Pate is the New Loaf

I'm thinking that the cats eat better than I do.

Because while I am chomping on all natural, heart healthy Veggie Chips, the four of them are tucking into "Classic Pate" which, by the tag line on the case of 32 I just bought, "Loaf" is now.

Yes, Loaf is now Classic Pate which of course means the cat will turn his or her nose at it somewhat less infrequently than he/her snubbed good ol' loaf. Because cats are all about class and attitude.

No.

Not really.

Cat owners, some of them anyway, are.

Cats are practical. They'll eat rodent gizzards if they need to survive. They don't hold any illusions of Classic Pate being any more than yesterday's Loaf and it doesn't portend Julia Child in the kitchen, fluffing tails and whipping up a little light Coquille Seulment Pour Chat.

Cat owners, some of them anyway, think that the fancier the label, the better little Pibbles, Bing -Bing, Mewkus or Monkey Butt will like the pureed whale snot that's being doled out of the tremendously expensive little can.

Of course I'm not like that. Cats eat what they eat and I couldn't care less although I found it encouraging that I could now serve Classic Pate to the little monsters and not have to dupe them into another evening of Loaf.

The Veggie Chips aren't bad either, but I need to remind Thumper that in fact, a potato is a veggie.

I could just as easily have a dog, because I like dogs as much as I like cats. But I'm more of a cat owner, which is to say I'm a little more sensitive. Can't stand leaving the house every morning with some dewey-eyed pooch wide-retina'd at you, wagging and drooling "DON'T GO!" The cat's "Yeah, see you when you get back, maybe." between hindquarters lick is a little more condusive to me getting into the car.

So it's cats for me for now. Four of them: Two that came from the knob and tube, one from Thumper's house, one that seems to have come with the new place.

Pate is the new loaf.

If only steak were the new Veggie chips.

Bunny on.

How's by you, Comrade?

Hooray, hooray, the first of May! Outdoor fucking starts today!

There. If I've ever left an indelible impression, that's it and no other parade down Red Square will ever seem the same.

Forget diatribes about the old man's shorting out most of the east coast, putting up a Christmas tree, forget every airborne automotive stunt involving intentional acceleration. Memories are made up of vernal copulation.

May is still a ways away. But spring is right around the corner, despite Phil having prognosticated otherwise. Who can blame him? If I got dragged from a nice warm burrow with cable tv and an espresso bar every February and had my naked underbelly shown to the world of a thousand videocams and flashbulbs, I'd want revenge too. Can you blame an overfed rodent for pissing down a gloved hand and condemning them to another six weeks of morning galosh hunt?

Not only is spring close, daylight savings time is even closer. This is congress's fix for power savings, originally inspired by Ben Franklin's quest for candle savings. Didn't work then. Won't work now. See, Ben was in France and noted that if you turned clocks an hour later or earlier depending on the season, you could save candles for illumination on the way home since the sun would still be out. Worked over there because, well, it was France. Who the hell gets up at six in the morning besides prostitutes anyway? Kind of flopped in the colonies where we did actually get up at six and earlier because there was no Bastille to storm just before taking August off. Hadn't been built yet. Plus, we couldn't pronounce Versailles without alluding to chandlery.

So the extra sun we'll get scorched into our retinas on our evening commute home next week will be offset by-just as we were getting to the point of waking at dawn's first light-the pitch black cold morning we have to get up in again like January came around again just for the hell of it.

What will Congress think of next? Wait, don't encourage them. They might. I just carbon traded six briquettes for a Mickey Mantle rookie season card.

Bunny on.