Hawkman
08-21-2013, 10:12 AM
It’s no good—the question just won’t go away. It’s burrowed under my scalp and itches worse than a second-hand wig. I worry at the void in my knowledge the same way my tongue keeps investigating that cavity where my tooth used to be.
I have to find out.
OK, switch on the computer—God, it takes ages to boot up. While I’m waiting, I make the 6th cup of Java of the morning and try to control the twitching. My heightened, caffeine-boosted senses endure the nano-eternity of my PC’s wake-up routine.
Bing-bing-chime!
At last.
I double click the browser icon and Google awaits. With trembling fingers, I type; ‘How many ways are there to skin a cat?’
There's little agreement in the options which appear as I click the various links. Maybe the answer depends on why you want to skin the cat in the first place. If you just want the meat, then I guess the cheese-grater option suggested in one of the replies on a Yahoo forum could be considered viable. But if you want to make a hat, or maybe a nice stylish pair of mittens, then it’s a pretty useless idea. It still counts as a way to skin a cat though...
My butterfly mind leaps off at a tangent. I’ve got this book. With illustrations. It’s called, ‘101 Uses of a Dead Cat’. I think my favourite is the pencil sharpener. None of them say anything about skinning it first though.
I click another link. Just some random numbers—some people have just picked one and posted it. Some of them just say one, and that’s nonsense. I can think of more than that. One guy says thirty-five, but I don’t believe him. Anyway, there are no details.
I find a link to an article about Chinese bootleg fur traders. Man, what I read is sick. They keep all these cats in tiny cages and skin ‘em without bothering to kill ‘em first. I mean, why do that? You can’t do a good job skinning a cat if it’s wriggling all the time. It doesn’t say whether they got more than one way of skinning ‘em either. I guess it’s only logical though; you find a quick way that works and you stick with it. I click a few more links, but I start going round in circles. This is useless.
I make another cup of Java and smoke my 37th roll-up of the day. Time to engage the brain and start thinking for myself. Thinking for yourself is what marks out great minds from the hordes of Helots populating the world.
I pick up a pencil, but it’s blunt and I don’t have a dead cat to hand, so I put it down again. I find a biro at the bottom of a drawer and test it on the back of my hand. I barely notice the nicotine stains on my fingers. The pen works. Now all I need is some paper. I grab an old envelope, a white one, A5 size. It’ll do for a start. I try to write but my hand is shaking so bad that I have to take a break before I’ve put down more than 3 ways to skin a cat.
I light another roll-up, number 38, and make another cup of Java while the fag hangs from my bottom lip. Ash drops into the cup but I don’t care. The smoke gets in my eyes, but I don’t care. I need to take a piss. I care about that. My bladder is bursting. I step to the john and fumble with my zip and try to control my aim and the piss comes out blacker than when I used to drink Bacardi and Coke all night, blacker than Mugabe, blacker than an SS uniform. It looks and feels like my soul is draining into the bowl. When I’ve finished I go back and drink the coffee I made with the fag-ash flavouring and light another roll-up from the dog-end of my last.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I can’t read the spidery scrawl on the envelope. There’s only one option left. I gotta do what great minds do. I gotta experiment. I go out and I stagger to the shops and buy a net, a sharp knife, a cheese grater and a lot of cat food.
Here, kitty, kitty….
It’s late, I’ve run out of coffee and there’s no more tobacco. And there’s this hammering on the door. With eyes that can barely see I register the flickering of light outside the windows. Lots of different colours. I can’t tell if it’s real or just my eyes playing tricks. There’s colour in the room too. Red: a lot of red. Red up the walls; red on the carpet that used to be blue; red on my arms, my hands, my clothes and on the pile of small skinned carcasses in the corner of the room. There are quite a few. I count forty-one. Forty-one, and all skinned differently. The pelts are neatly stacked on a chair and the gratings are in the wastebasket. The hammering sound makes a change from the sound of meowing—that’s stopped.
Then the hammering stops too and right after there’s the sound of splintering wood and then boots on the stairs. Lots of boots. I hear someone being sick and I feel the blows of fists and sticks. It’s a relief when everything goes dark. My last thought is, 'forty-one—but I ran out of cats...’
I have to find out.
OK, switch on the computer—God, it takes ages to boot up. While I’m waiting, I make the 6th cup of Java of the morning and try to control the twitching. My heightened, caffeine-boosted senses endure the nano-eternity of my PC’s wake-up routine.
Bing-bing-chime!
At last.
I double click the browser icon and Google awaits. With trembling fingers, I type; ‘How many ways are there to skin a cat?’
There's little agreement in the options which appear as I click the various links. Maybe the answer depends on why you want to skin the cat in the first place. If you just want the meat, then I guess the cheese-grater option suggested in one of the replies on a Yahoo forum could be considered viable. But if you want to make a hat, or maybe a nice stylish pair of mittens, then it’s a pretty useless idea. It still counts as a way to skin a cat though...
My butterfly mind leaps off at a tangent. I’ve got this book. With illustrations. It’s called, ‘101 Uses of a Dead Cat’. I think my favourite is the pencil sharpener. None of them say anything about skinning it first though.
I click another link. Just some random numbers—some people have just picked one and posted it. Some of them just say one, and that’s nonsense. I can think of more than that. One guy says thirty-five, but I don’t believe him. Anyway, there are no details.
I find a link to an article about Chinese bootleg fur traders. Man, what I read is sick. They keep all these cats in tiny cages and skin ‘em without bothering to kill ‘em first. I mean, why do that? You can’t do a good job skinning a cat if it’s wriggling all the time. It doesn’t say whether they got more than one way of skinning ‘em either. I guess it’s only logical though; you find a quick way that works and you stick with it. I click a few more links, but I start going round in circles. This is useless.
I make another cup of Java and smoke my 37th roll-up of the day. Time to engage the brain and start thinking for myself. Thinking for yourself is what marks out great minds from the hordes of Helots populating the world.
I pick up a pencil, but it’s blunt and I don’t have a dead cat to hand, so I put it down again. I find a biro at the bottom of a drawer and test it on the back of my hand. I barely notice the nicotine stains on my fingers. The pen works. Now all I need is some paper. I grab an old envelope, a white one, A5 size. It’ll do for a start. I try to write but my hand is shaking so bad that I have to take a break before I’ve put down more than 3 ways to skin a cat.
I light another roll-up, number 38, and make another cup of Java while the fag hangs from my bottom lip. Ash drops into the cup but I don’t care. The smoke gets in my eyes, but I don’t care. I need to take a piss. I care about that. My bladder is bursting. I step to the john and fumble with my zip and try to control my aim and the piss comes out blacker than when I used to drink Bacardi and Coke all night, blacker than Mugabe, blacker than an SS uniform. It looks and feels like my soul is draining into the bowl. When I’ve finished I go back and drink the coffee I made with the fag-ash flavouring and light another roll-up from the dog-end of my last.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I can’t read the spidery scrawl on the envelope. There’s only one option left. I gotta do what great minds do. I gotta experiment. I go out and I stagger to the shops and buy a net, a sharp knife, a cheese grater and a lot of cat food.
Here, kitty, kitty….
It’s late, I’ve run out of coffee and there’s no more tobacco. And there’s this hammering on the door. With eyes that can barely see I register the flickering of light outside the windows. Lots of different colours. I can’t tell if it’s real or just my eyes playing tricks. There’s colour in the room too. Red: a lot of red. Red up the walls; red on the carpet that used to be blue; red on my arms, my hands, my clothes and on the pile of small skinned carcasses in the corner of the room. There are quite a few. I count forty-one. Forty-one, and all skinned differently. The pelts are neatly stacked on a chair and the gratings are in the wastebasket. The hammering sound makes a change from the sound of meowing—that’s stopped.
Then the hammering stops too and right after there’s the sound of splintering wood and then boots on the stairs. Lots of boots. I hear someone being sick and I feel the blows of fists and sticks. It’s a relief when everything goes dark. My last thought is, 'forty-one—but I ran out of cats...’