Thomas Wictor

There was a time when I didn’t hate my neighborhood. Back when I moved here in 1993, it wasn’t a bad place. What happened was that all the old people died and young monstrosities moved in. Now I can’t wait to leave.

The main reason I want to leave is that everyone here is a barbarian. They put Tim and me in impossible situations. Nobody gets their cats fixed, so we’re overrun with ferals. They all have feline leukemia. A few weeks ago, a feral gave birth to a litter of three in the back yard of Tim’s former house.

When this happened in the past, we took them to the pound, where they were euthanized. Their last hours were full of terror. So we’re not going to do it anymore. Instead, we’ve put food and water bowls in the garden. The cats are becoming less skittish around us, but they can’t be saved. The mother already looks sick, and one of the kittens has a gummed-shut eye.

We can’t catch them without traumatizing them, so we’re going to let nature take its course. Though I feel bad for them, all our choices are rotten. I refuse to be put in the position of scaring the hell out of them in the process of rounding them up for their execution. We’ve done that too many times. After Mom and Dad’s deaths, I don’t have it in me to do that anymore.

So we’ll feed them as long as they’re here. The back yard is fenced off; they’ll have as peaceful a life as they can, under the circumstances. God left me a message. It’s a grade that I found on the sidewalk, made of twigs.

I agree. My neighborhood gets an F.

Was this also a message? Do you see what I see, or am I a pervert?

I don’t see those everywhere I look. On the other hand, I keep finding things without looking for them. For example, these.

What the hell are they? I assume they came from a cat, but they’re perfectly round. When our cat “_______” (whatever pseudonym I gave her) puked up “hairballs,” they were actually tubes of horror, like reddish cement, vegetables, and grasshopper legs. I couldn’t detect any hair in them. She’d start convulsing like this.

Then she’d back up as she deposited her gunk. She loved to climb up on top of the bookshelf. One night she started chugging up there, and we screamed and tried to get the laundry basket to catch it, but we were too late. It rained reddish cement, vegetables, and grasshopper legs all over our futon. Luckily Carmen had a great sense of humor. She cheered me up with her raucous laugh. At that moment I would’ve easily taken the cat to the disposers-of-cats.

It wasn’t the cat’s fault. Cats have a design flaw, just like men. You know what ours is? The prostate gland. Who dreamed up the idea of having the urethra go right through the middle of it? Here’s a message I got today.

Give it a hearty breakfast? Tell it, “You look marvelous!” I don’t know, because I immediately deleted the link. I keep getting completely self-defeating messages. If you want me to click a link to some kind of prostate promotion, provide an image that I find irresistible.

See, if it said, “Give your prostate Elsa Lanchester every morning,” I’d click it. Immediately! Or how about this e-mail?

That photo makes me want to drink and do drugs again. Doesn’t that glass of scotch look delicious? And I can feel the coke going into my sinuses and giving me that numb-but-tingly rush. The joint would then take the edge off, and whatever those pills are, I’m sure they’re great. If you want me to not drink and do drugs, send me a photo like this.

Don’t remind me how much I enjoyed drinking and getting high. Show me what a ridiculous carcass it’ll make me. Like when Rip Torn—utterly out of his gourd on drugs—attacked author Norman Mailer with a hammer during the filming of Maidstone. WARNING: Violence, foul language, and terrified but physically unhurt children.

Instead of drinking and getting high, I’d love to buzz my neighborhood in a jet trainer. This is a still from the lowest flyby ever accomplished. Let me be clear: This is a jet aircraft flying past a cameraman standing on the ground.

Here: Watch for yourself.

That’s an Argentinian pilot. They’re truly insane. During the Falklands War they flew too low for the British antiaircraft defenses to track them. There’s footage out there of Argentinian jets being blown apart in midair, but I won’t link to it. That was one of the stupidest wars ever fought. I can’t look at the video. Brave and incredibly skilled men died because their leaders were trying to distract the public from what a mess they’d made of the country.

Instead, let’s watch that video of the Argentinian pilot giving the spectators a haircut with his exhausts. I can’t believe the cameraman didn’t duck.

Lastly, a photo of my paternal grandfather Frank Wictor at Long Beach in the 1950s.

Surreal. It looks like a still from a European art film. Toulamés Pratis de Colfa.

And neuter your goddam cats. Tim and I are sick of having to make life-and-death decisions when they’re not even our pets.

You lazy, fat-assed dolts.