A third sleep, roughly of normal duration and timing, by which I mean 1 until 9; and a third dream to go with it, very much in the series.

I won’t bore you senseless, but it started out looking nothing like the concluding act of a trilogy. I was in a cool town, doing cool things, and work was the furthest thing from my mind. I think it was a film festival. I met cool people and did the cool things with them.

In the minutes before waking, the coolest of them turned out to be a prof teaching the same thing as me, and so I asked him: jobs? Oh yes, of course, because this is the dream where absolutely everything is too good to be real. Naturally I applied, with every hope of getting the offer, because like I told Ron, I am very good at what I do, and that part’s not even a dream.

At the very end I set about figuring out where I was. The answer was: on the campus of the Other College in Bisbee.

Which, in the woke world, is where the too-good part comes in, because although Bisbee is indeed a very cool town, much given to film festivals, drag shows, and other evidence of a living culture, there isn’t even one college there, let alone an alternative blessed Other.

So there you have it. The bad, the good, and the ugly.

Which might make for an interesting spillage itself someday; how I always find myself cast as Cheyenne, even if I’m not quite as pretty as Jason Robards the younger.

How I love that film. I’ll bet it was playing at the festival. In fact let’s just say it was and be done with it.

Alright then. The cat.

Went to Nevada and ate turkey and froze my ass on the pedal car down the rails, as you know. But we didn’t go straight back to the place where the beds are set up. Instead we detoured, to the place that won’t sell, the one house that is mine, or at least my obligation. We are past the dreams now.

At this house, during the last time it was truly inhabited, there also lived a substantial colony of feral cats. This species is the sole totem of my dear S.O. and she made them her business, cropping their genitals first, getting them shots, finding homes for some of the marketable little ones, and so on.

All this vacant time, three of them had been hanging on up there as a remnant. Two of these, a rangy pair of dear boys, still do. But coming back from Thanksgiving, my inamorata wanted to snatch the last girl away from her hard life, and start socializing her. It all went precisely to her plan in the end.

For lack of a better foster home, mine got picked.

So for now I have a cat, sort of. Her name is Kali. I say ‘sort of’, because it’s nothing like having a normal cat. She wants of no petting thus far, and spends most of her time under the kitchen table. She doesn’t show a lot of evidence of fright, but she has a deep old habit of avoiding people, which is a conundrum for her now that she’s living with one.

I dole out the food and clean the litterbox, and sometimes we talk. Or rather, she bitches for a bit, and I ask her What’s Wrong Babydoll? No answer comes, but we both know what it is. What right did I have to be complicit in her snatching? I had none. Who the hell am I really, and can I be trusted? I’m not anyone in particular, and yes. To a point.

I mean you no harm. I’d like to see you happy, Kali, whatever that means. Maybe that’s an answer we can find alone together.