Meatosis

I was born a carnivore.  When I was a baby, my Dad tried to feed me spinach. He held the tiny spoon up to my teensy face, gently insisting. I scrunched up my schnozz, furrowed whatever brow I had, and slapped the spoon of spinach out of my father’s hand! I showed him who was boss! Ever since, his nickname for me has been “Chief.” We reminisced about this on Father’s Day.  Spinach has always nauseated me. Especially raw. Yet I’ve obediently ingested it in countless salads frosted with creamy dressing. The one and only time I thoroughly enjoyed spinach was when my aunt simmered and served it in buckets of butter! The thing is, even though raw spinach made me physically ill, I still only feared the fat! To me, this was the unhealthiest possible way to eat my veggies. Today, even avoiding dairy, I know that the butter was better for my health! My Dad has since made up for those green years. For what feels like a decade of birthdays, he’s treated me to my f...

Yesterday’s midnight walk through the park on the way to work was an echo of a similar night months ago. Twenty paces from the first corner along the path, I watched a white cat pop out of thick bushes before swinging straight back in. The feline paused halfway through this hasty maneuver to figure me out. Maybe kitty’s too superstitious to cross paths with a black human! When winter was still in mid-thaw, a black kitten crossed my path exactly where last night’s timid snowball shied. By the time I turned that bushy corner, I was weeping like a toddler. This wasn’t bad luck, but it exhumed overwhelming memories of the black cat I mourn to this day. His name was Nietzschie. I added an “i” before the last “e” in his name to demand proper pronunciation. You see, I had either read or simply decided that an “ee” sound would catch a cat’s attention more than pronouncing it with the huffy academicism of “NEE-chuh.” And I was right! “Nieee!” I would squeal, and he actually bopped right ove...