The cat drools when you pet it.

The cat drools when you pet it.

So, of course, I go out of my way to pet it. Several minutes and a small pool of drool later, my job is done. I wipe the excess cat saliva on my mother's couch. I hate that couch.

It was covered in plastic, cat fur and my discontent. How was it that guests would ever enjoy that damn thing anyway? It was a shrine to my mother's life. Beautiful, but separate.

I'll never forget the day I had her laminated. The guy at Kinko's looked at me like I was crazy. But I said, this was her dying wish. After that I drug the corpse to

Mayor Gingivich's waiting room. I imagined his flabby face when, next morning, he would trip over the laminated barmaid in his usual stupor. He'd rack his brain, thinking that he

had forgotten to put it away. After a few days it would start to gnaw at him. After a week he'd start questioning everything and by the end of the month he'd be ready for the crazy

glue that he liked to be applied to his rectum. I always used to say to other people about him, "Rectum? Damn near

kilt him. He blowed up like a balloon, till he could barely squeeze hisself through one of them double doors down the Winn Dixie. He'da popped like the Hindenburg iffin he'd kep

on-a growin' but that was not gonna be the case. Nosirree. Not BobJoe the Plumber. He had hisself a case of Drain-O in the back of this here pick-up, and he hisself had a funnel