Cat, Pet, Animal, Tabby Cat

"What's new?" he asked.

"Not much.  How about you?"

"Same."

"That's good, right?"

He shrugged.  "Yes.  Boring, but good."

"If reincarnation is real, which would be a double edged sword, I'm going to be born in Paris, next time, and stay there."

"You may have already done that.  I mean you can't remember any of your past lives, maybe one of them was in Paris.  You might have lived during the Bel Epoque era.  But you start over every time, and do the same things, again and again, until you die, then you do it again.   Sure the time periods are different but nothing really changes.  I mean you have cars and you don't have to whittle pencils, but other than that."

"Don't forget penicillin."

"That too."

"Contact lenses."

"I get it," he sighed.

Maybe you were a pretty white female, with a black spot on your tail, in your last life."

He glared at her.  "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"You can try," she chuckled.  "What's the problem?  Don't you want to be a girl."

"Why would I want to have kittens?" he asked.

"Someone has to have them, or there wouldn't be any more cats."

"Well, it's never going to e me."

"What if you don't have a choice."

"Did you bring more catnip mice?"

"I did, and nice segue."

"Things always look good when you look at them backward because you leave out the ugly stuff.  And don't forget that you always look at the well to do, or famous people.  No one dreams of being poverty stricken, living in a box.  People, if there are any left, will look at our period of time and see everything we can't, because we're living it."

"That's true."

"I know.  That's why I said it."

"I brought you different treats," she said, ripping open the bag.

He looked at them, sniffed, then gently pushed one with his nose.  "Milk?"

"Yes."

He ate one. "Not bad."

"Okay, then," she said.

"Name all the important painters, writers and poets that were women in Paris, with Fitzgerald, Joyce, Picasso and..."

"Right" she said.  "Women were muses, models and sometime girlfriends."

"That's what I mean.  You're looking at the past with today's point of view. You already know what happened.  It wasn't like that back then, and even if you could go there from here, you would be disappointed.  Besides, the people then, didn't know who they were going to become."

"True."

"You're no Josephine Baker, you know.  No Gertie Stein."

"Gerti?"

"I'm not a fan," he said.  "She needed a nickname."

"You're probably right."

"Are you a poet?"

"No," she said.

"So, what would you do in Paris with all the artists and poets?"

"Write editorials and become a female Nostradamus, since I could see the future, having come from there.  I think that's how Nostradamus did it."

"Don't doubt it for a minute," he said.  "You could ignore Ernest and that would make him furious and more insecure."

"That might be fun," she say, smiling.

"You could tell Duchamp to put a bicycle wheel on a stool, before he thought of it himself, or play with the the Dada group."

"Duchamp seems stern and too serious, but the Dada thing would be fun."

"Maybe you could dance with the Ballet Russe."

"Not in a million years."

"What talent do you have," he asked.

"None that I know of."

"You must have something."

"I don't think so," she said, frowning.

"Maybe you could hang out with...."

"I'm not going, so we can talk about something else."

"Okay, but a lot of cats live in Paris."

"I'm sure that's true."

"If you go today, maybe I could hook you up with one of them."

"How?  Do you have a way of keeping in touch?"

"Of course," he said, looking at her strangely. "We have contacts all over the world."

"That's good to know."

"How can you not know that?"

"How can I not have any talent?"

"Maybe you do but you just don't know it."

"I don't think so," she muttered.

"Maybe everything you do is a talent, so you don't recognize it."

She laughed out loud at that.

"Cats are like that," he said.

She nodded.  "That's true."

"And you're more cat-like than most, so..."

"I'm making a garden."

"Excellent.  Rodents love gardens."

"Why do you have to ruin so many things?"

"What?  What did I say?" he asked, sincerely surprised.

"Rodents."

"What about them?"

"You said they would be in my garden and I assumed that meant you would hunt them."

"I, uh, no, not necessarily," he stammered.  "I just meant rodents like gardens, that's all."

"I'm planting a bee and butterfly garden so no rodents."

"If you plant it, they will come," he snorted.

"Funny."

"True," he said.

"I'm going to look at magazines and plants, so see you tonight."

"Okay, it's nap time anyway."

"I love you," she whispered, kissing his face."

He started purring.  "I know," he said, softly.

She smiled, picked up her tote bag and left.