I went into Petco yesterday to wait for Camille to buy catfood. As always in Petco there were two tiny sad cages by the front door with two large sad cats in them who could barely move. And as usual they were both turned so their butts faced the outside. They were probably sick of being poked through the bar by index fingers, maybe even scratched, and then abandoned. Nothing makes me sadder than housecats in cages, for some reason. I mean, I know why it makes me sad but I have no idea when or how it became the saddest thing possible. Formative experiences, I guess. I'm not being very romantic about it. Anyway, if I ever get arrested, it will be because I'll have been an undercover cat-freer for years, sneaking around under the cover of dark, jimmying the locks of pet stores everywhere and lifting the cats out with my special patented upside-down combination neck scratch calming lift.

(This lift is not to be attempted at home; serious scratching could occur, and has, if you don't have the cat at the precise degree of upside-down-ness required.)

Anyway, they'd be set free. I'm not a cat, so I don't know, but I think I'd rather live in the worst free conditions, alleys, scraps, backyards, fighting for territory with other cats, than live in a 2x3 foot cage in a Petco, or anywhere. Those shelters that require adopters to adopt two cats at once, that is so, so stupid. I haven't adopted cats from those shelters because of that rule. Almost everyone I know has chosen not to adopt cats from those shelters because of that rule. Sometimes you just can't adopt two cats. How can shelters set guidelines on adoption that result in less cats being adopted and more cats being put to death, and justify it at all?

Those would be released too. If I ever found out where Death Row for cats was, I'd be an outlaw immediately, probably so recklessly that I'd be caught. That breaking news that PETA was killing animals in the back of their van right outside animal shelters after they'd promise to make a 'good-faith effort' to find them homes severed any tenuous moral ties I ever had to PETA. I'm not sure how anything could be more antithetical to anything. Anger makes me not articulate.

Anyway, one of the cats, the one in the bottom cage, had his neck craned the tiniest bit so he could see out, but it wasn't immediately obvious that he was. I started to reach my finger out so he could smell it, but stopped. I read the sign on the outside of the cage, written, as always, in pleading language with smiley faces and cat cartoons and 'Adopt Me!' balloons all over it. Name: Arthur. Sex: Male, Spayed. Age: 4.5. Description: Sweet as can be!

Arthur peered at me over his shoulder, looking wary. I stood still, peering back. Unconsciously, I shuffled one of my feet, and, suddenly on guard, Arthur circled, crouched by the door of his cage, and sat tense and facing me, his nose between the bars. I shuffled again, and realized what had him so interested... the drawstrings on my cargo pants.

For the rest of the time I was waiting I walked back and forth, danced, dragged, in front of his cage, and the whole time he was entranced. I made sure not to let him know I was looking at him. I just let him, in his mind, stalk that mouse, that rabbit, that bug, around trees and under fences and through stalks of corn, his paws eventually batting through the bars of the cage, and, finally, let him catch it, bring it up onto the metal floor of his prison and gnaw a hole right through. He had such a grip on it that when Camille was finished and came to get me so that we could go, I had to kneel down and disentangle it from his claws, extended all the way out as they were. As I was replacing it around my ankle, my face level with his, he meowed at me. In my mind I had a flash of lifting him out of the cage, bringing him to the counter, adopting him, taking him home, hiding him from my landlord, letting him out to be friends with the cats from the other building and chase real mice, real bugs. It was a quick flash. My body killed it by walking out. But if I had endless money and endless time I would buy a giant fenced in mansion and as many cats as I could love.