Brooke

I’ve known Brooke nearly since I started working at the Union two years ago. She’s Morgan’s roommate, and spends a lot of time in the joint; and even I, with my lousy memory for people, will get to know you if you’re around four or five times a week.
Brooke makes me feel very open-minded, because she’s kinda crazy conservative, but I like her anyway. How conservative is she? When the Doofus-in-Chief came to town last year on his “vote for me” tour she got tickets to see him. She said that he was so close to her that she broke down and cried, like my mom might’ve done for the Beatles. Okay, crying because you’re near the Beatles is goofy, but doing it because you’re near a politician is just plain creepy. I mean, John Lennon had a far more positive influence on the world than Dubya.
Anyway, Brooke and I have never really had a political discussion. The closest we ever get is that she looks with disapproval upon certain items in my T-shirt collection. She’s decided that it’s better for our friendship if we don’t talk politics, and given her highly emotional reaction to the pResident, she’s probably right. I doubt there’s any common ground there.
Beyond politics, Brooke is cheerful and exuberant, and inclined to drinking lots of shooters, a trait she probably picked up from Morgan, the shooter queen. Also, Brooke likes my blog, so she’s obviously a person with very refined sensibilities. She used to bug me all the time about getting mentioned on it. Now, she's not only been mentioned, she has her very own page. It's very gratifying that she likes this little project so much.

If I could just turn her to the dark side, she’d be just about perfect.

Jeannie

Jeannie is the cat that lives with me. She was a stray when she took up with me, but she obviously hadn’t been stray for too long ‘cause she was too healthy. The people she lived with before me, though, must have been really mean to her, because she’s an absolute fruitcake. I mean, I’ve always made fun of the very idea of pet psychiatrists; how could an animal have emotional problems? Well, this cat has ‘em, and she’s got ‘em bad.

She hates every living thing that crosses her path, generally including me. If she’s in a bad mood (which she generally is) and you come near her, she’ll bite and claw you like crazy. Even if she’s in a good mood, she expresses affection by biting, only not quite as hard. And don’t try to pick her up, whatever you do. Ask Davey Nine-Fingers about that. And if you’re sleeping around her, be careful how much of your body sticks out from under the blankets, ‘cause she might decide to attack any exposed flesh. Christy woke up to find Jeannie on her throat once, and was afraid to move until Jeannie decided to relocate.

Even though she’s tiny (she’s about 2 ½ years old now, probably), she is absolutely the terror of every cat in my neighborhood. They’ve gotten to the point now where they try to gang up on her two or three against one, unusual behavior from cats. But, I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. And she is the real walking death to every smaller creature in 4 ½ Alley.

She does seem to have developed some casual and limited fondness for me, though. It took about a year of living together, but she actually sleeps on the couch with me now. If I go for a walk and she’s out, she’ll follow me wherever I go like a dog, even up to school and around campus. And she no longer attacks me when I pick her up, though she certainly expresses her displeasure vocally.

She has a couple of unusual character traits that don’t demonstrate themselves in acts of violence. She tends to burrow, which I’ve never seen a cat do before. She digs under the covers to sleep, for example. Also, she absolutely will not eat human food. I can fix myself a big plate of fish, or stir-fry, or butter-and-herb pasta, or whatever, and if I have to step out for a moment I can just leave it on the table. She won’t touch it.

The other day I was making a big thing of tuna salad. I put three cans of tuna fish in it, and she came ‘round when she heard the cans opening, thinking she was getting some soft food. The last can, I saved a little bit for her. She even refused to eat that. She’d seen me putting the rest in a mixing bowl, I suppose, and decided that it was human food and therefore beneath her. I’d never seen a healthy cat turn down tuna before.

Also, she likes the shower. Every day when I’m in the shower she sits right by the stall (I have no bathtub) and then rushes in to take the occasional drink. This is very disconcerting, ‘cause I’m naked and she still bites under these circumstances. And though she usually goes to the bathroom outside (because she’s usually outside period), if she’s inside when I go to the bathroom, she wants to go, too. I guess it’s a togetherness thing. But between us, we can make the room pretty near unlivable.

So, yeah, she’s an interesting creature, unpleasant and eccentric. There might not be anyone else in the world who could love her. But I have a long history of loving the unlovable, and I guess she fits right in with the history of my life.