Maryland Captivity - Beautiful Swimmers

When I cleaned up my diction, I had nothing left to say…

A recent email I received from my dear friend:

Dear Jimmy,

For the last several months, my roommate and I have been trying our hardest to ignore the dreadful screeching of what we thought was a dying stray cat outside of our apartment.  Usually around nightfall, he awakens and finds a nice, cozy spot on the pavement underneath my bedroom window and begins his nightly death cries.  It is difficult to explain what he sounds like exactly, but if I were to compare it to something, it would be the noise a crow makes when it has just been shot in the throat, and is now wailing for help while devouring a bloody, rabid possum.

Recently, we discovered that this feline is not a stray at all, but our neighbor’s “cat,” equipped with a collar and what appears to be a decently groomed coat of fur.  We have seen the cat kicked out of his house and told to “scram,” and even heard him introduced to friends as “the one with the voice.” This caterwauling, regrettably, has become a nightly form of expected abuse in our household, and to put it bluntly, it has become unendurable. I feel that if I feed the cat, it will never go away, but it has gotten to the point where I wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming about it, only to realize that my dreams are far more tolerable than the reality; the first thing I see when I emerge from these nightmares are his fangs, ominously bared beneath his devilish eyes, pressed up against my window pane.

The reason I am writing you, Jimmy, is because I wouldn’t want to do any harm to the animal, nor would I want to call the SPCA regarding a possible animal abuse problem.  What I do think, however, is that you will know what to do.  Whether it be a practical joke or a skit, the owners need to know the extent of the agony they are inflicting and their reaction to this needs to be publicized.  A filmed confrontation like this can only provide golden television.

We know you are the one for the job Jimmy! If you want a recording of the cat for proof, I’d be happy to give it to you.  Give me a call at 443-555-8882 or email me at Benjamin.Lapides@gmail.com to talk about the possible gag.

All the best,

Benjamin Lapides