It's not fair. I never believed in this garbage. In college, when we'd sit around the dorms smoking pot and talking about whatever sophomoric crap we felt like hitting that night, I'd always be the one pointing out the problems with reincarnation- the inconsistency with the available number of souls from generation to generation, the possible conflicts with the Second Law of Thermodynamics (although I have to admit that progressing from human to cat probably does count as a process that tends towards greater entropy), and so on. I wasn't sold on any of the afterlife options, much less the freaky, mystical reincarnation jazz. But here I am. A fucking cat.

Why it is that I can remember my past life, I have no idea. I can only assume that my last go-round wasn't my first incarnation, but I sure didn't have any past-life memories then. Or if I did, I can't remember them now. If that makes any sense. Shit. This confuses me every time I think about it- I can't tell you how much it sucks to be stuck with a brain the size of a walnut.

Anyway, here I am. One minute I'm riding on the back of my boyfriend's motorcycle on the Long Island Expressway, white-knuckling his back as he weaves in and out of traffic. Next thing I know, I'm tussling with a bunch of other furballs for a teat. It took me days to decide for sure that this was reality and not just the result of someone slipping me something at CBGB after our last show. And, actually, catdom wasn't so bad at first, after I figured things out.... Didn't have to worry about making rent, and all the free food I wanted was right there for the suckling. No cheating dickhead of a boyfriend, no worrying about the Village Voice never giving us respect because we were an all-girl band. Plenty of brothers and sisters to play with, and believe me, having cat reflexes and claws feels pretty good after you've gotten used to being five-one and a hundred pounds. No static from my parents about when I was going to get a real job and settle down like a normal girl. No real parents, as far as that goes, just a big cat that picked me up by the scruff of the neck from time to time. Sure, not being able to talk bugged me a little- I had all of these gawdawful "pussy" jokes coming to me, and it was killing me not to be able to rattle them off- but that was nothing I couldn't live with. Let's be honest- it's not like being human's so great.

I even got to like the litter box. I always was a nature girl at heart. And crap-if I could have been this flexible as a person...

Of course the whole kitten thing couldn't last forever. After a couple of months (maybe more, maybe less. I have trouble converting cat time to person time these days), people started showing up and picking us up, poking at us, looking in our mouths and under our tails, and saying all kinds of jackass stuff like "Ooh, look at that one- he likes me!" or "This one's a real love-muffin!" I thought these people were total idiots and clawed the hell out of them when they picked me up. But this one fool, who even looked a little like the biker-moron boyfriend who got my clock punched, just kept laughing when I bit him. He held his arm out with me dangling down from where I'd sunk my teeth into his hand, and made a big production of saying, "Whoa, this one's got a lot of spunk! I'll take her." Then they jammed me into a cardboard box with a bunch of holes poked into it, and my kittenhood was over.

It didn't take long to figure out that I wasn't going to like living with Alec (and, by the way, it was a big relief when I finally sleuthed out what his name was. It got pretty old, always having to call him "the bastard who never feeds me on time" or "the lazy piece-of-crap who can't be troubled to change my friggin litter more than once every ten days"). It's not so much that I missed my mom or brothers or sisters. They were just a bunch of cats, after all, and it's not like I was super attached to them. But Alec is a total prick, and a huge pig when it comes to women.

He was pretty friendly to me at first, and I guess there was a brief honeymoon phase where I tried to convince myself that I could learn to like him, even if he was obviously way too stupid to grasp the concept of on-time cat food delivery. He'd pet me and dangle a string or shoelace in front of me, and I'd purr and pretend to be interested. He'd try to buy me off with catnip, and I'd roll around like it was the kindest shit I'd ever ingested (actually, one sorry night in New York, we wound up smoking catnip after a show, and I do have to say that it packs more of a whallop now. Whatever). But it became clear pretty fast that we were just kidding ourselves. When it was just the two of us, I'd be his pal and the pretty kitty and whatever other googly baby-talk he wanted to dish out (I am not, by the way, going to let you in on the gawdawful name that the a-hole saddled me with). But when his chubby-goatee-suburban-guy friends-- the kinds of putzes that my girlfriends and I used to go out of our way to taunt and torture at nightclubs- came over, I immediately turned into the goddamned burden on his time that he totally just kept around to impress the chicks.

It is not a coincidence that the first day I heard this little monologue happened to be the first day I peed on the ratty Michigan sweatshirt he prized.

And he certainly wasn't kidding about using me to gain ground with the ladies. A couple of times a week, he'd bring a woman over and it was grotesque how quickly he'd slip into the I'm-a-sensitive-guy-with-a-cat routine. And the women, I'm sad to say, would usually lap it up. I can only assume it's because he pre-selected the dumbest ones he could find. They'd get all breathy and start giving him these heavy-lidded looks after just a few minutes of his song and dance. In the spirit of female solidarity, even if they were dumber than cat litter, I always jumped on their laps and tried to warn them that Alec was a slimeball who was going to fuck them and then never call them again. But it just came out as meowing, and, making it worse, the evil son of a bitch would just shake his head patronizingly and say, "See? I told you she talks a little" and that evening's victim would get even more dewy. Christ.

And while we're talking about sex... Another thing that drives me nuts about Alec is that he won't pay to get me fixed. Which is fine in and of itself; I mean, philosophically I'd rather be a whole cat than some sorry eunuch. But then do you have any idea how much it sucks to periodically get this all-consuming feeling that I'VE GOT TO HAVE IT RIGHT FRIGGING NOW and not be let out to get some use out of any of the tomcats in the neighborhood? It would only be fair, given that my only function around here is to help him get some...

And each time I go into heat, I wish like hell that I still had my Hello Kitty vibrator along. But it's like they say, you can't take it with you.

For a while, I waged a direct war against Alec. Whenever he picked me up, I'd go all Halloween-cat on him and give him the full tooth and nail treatment. Pretty soon, though, I realized that this was a big mistake. He and one of his yahoo friends were sitting around watching some sorry Adam Sandler movie and he mentioned out of nowhere that if I didn't knock it off he was going to take me to the Humane Society and have me gassed. This freaked me out pretty bad- he's just bastard enough to do it. And then, well, it's not like this life is a picnic, but I didn't feel like rolling the dice on another one. I climbed down from the bookshelf where I'd been preparing to dive-bomb his head and went to hide under the bed and rethink my strategy.

Ever since then, I've stuck to guerilla tactics. When he's around, I'm reasonably well-behaved. To be honest, I try to sleep as much as possible then to avoid his bullshit. But when he leaves, I turn into a one-woman (ok, one-cat. Old thought habits die hard) monkeywrench gang. Anything on a shelf or a table that's small enough for me to move (and with nothing to do but eat, sleep, and look out the window, I have to tell you that I'm one hefty animal) goes down. This technique alone must have cost him a thousand bucks in cell phones and palm pilots. Dresser drawer left open? Guess who's in there immediately hosing everything down with a good coat of cat musk. Date coming over tonight? Oops, I didn't mean to step in my cat food and then leave meaty footprints on every horizontal surface in the kitchen. It's also not my fault if I get into some milk and get gas and start blasting out the cat farts while the date's around. Got a honey in the bedroom? Well, if only I could control my crazy compulsion to pound on the doorknob with my little paws because I hate closed doors. But I can't help it, I'm a dumb animal. Heh heh.

And the putz will actually take all this as long as I can suck it up and make myself sit on him and purr every once in a while or rub against his leg every now and then. Moron. Just makes me hate him more for being such a tool. I don't think I can take a whole lot more of this. Next time he opens the door to take the trash out, I think I'm out of here. Life on the street can't be that bad. And if nothing else, I'd finally get a chance to take out that smug fucking pigeon that's always giving me lip through the window. Man, I hate that motherfucker.