Of cats and girlfriends and Queens.

Neither Snickers Bar nor
Mars, Incorporated,
have paid Angela
for her endorsement...
and that is a frickin',
cryin' shame.

by Angela K. Durden
The Most Brilliant Woman in the World
Poet-in-Residence. Goddess by the microphone.
And Queen of all she surveys. 


I have this friend, see. He's a widower and had two cats. I say had because one died. The one that died was a great cat. For me, a non-cat lover, to say that truly means something. What made the cat great? Easy answer.

He recognized I was the Queen. Yes, Queen with a Capital Q. I was the only human he never kicked out of his chair. My friend could not believe it. That was one smart cat; he was also comfortable in his own skin, so to speak. No ego with that handsome feline.

I was with him when he died. Strokes. Not pretty.

After Cat 1 died, Cat 2 now decided she was ruling monarch. The problem with deciding one is a ruling monarch and actually being one is that the latter is a fact and nothing on earth can change that, while deciding to be is a solely personal opinion.

So, Cat 2 decided to be, but Queen Angela was — and Cat 2 knows it. Which drives her crazy.

When Cat 1 was still with us, Cat 2 used to suck up to Queen Angela with purrs and invitations for petting because she knew I preferred him over her.

But Cat 2's jealousies of my actual monarchness drove her mad. Night and day, Cat 2 was tortured by her lack of monarchy. She would end up biting or scratching so that finally Queen Angela did not acknowledge Cat 2's approach as she begged for royal favor.

After Cat 1 died, Cat 2 assumed the crown would pass to her. Then I walked into the house and she was furious. Each time I enter, Cat 2 lets me know immediately she hates my guts and wishes I would die. Throwing death rays at me (they always miss or bounce off), she runs and hides. What makes it worse is that I don't care what she thought before Cat 1 died, and I don't care what she thinks now.

As a real monarch does, right?

My friend thought it was all quite amusing. Then he got a girlfriend. Girlfriend 1 (oh, you know where this is going) threw death rays at me, too, though he was mostly at her house so I didn't have to see that very often. That lasted 18 months, then she was gone.

Then along came Girlfriend 2 who eventually moved in. Here is where the story really gets funny. She is a P-HWPCDLRSFC* , and how! She is mad her boyfriend has a non P-HWPCDLRSFC female friend. Especially one as awesome as me. But as he told me one day, "Angela, girlfriends come and go, but monarchs are forever."

See? My friend was like Cat 1. No ego. Accepting of facts. Girlfriend 2, on the other hand, is like Cat 2; that was brought home to me the other day when I went over to take something to my friend. I'm handing the thing to my friend and we are talking about it when, out of the corner of my eye, I see scurrying and I thought, "That scurry is too big to be Cat 2."

Sure enough, it wasn't. Girlfriend 2 was running out of the room. She didn't want to see me. She didn't want to talk to me. But, you know, a monarch's got to have her fun every now and then, so of course I hollered, "Hey! How are ya?" And just like Cat 2 does when I mess with it, Girlfriend 2 stopped, twirled, and backed out of the room.

Throwing death rays that missed.

I didn't care. Still don't. 

Citizen Journalist.  Novelist. Author of other stuff. 

Business writer.  Songwriter.  Protecting creator's copyrights. 

* P-HWPCDLRSFC is Pussy-Hat Wearing Politically Correct Democrat Liberal RINO Socialist Fascist Commies