Chocolate Catfish

 There once was a black cat whose name was Tony, short for Rigatoni. This particular noodle was indeed shaped like the much loved pasta he received his namesake from, thick and tubular. Tony was a strange feline with peculiar habits. His eyes were wide, wide saucers that only aliens could pilot from above. His soul was not quite as feline as his vessel, and that’s what made him unique. When the sun would dim, and fizzle out each day, so would our cats' otherworldly inhabitants. Only after dark, after all his fellow humans would sleep, would this feline vessel give way to the true Rigatoni. 

Every night at around 9 p.m. the humans would enter into their dormitories and proceed to no longer vacate the vicinity for the rest of the night. It was then that Tony would make his true debut. This black cat was piloted by various souls throughout the planes of human existence. Why? No one knows but the inhabitants of said kitty. Every night the pilot would vacate the cat, and leave through a small portal in the rear. Cats are notorious for always showing hole, and well in this particular case, that cat’s hole was a portal to an otherworldly dimension.

 

It was late one night, around 3 a.m. in the morning when I got up to use the toilet. I stumble stepped into the bathroom and tripped over a rug, my arms falling forward, hitting the side of the toilet where the handle lay. My hand swiped down the handle and I heard a distinctive lack of flushing, despite feeling my hand tug down on the handle.

”shhhhhhh” groaned my partner from the bed.

”Mrrrrow” purred the awoken kitten by my feet

”The fuck”, I said staring at the unflushable toilet.

I grabbed the handle and tried to flush the toilet, and to no avail, the toilet was not flushing. Disturbed by the toilets' lack of activity, I optioned to use our second bathroom. I walked from the bedroom bathroom, into the hall where the second toilet resided at the end in a door to the left. I flicked the hallway light on, and in the glimpse of an eye, I saw what I could not believe. My black cat Tone, or Tony, was at the end of the hallway with what is best described by the rap group 2 Live Crew as, “face down ass up”. His small black head was laying on the ground, and his hind quarters were hoisted into the air. What I saw next was what made this glisten in my memory as an unforgettable point in my life. I watched as a miniature man dressed in slacks and a striped button down shirt dragged an equally miniature step ladder from the front of my cat's head, to the back of his rear. Where he proceeded to climb up the step ladder, and then forcibly, made his way through Tony’s rectum. In the blink of an eye the miniature man disappeared into a round pink starfish of an anus, only to reappear a moment later. I should have said that he didn’t exactly reappear, but a small miniature arm reached out of my cat’s butthole, and snatched up the miniature ladder, pulling it into the cat with him. 

“What the fuck”, I said, my jaw gapping open, much wider than my cat had. 

In the blink of an eye, and without batting one, my cat removed his face from the ground, and went about his kitty business like nothing had happened. Rigatoni waltzed over to my leg, curled himself around my ankle and let out a long and weathered, “Mrrrrrrrow”.

Jaws still gaped, I replied  urgently with, “I’ve got to take a piss, cat”, and then ran to the bathroom as fast as I could. Tony followed me, but I out paced him by several feet. I slammed the door behind me and unleashed urinary hell on the toilet. 

“Mrrrrrrrrow” said Tony from outside the door.

What the ever loving fluff just happened. I replayed the scene in my head. There was a tiny man with a tiny ladder, and he walked from my cat’s head to my cat’s ass, and then disappeared into it, ladder included, and then my cat acted as if not a single eye had been batted. I pinched myself hard on the bicep to confirm I wasn’t dreaming. 

”Ouch!”

I definitely wasn’t dreaming. 

I finished up in the bathroom and returned to the hallway, Tony in lockstep with me. I got to the bedroom, and closed the door behind me, the cat still on the other side of the door. I climbed into bed and shook our other two sleeping cats off of my girlfriend and tried to jostle her awake. She was out cold, her body limp and her face hanging off in a sleepy daze. 

“”Babe, babe, wake up” I whispered gently to her.

She groaned and rolled over, somehow falling deeper into sleep than she already was. I tried again a few more times, but this woman slept harder than any rock known to mankind, she was not going to wake,  not this late at night. She must need her beauty sleep I thought, and I wiped some drool off of her face, and gave her a kiss on the head, and laid back in bed. 

I lay there for a few hours mulling over what I just saw. I eventually fell asleep.

I woke the next morning convinced I had a waking dream of sorts. I went about my morning as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. We had four cats, three of them were Bernese and Tony, was a Bernese Bombay mix. Getting out of bed and feeding all four of the cats, I walked into the bedroom to find my girlfriend snoring loudly, her body splayed out across our California king. She was half covered in blankets, half wearing pants, and after they ate their breakfast, covered in two cats. She awoke that day like a bat out of hell. She began grumbling through the morning trying to recount her dream.

”I had this long vivid dream about a man in slacks and a button down striped shirt. He was holding our cat and kept telling me to wake up, and wake up now”.

I paused for a moment after hearing her dream, I looked from her, to the two resting cats, and then finally opened the bedroom door to find the black Bombay mix, Tony. I picked tony up and looked him in his wide eyed saucers and said jokingly,

”I see you”

Tone let out at a soft “Mrrrrrow” and touched my face with his paw. I thought nothing of it and let him down. Turning back to my girlfriend I told her about my dream last night, and shared that the tiny man in it also had slacks and a striped button down shirt. 

“Weird, I don’t think I’ve ever shared details of a dream with someone before. Obviously this means we are soul mates, doesn’t it, huh.”

Chortling, I said. “Teehee” and then went about my day. The day passed with ease. I went outside to write some on the patio, and even dreamed up quite a wild short story that day about humans piloting cats. I shared the story with my girlfriend, and she thought it was a poorly written slop, and that I should go back to pontificating in my writing about my philosophical endeavors. Naturally, I ignored her and continued writing about my cat late into the night. The day ended, and she went off to bed around 8 p.m, she was an early sleeper, always had been, but I was the night owl. I stayed up until 1 a.m writing about a small man piloting my cat. I began writing during the day on the patio, but continued writing late into the night from my bedroom. It was 3 a.m. now, and my story had finally ended. I won’t spoil anything, but it was quite the romp. I got up from bed to walk to the bathroom. Remembering that the bedroom toilet was unflushable, I used the hallway bathroom instead. As soon as the bedroom door opened, there it was once again. Face down, ass up. Tony was perched in the middle of the hallway. Quickly slapping myself in the face, I added a pinch for good measure to confirm, I was indeed not asleep. Just like the night before, a small miniature human walked from around my cat’s head, step ladder in hand, and made their way for the hindquarters. 

“Stop, stop right there” I demanded

The tiny person looked up at me. It was a woman this time. She wore a chic night gone with trusses and frills dangling off the sides of it.

”You aren’t supposed to be seeing this” she said, and continued to position the ladder behind my incapacitated cats ass

”You really should be more like your girlfriend, she goes to bed at a reasonable hour, not some late night hedonist like yourself”

”Wha, what, what the hell are you doing?” I said slowly, my jaw opening.

”Is it not obvious? I am making my getaway through the cat portal. The directions were clear. We are to exit the pilot seat, take the step ladder, and climb into the portal that lay just beyond your cat’s butthole. Once we enter the butt, and grab the step ladder, we are expunged through a deep black void, where we are spit out randomly in our world”

”What the fuck” I said.

”Well, it was nice meeting you. Maybe next time you should be asleep instead of staring at your cats asshole.”

Then she climbed up the ladder, and slid into the rectum, only an arm returning for a moment to claim the ladder, and bring it back inside.

I slapped myself again, and again, and again. 

“This has to be a dream. I am having a waking dream. I am asleep right now”

I heard loud obnoxious snoring coming from the bedroom. Turning to face it I felt a soft furry object wrap itself around my ankle. Looking down, there was Rigatoni, wrapping himself around my leg and purring gently. I stormed into the bedroom to wake my sleeping beauty. I nudged off a cat sleeping on her back, and shook her awake. Not taking no for an answer, my shakes were steady and persistent, and I whispered,

“Babe, babe, you’ve got to wake up.”

After a good shakedown, her mind came to, meeting itself violently in her body and she said,

”What. What the fuck do you want. I was having a dream about the mountains, what the fuck is so important, what.”

Exacerbated, I said, ”You won’t believe this. A small woman was inside of our cat. She told me she was done piloting the cat for the night, and made her exit through the cat's butthole.”

She looked me dead in the eyes, and said,

”I don’t care, I was dreaming about the mountains, and now I’m here. Go to sleep, I don’t want to hear about your dreams right now.”

She then laid back down and instantly fell asleep. Not within 10 seconds did one of the bedroom cats jump back onto her lifeless body, and she began snoring a thunderous snore. 

“What the fuck”

I walked back out into the hallway where I’d last seen Tony. There he was again, in the middle of the hallway, face down ass up. This time I watched a small tiny miniature man, climb out of his rectum holding a step ladder. He looked at me and said, 

“Well, don’t just stand there,  go get her”

Without failing I walked directly into the bedroom to my slumbering beauty. Repeating everything I’d done to wake her before, I shook her awake.

She looked me at me again, dead in the eyes and said,

”I was dreaming about the mountains again, nothing you have is worth missing out on this dream” and she went back to bed. 

I shrugged my eyes and went back into the hallway. The man was gone, but Tony was acting strange. He didn’t curl himself around my legs like he usually did around this time. He instead did a cat walk over to my legs and began pawing at my knees. Looking down at him and feeling a strange desire to pick him up, I did just that. Picking up the cat, he threw his front paws over my shoulders and began purring violently in my ear. I flicked the hallway light on and the cat motioned to look me in my eyes. That’s when I saw it. I saw a tiny man sitting in a pilot seat behind my cat’s iris. He was laughing and pointing at me, and then held up a hand written sign that read,

”No one is ever going to believe you”