Strays of
“One of these days I swear to God I am going to find one of those damn cats smashed under my tires.”
“Seriously.”
“They’re fucking everywhere.”
“I know.”
“Like that one with the broken leg. It’s the ugliest piece of shit alive.”
“Yeah. Poor guy.”
“Poor no one. I wish someone would run it over. Put it out of its damn misery.”
“They are pretty gross.”
“I saw a couple kittens with it under our porch and I almost threw up. I just screamed and chased them away.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. So you still wanna go to Shane’s tonight?”
“Yeah, if you want.”
“Definitely.”
Lainy drove like a maniac when she was pissed. Stray cats under our porch pissed her off. I pretended not to notice when she almost collided with a parked Buick on Woodlawn.
“I wonder where they all hang out,” Lainy said.
“Who?”
“The cats. Bet they have huge cat orgies in that huge abandoned house on the corner.”
“You think?”
“They’d stay warm that way. They probably throw big cat parties with lots of weed and cat hookers and shit.”
“Probably do lots of meth together.” Lainy looked at me funny when I said that.
“We should make a goddamn reality series. Record all their nasty lives and compile it like The Real World or that one with the midgets,” she said.
“What would we call it?” I asked.
“Call what?”
“The show.”
“Oh, I dunno. Something catchy, funny.”
“Hm. How ‘bout Strays of
“Shit, Jen! You’re a genius! Strays of
“And we would need a theme song, too.” This makes Lainy launch into an impromptu humming version of the title. I felt encouraged so I kept going:
“There would be all the stereotypical characters. The angry atheist, the kick-ass lesbian, the slutty bitch with a million kittens. And the ugly ‘nice’ cat – she would be the gross one with the broken leg.”
“Fucking hilarious. I think we’ve just hit a goldmine.”
There was a thud.
“What was that?!?”
Lainy stopped the car. We got out. There was blood on the street. Lainy is freaking out. I looked under the car. There it was. A pulpy mess of fur.
The leading character of our imaginations, dead.
“We could say she died of a heroine addiction,” I said.
“You’re a fucking genius, Jen.”
