Editor's Note: Brian's article originally ran on Thought Catalog. We're rerunning it here with his permission.
My cat died about a month ago. It’s awful news. The kind of news you want to crawl up with for a week and beg to go away. Th...
Editor's Note: Brian's article originally ran on Thought Catalog. We're rerunning it here with his permission.
My cat died about a month ago. It’s awful news. The kind of news you want to crawl up with for a week and beg to go away. The kind of news that can turn a six-year-old rerun of Scrubs into a tear-jerker, or a commercial featuring the Charmin Ultra-Soft bears into a poignant statement on the fragility of life. It is, to be sure, the sort of thing a comedy writer like me should not go anywhere near, but I wrote about her so often here that I felt it wrong to keep it to myself.
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Cheese, still adorable to the end.
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Invariably, my most popular articles have been about Cheese the Cat. Whether I was coming out of the closet as a male cat lover, or narrating her opinions of my female callers, or nominating her to be the Pope of the Catholic Church, it was clear that the internet loved Cheese. Not as much as I did, of course, but she’s never licked your noses, so really what chance did you have? My Cheese writing reached so far that I was once stopped in a bar and asked, “Hey, you’re that guy who can’t stop writing about your cat, right?” Not necessarily the description that every joke writer is looking for, but I rushed home to tell Cheese about it anyway.
Is that weird, in light of that fact that she can’t speak English, or even, you know, Human Being? Probably, but I could tell she was proud, as she celebrated with a particularly vigorous licking of the butt. So vigorous it would’ve made even the Charmin bears blush. Besides, I’m pretty sure I rocketed past weird a long time ago. Such is the life of a man whose best friend is his kitty cat.
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Tabby and antique typewriter by Shutterstock">
Tabby and antique typewriter by Shutterstock">
Obviously Cheese doesn't type -- she just channeled herself through me. Tabby and antique typewriter by Shutterstock
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So I felt I needed to write one more Cheese piece, but didn’t really know how to approach it. I started writing something more somber, but really that wasn’t my cat’s style. She had an attitude, and her favorite thing to do was sneeze in my food the moment I sat down to eat. So here now is Cheese’s Last Will and Testament, as she would’ve liked it written ...
I, Cheese, of sound mind and particularly impressive body for a cat my age, hereby declare this to be my last will and testament
I hereby bequeath the following belongings to the mentioned parties. Hope you’re not expecting any cash, because I blew the last of my savings on a raging tuna party before I passed on. Tough crap. Get a job, you flunkies.
To the Sun: God, I love you, Sun. So hot, so relentless. I loved to sit in you until I was warm to the touch, then sit there for an hour longer, just to let the birds know who’s boss.
To you, I leave the stupid collar he made me wear that was just as incessant as your heat. Little tip: If you meow a bunch he’ll take it off for an hour. He’s a total softy.
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Cheese soaks up the sunshine and ignores the birds.
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