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.