Do you know the Kliban Cats? If not, you’re probably not old. Like me.

Back in the late 70’s the strip ran in the local paper and I sort of fell for it. It had the same tone and flavor as The Far Side but with cats. It also was a little cute in the way that Mary Englehardt drawings are cute. But not quite so rural housewifey as Mary’s work. The bean-bag shape of the cats Kliban drew so reminded me of my own feline friends. When I went off to college I had the usual sets of towels and sheets from Target…and one special set of towels with a Kliban cat printed on it. It was the Blues cat, sitting on a stool, strumming a guitar and singing the mousie blues…

Love to eat dem mousies
Mousies what I love to eat.
Bite dey little heads off,
Nibble on dey tiny feet.

It was printed in dialect then, although, if you go to the Kliban site today and watch the flash intro I notice that they have changed the printed lyric. Doesn’t change the fact that I would pay good money for a good mouser right now.

I came home this evening, with my overnight guest, Linsey who is a young woman on a Bike and Build cross-country summer bicycle trip. I set her up in the kitchen to check her email and went into the living room to get my phone charger. I looked up, out my beautiful picture window, at my antique library table on the porch that is the summer home of all my house plants, to see a mouse, a big fat healthy looking MF’ing mouse walking the length of the table, as if through a park, gazing into my living room at me.

I screamed. Because that’s what I do when I see a mouse. I’ve learned this about myself. I accept it and embrace it as part of Who I Am As A Person. And I walked quickly (possibly ran. and perhaps flapped my hands. just a little.) into the kitchen and stood facing the corner until I could compose myself.

I felt compelled to apologize repeatedly to her for the outburst, for the fact that my house has mice and for bringing her here. She was very nice and polite and didn’t seem at all concerned that she was being sheltered for the night by a stark raving neurotic lunatic. Or that there was a mouse on the porch. Clearly she Doesn’t Understand. She’s young. She’ll learn.

DS2 followed me out to the kitchen to smirk and mock me with his eyes. I sent him out onto the porch with another box of De-con.

Tomorrow, after I get up at 0-dark-thirty to make Lindsey breakfast and take her back to church by 7:00 AM (hey, I was told yesterday she needed to be back by 5:30 AM, so this is like a reprieve) and while I’m at work, the boys are instructed to clean EVERYTHING off the porch except the big pieces of furniture. I want to be able to see all the edges of the room and start to take up the carpet to see how badly the floor is rotted….if it is. And most importantly to make sure those damn mice aren’t nesting on the porch.

If this is a war, I’m about ready to go scorched earth on their tiny asses.

p.s. I would be remiss in not mentioning here, for my own sake, that two Saturday’s ago, when I was having a beer with AR (a.k.a. McKilt, if you MUST know) HE was the one who referenced Kliban Cats in relation to my mouse situation. It totally messes with my head to have him mention this fairly obscure cartoon with such familiarity. If it were only this example of weird connection it would be one thing…but it’s other stuff too. And if it were your general run-of-the-mill cult following stuff like Star Trek or even The Far Side it wouldn’t take me by such surprise.

But come on! Kliban Cats? He’s like the only other person, not a girlfriend from high school, whom I’ve ever met that knew what it was, much less could quote the mousie blues song to me.

I don’t actually think that makes us star-crossed soul mates or some such bullshit. But it does beg a couple of questions.

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

T -1 2007

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

T -1 2007

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

T -1 2007

Posted on July 21st, 2008 under house. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.