this was a good sign, as she sauntered past this crop of "diverse individuals" in search of her adversary, that singular, woebegone, awkwardly over-confident, would-be prophet with a gift for driving her mad. It occurred to Fiona that little Billy Figgs was in some respects the most dangerous specimen of the male persuasion that she had ever allowed herself to fraternize with; yes, this was true. She had, it seemed, quite consciously made a point of collecting an assortment of hapless, starry-eyed males as friends....she had been around nice, clueless guys for so long that the other varieties of what her Aunt referred to as "manbeast", namely those alpha-male, type-A control freaks, corporate CEOs, sales execs, martinet-militarists, brigadier generals, back-slapping politicians - even muscle-bound, spoiled athletes - seemed like comic-book parodies or stock characters from old  B movies. Fiona had expected the worst from Billy, had anticipated in advance his desperate brand of faith with its unnecessarily rigid, feverishly dogmatic approach to every issue, his tiresome need to feel righteous, smug, and condescending like some forgotten minor deity with a chip on his shoulder....What she did not see coming was any admission on Billy's part that his own world-weariness had in fact caught up with him....Of late she had heard him invoking the doctrines of the medieval Cathars and Albigensians of the 12th century - counseling people to avoid romantic entanglements, admonishing strangers to forego their usual public-displays-of-affection, to sever existing ties with boyfriends and girlfriends, to dissolve any and all relationships that gave any inkling of having been tainted  by lust or fraught with the fatal seedlings of sensuality and concupiscence. Where did that leave him and Gabby Grailsmith as a couple - Fiona wondered. Was this some ridiculous preparation for a bogus apocalyptic scenario in which young single adults would gather in the cornfield? It was perhaps entirely logical for Billy to assume that the world had already ended, but that the finale had been delayed. Fiona had wanted so very much to denounce him as a fraud, a fanatic, an aberration of what true spirituality represented. She had planned to corner him as he made his way from diner to donut shop.  Billy - listen for a second... Things cannot go on like this with you and Gabby running wild in the name whatever crazy concept of God or religion you happen to be advocating. Therefore, I am cordially inviting, or rather, I am hereby demanding  that you void your membership in the Prophecy Club - and that you sever your affiliation with the Esoterica Society and the Higher Consciousness Continuum. She knew how empty her words would sound in the zealot's ears. They would have no more impact than a fly buzzing around his head or a leaky faucet dripping. With her reputation - as Billy called it - for outworn, new-agey, hippie-dippie, secular-feminist-spiritualism (whatever that means)  she had no more clout than a construction worker trying recruiting lost souls for an opera company; the fact that it was Fiona telling him all this would only raise a smirk, or perhaps a silent glare. Oh yes, of course,  if R. J.  had not handed down any kind of imperial decree or executive order, had not given a thumbs down on this one, or thrown Billy and Gabby under the bus or sold them down the river - which it was safe to say, he had not, then they were permitted, nay encouraged to continue their crusade...Amazing, truly, how much space Billy was taking up in her thoughts...But his presence continued to elude her...It was simply not meant to be...she would not be having the big encounter today despite her best laid plans...Instead she heard horns followed by a loud crash; a hideous fender-bender was erupting a mere two blocks away. A few concerned citizens rushed over immediately to survey the damage. Moments later, as if to add distraction upon distraction,  Marci and Chloe came barreling out of the gelato shop sharing the same  cup of frozen wonder, happily oblivious to the sudden commotion. Walking higglety-pigglety in a zig zag fashion, they laughed uproariously - in the midst of one of their "giggle fits" - striding virtually arm-in-arm, slurping, shrieking, moaning, yelping like two wildly uncivilized girlie-girls,  happily gossiping about two or three "dreamy guys" who held them spellbound for the past day or week or full moon.  Oh brother - Fiona gasped - overhearing their mindless chatter. Why did they let themselves descend to this level? Was this their way of letting off steam?