THE NINE LIVES Of FELIX THE TOMCAT
By
Felix the Tomcat
and
M. P. Frank
***EBook Availablefree on Amazon Kindle Select Unlimited***
© 2022 Michael Patrick Frank and Felix the Tomcat. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, companies, organizations, places, events, locales, and incidents are either used in a fictitious manner or are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual companies or organizations, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For rights and permissions, please contact:
Michael Patrick Frank and Felix the Tomcat
Michealpatrickfrankwriter@gmail.com
FelixtheTomcat@felixthetomcat2022.blog
Thanks
To my incredible friends…my gang… Slick, Goldenboy, Hank, Gloomer, Rosa, lovely Afrodite…. And even that asshole V-Dome. Sincerely, Felix the Tomcat
To my amazing partner, Linda, and my loyal friends and family, and my amazing four grandkids. I hope someday, when your parents let you read this, you will chuckle and say, “Wow, Pop was a trip!”. M.P. Frank
See our website: FelixtheTomcat2022.blog/
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The Nine Lives of Felix the Tomcat
Chapter 1: Operation Foul Swoop
“A dog has an owner…a cat has a staff.” (anon)
My muscular chest broke through the waves of underbrush
in the tropical rainforest, like the prow of a Roman galleon. My
tawny orange, brown, and white fur with black rosette markings
blended in with the dappled shadows of the forest flora. I was stalking
a yummy-looking mule deer. With a lunge my awesome haunches
propelled me through the air, landing on the deer’s back. I sunk my
18 razored claws into the thick brown coat of my prey and bared my
vicious 2” jaguar choppers ready to pierce the quivering mammal’s
skull.
It screamed, “Let go of me, you Fudding cat!” and delivered
a vicious left uppercut to my snout, splayifying me on the nasty shag
carpet.
I had been snoozing in bed with Dakota for a couple of
hours, snuggled between her magnanimous breasts. She took 2
Ambeens at 4 PM trying to catch a snooze prior to returning to
night shift at the Seven-Eleven.
My thoughts kept wandering back to that awe-inspiring
‘BIG CAT SPECIAL’ on Animal Planet. I watched it yesterday for the
twelfth time. I love that program.
I got unlimited TV access living here. Fishface always left the
TV on and the remotes lying all over when he was either drunk,
stoned or sleeping, which constituted 89.7% of his empty existence.
I was slick with remotes.
Fishface got a VA pension for catching PTFSD in ‘The Storm’.
Since then, he just lays around the house. Loafing-not living… like a
no-income-poop, all moody and lazy. PTFSD stands for Post
Transatlantic Fu**ing Stress Disease… if you didn’t know that.
I saw a CNN special on PTFSD. It was mighty catchy out
there in that big sandbox they called I-Rock. Many of the soldiers
over there caught PTFSD- very infectifyed. It can make people act
strange: withdrawn, depressed, anxious, and angry… like Fishface.
Back to the ‘BIG CAT SPECIAL’. Really, to be fair, I should
have been a jaguar. Now, a jaguar is A REAL CAT. An Apex Predator:
superfast, streamlined, fabulous orange, brown and white fur with
black spots in Rosette patterns (like me), 18 seriously gnarly
retractable two-inch claws (5 claws per front foot and 4 per back
foot), massive jaws and razor-teeth with a skull-crushing bite. Jaws
with up to 300 pounds of bite pressure and no shit from no-buddy!
In my mind I am a Jaguar… the sports package.
Hey, I got 96.5% of the same damn DNA as that husky feline machine.
Just a little tweek of my jeans (spread over my 38 chromysomes) and
Bazinga! I got it all: the muscle, the speed (35-40 mph), more good
looks and, definitely, all the meat I can chase, bite, chew and swallow!
No more damn dogs yapping at me in the alley and no feisty raccoons
chasing me (they are the worst!) and no more goddam ‘owners’!
‘Stop fanatasizing… you twat!’ Felix, your fate was casted in
stones at conscription. I am what I am. I am going to have to live in
this beautiful sleek jaguar-colored coat, with my threatening
canines, my ‘not-so-shabby’ junk, my beautiful mind, my
sharpened sense of humor, and my healthy self-image… and cope.
But, in my mind, I am a jaguar.
So, you think I might be a little full of myself? Well, OK…
take a fine-lookin tomcat (felis catus) with a brilliant mind and give
that cat hyperthymesia (superb ottobiographic recall… the Learning
Channel). Some people call that a photographic memory. Now, give
that brainiac tomcat unlimited access to TV (with the remote):
Nature Channel, Animal Planet, CNN, History Channel,
Discovery Channel, Jeoperdy Reruns. Congratulations, you have
cloned yourself one super-bright feline. With my hyperthymesia I
could not force myself to forget anything! I remember everything:
smells, sounds, hunts, sex, events, names, scenes, faces, words,
sentences, quotes, and ideas… everything, in antagonizing detail.
The average housecat is, well, average. Cute, furry,
possibly… but sneaky, lazy, boring and generally stupid as a boot!
And totally narcissifyed… totally! Generally, apart from Tomcats,
housecats are a bunch of losers. (in Chapter 26 I will explain how that
happened over 10000 years of evolution. Read on.)
I was the eggception, me, Felix the Tomcat (I named myself after felis catus). I was both a treat to the eyes and a mighty fine specimen of a Tomcat. (the Apex Predator of New Zealand, 2021)
EDITORS NOTE: Dear readers. I am a cat lover. I do not share Felix’s low opinion of house cats or his high opinion of himself. Please send your hate mail directly to Felix at FelixtheTomcat2022@outlook.com. Leave me the hell out of it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: without their dentures, neither Dakota nor Fishface could pronounce the consonant diagraph ‘ck’ as in ‘mucking’ or ‘trucking’ and therefore those verbs sounded like ‘mudding’, ‘trudding’ or occasionally ‘fudding’. Hey, don’t blame me!
“You fudding Idiot!” screamed the edentulous Fishface from the living room. “Rothmans Burger!” He continued, “my Fudding Aunt Gwen can throw better than that!” I did not approve of Fishface’s vulgarudity.
A beer bottle smashed against the wall. He never threw the full ones. It was Monday Night Football… 8 or 12 beers, a pack of Marlboro’s, 6 or 8 joints while glued to the tube… Football Night right here in downtown Pittsburgh. As usual, he was reclined in his stupid burgundy Bark-a-lunger… watching the Steelers lose. I hate that crappy team. They are a home team disadvantage.
Fishface was getting on my nerves. Monday nights often ended poorly… for Fishface.
What a weird game: huge human beans with wide shoulders and tight pants, bright sweaters with numbers on them, funny, shiny hats with little cages on the front, and weird-looking grass. All of them yelling at the guys with the black-and-white tops.
Once in a while, they all stop yelling and they all bend over … and then they run into each other to knock everybody down on the grass- the big dopes. And I cannot follow that goofy, pointy-ended ball that rolls funny. The whole thing is bizarrifyed . Obviously, football is another alcohol-dependent human-bean activity (ADHBA). There are always about a billion other silly human beans, wearing the same bright sweaters, sitting on their butts yelling and drinking beers. Some of them paint big letters on their chests, take their shirts off and sit there, freezing their butts off in frosty Pittsburg. The morons at the game are just like Fishface but without the ugly burgundy Bark-a-lunger. He got that nasty thing at a garage sale and calls it ‘the mother ship’.
Sorry, I divurge. I had no intention of letting Fishface disturb another dreamy evening between Dakota’s breasts without some correctifying action (payback).
I watched a program on the History Channel about this 600-year-old Chinaman, General Sun Sue. I don’t know if he could fight but he could sure quote and he knows how to make damn good chickun. Anyway, as a bit of a general myself, I’ve adopted many of his smarter ideas into my warfare stratagems. I launchify frequent squirmishes against cats, dogs, rats, mice, squirrels, raccoons, and, of course, the one human bean who is my genesis, Fishface. I turn to the General for good tactical advice in times of action.
Rejected from between Dakota’s breasts, I had a nice stretch on the shag carpet and buffed my claws with my raspy tongue. (actually covered with tiny barbs…Animal Planet) I shook my sleek jaguarish coat and tippy-toed quietly into the living room. Dakota always left the door ajar for my convenience in case nature called. She forced Fishace to build a cat-flap (an invention by Sir Isaak Newton) for me, from an old truck mudflap, in the kitchen door so I could go outside whenever I fancied. Dakota liked me.
There I was: free, single, brilliant, fed most of the time, and living in a crappy flat in downtown Pittsburg with a classic under-retriever, Fishface, and his statue-esk, whopper-size wife, Dakota, who was mostly all right.
Fishface was splayed out in the burgundy Bark-a-lunger like a pregnant manatree, a large Florida sea mammal. (Animal Planet). His feet were up, his head tilted back, watching the tube. He had a reefer in his right hand, a cigarette in his left hand and a beer between his knees. He was a Rollin Rock guy. He worked at the beer factory before The Storm where he caught PTFSD. He claims the factory gave him free beer… a ‘2-4’ every Friday at quittin time. He probably stole it. I was a Bud cat myself.
I hopped up to my military observation platform, a tacky for-Mika shelf on the wall up about 6 feet above and behind the burgundy Bark-a-lunger, to survey the field of battle and assess my enemy’s strengths. Fishface was oblivamous to my presence at his 12 o’clock. I shared his weed smoke with him, second-hand.
Now, what would General Sue do?
“Let your plans be as dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” (the General)
“When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing.” (the G). I loved that Chinaman.
It was time for ‘Operation Foul Swoop.” Fishface appeared to be unconscious or dead. I had a few too many wiffs of secondhand weed smoke and drifted off.
When I awoke, the game was still on… 4th quarter with 2 minutes to go, Skins 36 to Steelers 6. Fishface appeared to be dead. This being my ottobiography (written while I am still alive) allow me put on my arthur’s hat and properly describe my genesis… Fishface: balding badly, pudgy bulbous nose, fringe of grubby dirty brown hair with a stubby ponytail, chubby red face, wispy nicotine-stained beard, yellowed teeth, foul breath, stinky charmpits, 24- pack beer belly, tattoos all over (my favorite, ‘I am a US Maureen,’ big, on his left arm), ragged-looking Steelers shirt #7, the Storm pants, and, of course, his constant footwear, the tattified Army boots from the Storm. Fishfacehad a face like a river carp. His shirt was off because he was sweating.
Fishface was surrounded by 8 empty beer bottles, shards of glass from #5, the one he tossed, and a half-full brewski #9, sitting on the shag carpet. Brew #10 was tucked in his crotch. He was snoring…a rumbling bass drone, punctuated by the odd fart. STRIKE TIME!
With an ear-piercing, ban-she scream, I launched ‘Operation Foul Swoop’ and myself from my military observation platform into the heart of battle.
“All is fair in love and war.” (the G).
I landed, nailing the strike zone- the middle ground of his flabby chest. I dug 18 staccato scratcheroonies into his bare chest with my razor-claws, then nipped his nose with my incisors and then crunched down on his WEINER with my four needle-nosed canine teeth. Blood spurted forth from his nose like a geezer in Yellowstone Park.
I escaped with a deft front flip, hurtling high over his legs and landing elegruntly on the filthy grey shag in front of the burgundy Bark-a-lunger. Whew! The hawk had struck.
Fishface was having afroplexie: red face, gasping, wheezing, gurgling, grunting, shaking and speechless …….
A horse female voice eruptifyed from the bedroom,“ Fishface! Y’asshole!” she explained, “What are you doing to that fudding cat? Are you teasing him again?” (Dakota’s teeth were having a swim in a glass beside her bed)
Arthurs note: You see, reader, everyone called him Fishface... if you met him you would too, even if you were a Jehovah’s Witless.
I was standing on the shag beside the Bark-a-lunger… just waiting to see what was going to happen next. I could not suppress a wee, sheikish grin.
To my genuine surprise, Fishface, who had been glaring at me in a hostilified manner suddenly smiled and reached out his right hand towards me, in a gentle fashion. Surrender? Was this surrender already? I blushed.
“I bet the little fella just wants a nice bowl of warm cream. Come here, little man”, he whispered in a voice that would curdle peanut
butter. Maybe he was afraid of Dakota.
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s
resistance without fighting.” (the G)
I edged toward Fishface and gave his nicotine-stained fingers a quick
swipe with my raspy tongue. Hmmm, no problemo. Then, I rubbed
the sleek black-orange rosettified fur of my neck cautiously against
his palm. Hmmm, no problemo.
‘Ya gotta give a little to get a little.’ (Felix the Tomcat)
“Bring on the cream! “I purred.
“One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of
one’s own.” (the General)
Instantly, Fishface’s soft-stroking right hand morphified
into a vice-grip around my midsection. He had brutal grip strength
from all that beer drinking.
In a flash, he yanked me up into the air, like a live grenade,
circled me behind his right ear and hurled me, in a perfect spiral,
across the living room and out the open kitchen window.
Even General Sue must have lost a squirmish or two… of
course he did! War, war… and more war.
“One mark of a great soldier is that he fights on his own terms or
fights not at all.” (The G)