Fanging My Way Thru America: On Pets And Other Major Revelations

[Mary Kay, 40s, sits at a table in a café. She jots down notes on a piece of paper.] 

I'm writing a letter to the editor of the New York Times, to Senator Hilary Clinton, to President George W. Bush, and to Oprah Winfrey, but I fear I'm incapable of being succinct. I'm overwhelmed by man's inhumanity to man. Why do we relish the self-importance of vicarious power? I am asphyxiated by the carbon monoxide of everyday life. Why can't I make things happen? What is this all about? How can people live without passion? Why is passion scary? I want to tell you about Ivory. Ivory is my white cat. He likes to go out and you have to come and open the door for him, doesn't matter if you are in the middle of something, he comes and fusses until you let him out. Then he comes back in, then he goes out again. It's spring, cats meet, cats meow.
The other day Ivory came back with a huge bite on his shoulder blade. I had to take him to the vet. It cost a fortune.
Every morning I have to grab him by his neck and pry his mouth open and squirt the pink medicine in him. Ivory is fixed. He is fixed for sure because his pee doesn't stink anymore. But tell me, does a fixed cat have feelings? Does a cat love? Not anymore. He got fixed. No more feelings. It's for the cat's benefit. It would be very frustrating for the cat to have feelings and stay cooped up in the house. Plus all the stray cat population would be dreadful. They would starve, they would be sick, they would be everywhere! It's better that way, saves them from unhappiness. What about Ivory's feelings? Does a eunuch have feelings? It's not like the cat had a vasectomy. A vasectomy still lets you have the hots for someone. But does a eunuch have feelings? Chop the thingy and then no more feelings. No more falling in love. Can't you extirpate my feelings too, someone? Just extirpate them. A painful burden. Jealous over this and that cat, unsure if my fur is still appealing, what if he bites me instead of kissing me? Better extirpate it. But do eunuchs have feelings?
Isn't this fascinating? Much more than obsessing about books. No more talk about books, please. I had enough of talking about books and theatre. I mean to write about real people, be useful, for God's sake.
I don't know much about pets; I'm the wrong person to talk about pets. In New York City you have all sorts of dogs. In winter they have coats and shoes on! I want to go away, where it is sunny and warm, and the wind blows and the sea murmurs. A friend invited me to Florida. You don't need to worry about the weather in Florida, always wonderful. Even if it rains you just sit still and the next minute the rain goes away in Florida.
Oh, in Florida they always have to chase the cats away because they scare the birds and people like watching birds. They like watching the parrots. In Florida parrots are wild. Yes, they escaped the cages and now they are wild. Hurricane Andrew pulled away the aviary nets at the zoo and the exotic birds spread all over Florida. People drive around and ask each other, “What kind of bird is that?!” “I don't know, I haven't seen such a bird before,” and then you check on the Internet, it's an African falcon! In Florida!
They often have snakes running away, hidden in the sewers in Florida. A 20-foot boa constrictor ran away and the way they knew about it, was that the cats and dogs in the neighbourhood started to disappear. Luckily no small children were eaten! Also they are full of iguanas, large iguanas 5, 6-foot long iguanas in parks. Alligators and crocodiles too. Since the nuclear plant opened there, alligators and crocodiles found out about it, sent letters to all their relatives to come along, and they gathered around it, clogging all the tunnels. Because of the power plant water-cooling system the water was warm. Alligators don't care about people, but crocodiles, oh, man! They eat you if you swim in the canals. Or you just walk by the water and they snap at you, eat you with shoes, trousers, they don't care. People disappear in Florida.
I'm not so sure I want to go to Florida. Soon they're going to farm insects in Florida. Did you know that? Much cheaper food. They started already in California. They farm grasshoppers and cockroaches in California. In Europe and in Asia they already have on the menu dog and horse meat, but here is a steak and mashed potato country, but soon, we will eat insects, bowls of insects. It's much cheaper to grow a billion grasshoppers than a million cows, and think of it, insects are pure protein. The way things are going nowadays soon we'll be 15 billion people and then we gonna crash, there's no way around it, we gonna be like the Easter Island civilization which just caved in on itself! Just caved in on itself! Exhausted itself, fished the seas, ate the animals, destroyed the vegetation to build statues and now where are they? Gone, they ate each other in the end, that's how is going to be for sure, give it 200 years at the most, and it's going to be back in the caves. Our civilization will crash.
Or maybe the government will say, choose: #1 you either live to be 90 but you'll have no perks, because there is no more social security funds, or live happily until 50, and when you are 50 you go to the hospital and you don't come out of there, but we'll give you the perks. Like what? Like I want a new car every year. Okay, we'll give you a car every year. You'll be very happy. Everything will be taken care of.
Or, #2 children will be injected with a drug that will make them infertile.
Why not fix them? Cut off the thingies. Do they have feelings if they get this injection? No, they have no feelings anymore. Or, the way they know they have developed immunity to the drug is if they fall in love. If they fall in love, then they somehow evaded the system and they can run away and start a new civilization in the Everglades. [Beat.] Maybe Ivory will find a fixed friend.
This is my new book, by the way. My Fixed Friend. This is a good title, don't you think? But before starting on the book, I'd better get that letter in the mail.
[Beat. Thinks hard.] "Dear Senator Clinton…. Dear Hillary Clinton… Dear Mr. President… Dear Mr. Bush… Dear Oprah…"
Sometimes I get carried away…[Blackout.]

2004
New York

Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and engineering social change thru art being one of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
June 6th, 2013