In some ways I am a cat. On guard for the mouse. Protecting my food, my flock, my solitude found in liquor. Always on guard, peering over the shoulder, pour and drink and repeat in isolation quickly racing against being caught. Like a cat shielding their food bowl or their tummy when rolled over, alert to prevent the touch and if touched they lunge. They need a rest, a nap, purr peaceably when fast asleep or eating- nourishment for the soul. Absinthe, beer, and bourbon, nourishment for the soul. On and on and on. Three meals a day, all the food groups, the holy trinity, salvation, or justification, or will to live.

Fill a food bowl for a large cat and they cannot contain themselves, all so satisfied unable to digest hordes of nutritional lust. Gorging themselves and purr endlessly.

Pour an absinthe before eating, then a bourbon, chase with a beer, and repeat it all over again. A spark to jump or kickstart the day, jumper cables in a dead Buick of antiquity revealing now in the warm sun and empty road cruising merrily now that things have been restored.