Cat Turned Blue

Twice this week – TWICE! – I caught a woman in the neighborhood pushing a stroller around our fair streets. Both times, she was wearing an aqua bedazzled airbrushed sweatshirt with a cat on it, which means, as Mimi Smartypants accurately guessed, she probably has a kitchen full of stenciled geese, and both times – BOTH TIMES, I tell you! – her stroller was not full of a baby, but was, in fact, a little screened-in contraption bearing a very unhappy-looking Siamese cat, who was issuing plaintive cry after plaintive cry and looking like he wanted to break free and eat the face off of the sweatshirted woman. Frankly, I didn’t blame him, because you gotta figure, the sweatshirt-stroller combo probably means she diapers him in her spare time.

Do I need to add that she was loudly describing the passing scenery to him (BOTH TIMES) and that his name is Elmo? I didn’t think so.

I’m perplexed by the pet stroller phenomenon, if I may be so bold as to call it a phenomenon, since I recently spied a woman at a nearby shopping center wheeling her stroller-bound yorkie through the crowd along with her armload of purchases (Chanel! Louis Vuitton!) What was particularly odd about the whole scene was the fact that her three children – all of whom were under the age of 5 – were all walking and whining that their feet hurt. The yorkie wouldn’t complain that much, is what I’m saying. It must have been that choosing a kid to push would have been too hard. Yes, that’s it.

Let’s pretend there’s a really nice segue here that involves yorkies shaking hands and eating. Okay? Okay.

Generally, I’m a pretty tolerant person. I don’t have a long list of pet peeves, and it’s pretty hard to seriously get under my skin. That being said, loud eaters really grate my cheese. Unless you’re eating ribs or something else that requires finger licking (though let’s be honest, what does?) I mean, did your mother not TELL you to be quiet? Do you not feel the breeze on your tongue and wonder, wow! It’s windy in my mouth! How is it that you don’t hear the smacking? THE NEVERENDING SMACKING? How? I’m honestly dumbfounded by this habit, because it just seems like unless you’re hard of hearing, you should hear the smacks and say hey, I’m smacking when I’m eating! Why don’t I close my mouth?

*SMACK*

Along these same lines, let’s discuss handshakes. While I don’t think handshakes should feel like dengue fever, when someone hands me a dead fish, I immediately jump to conclusions that they are either a) arrogant and/or overly proper, therefore too cool to care whether their handshake measures up (to that I say that unless you accompany that limp rag with a curtsy, and are, I don’t know, doing some sort of REENACTMENT, it’s no excuse); or b) are pussified. I know that’s sort of jerky of me, but I can’t help it. Can someone explain this to me? I’m actually asking. Tell me!

Or if you prefer, I can say in a baby voice that Elmo really wants to know. I’ll wear a bedazzled cat sweatshirt and we can stencil the walls in hearts.

*Rusted Root

37 comments May 1st, 2007