Days of Fish

Beach Cat crawled out from his rocky hollow to have a look around, out into the mist, into the sand, felt the moist grit under his paws, the salt air in his lungs, padded out towards the sea, barely making a dent in the hard sand; a ghost-cat, he was his own cat. He thought for a moment about trying to catch a gull…a breakfast gull, a ham and eggs gull, but decided it was too much trouble; one of those red-beaked bastards would only get caught in this throat, they were incorrigible…like communists. Those damned Red Beaks were taking over the beach.

He trotted down towards the surf, hoping for a little tidbit, something ready-made like a Duchamp sandwich, some washed up piece of surf detritus, a dead fish…or a live fish…or a cooked fish…a left over piece of sushi, a pile of salmon roe. This was one of the benefits of a home with ocean views, beach flotsam and jetsam, though, these days, the pickings were getting slim, all that over-fishing maybe…or the oil spill in the Gulf…Gulf oil in the Gulf.

Not like the old days. There was a time when a cat couldn’t barely move for all the natatorial cat snackettes, washing up on the shore: tuna, salmon, sturgeon, flake, mackerel…jellyfish like abandoned placentas lined up like a beach buffet, shark fin soup, whales beaching themselves out of some crazy suicide pact, the great Roman tragedy, whales were the last of the romantics. There was maritime morsels from here to New Mexico. Those were the days, the great fish days, the catch of the day days, seafood baskets when the trawlers were in, abandoned fish heads in the alley behind Jack’s Fish and Grill, California when the world was young, all these cats on the beach, jazz cats, Mexico cats with no fur, skin pink like an albino’s eyeballs, philosophy cats, Schrodinger’s cat, whacked out on barnacle beans and weed, seaweed, boxed in, boxed out, who knew? Tea cats, free cats, mom and pop cats. And then there was the pussy…my lord the pussy…more pussy than a pussy knew what to do with; Californian pussy…there’s nothing sweeter or furrier than Californian pussy. Back then, before Albuquerque, he was known as the Cat Who Knew Too Much…he was the cat who could get things…get things done, the cat who knew other cats. Back then, he was known as the Sea Doctor, the Doctor of the Sea, or just Doc…or sometimes Sea Doc…or Sea Cat…or Doctor Cat…or the Big Cat…or just Cat. It all amounted to the same thing…he was a known cat. He was one of the untouchables. No one could touch him. Not even the Red Beaks. Those commie bastards.

Albuquerque was the fork in the road where he should have turned left instead of right, gone straight instead of turned, stopped instead of gone, pulled out instead of pulled in. Albuquerque was where things went awry. But – and this has been said by smarter people than I – the past is a foreign country and this distance of retrospect is like a shining light…like a lighthouse, like a beacon of illuminating memories, like a slap in the face with a wet fish. The past might be a foreign country, but it has its name on the front of your passport, etched into your passport photo like a roadmap. Albuquerque, even the name sounds like a cat coughing up a fur ball. But I’ll be straight with you, this is a cat who was always destined for trouble; some are.