The Cat and Coffee

Last week I cautiously accompanied my roommate, Asia, to The Cat and Coffee, a coffee shop with live cats as decor. I was preparing myself for what I might see: cats in party hats and wearing clown makeup, like the hapless felines I saw on a billboard here. Luckily, The Cat and Coffee turned out to be a dignified coffee shop, where the cats seemed happy. They had scratching posts and catnip toys galore, plenty of food and water and escape holes they could jump through if people were harassing them. I laughed at Asia's eagerness to entertain the cats. It looked like she was performing a marionette show with cat toys. 

The first thing I did was order coffee. I sat down to drink it and kept feeling gusts of fur brush the small of my back. It was a wild cat running around and acting absolutely crazy. Asia said she didn't think it was meant to be a domestic animal. 

I laughed spitefully when I saw the crazy cat torment a poor Persian kitten. Then I instantly felt bad. Mocking a Persian cat's wimpiness, just because I once dated a wimpy Persian, revealed a side of me I didn't know existed. The Persian cat climbed up a scratching post and sat on the perch, but the crazy cat latched his claws into the scratching post and shook it. I walked over to pick up the Persian cat and stared pityingly at his stupid scrunched up face. I petted him while drinking my coffee and the crazy cat jumped up and scratched my hand, as if punishing me for rescuing his prey. The poor Persian kitty might have been better off being degraded at the clown coffee shop, seeing as how he had to put up with this bully all the time. But no one should suffer the indignity of wearing clown makeup, not even clowns. Maybe he would have been given an elf costume with jingling bells to wear, or a pirate costume with an eye patch. I suppose there are worse fates.