Kindness And Strength...

Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers have LEFT the building!
These two have finally left my head. They were in there for 18 hours yesterday singing Islands in the Stream, (rinse, rewind, repeat) apparently under orders from Homeland Security to finally drive me completely mad. I was ready to begin eating sand and washing cats.

But! It's a new day, a new thick-with-fog day. And I've already had an altercation with the neighbor by 6am. Nice. Great way to start off Sunday morning. Their cat, that they choose to let out of the house at 5am (because it's bouncing off the walls) has woken me up for the second and final time this week. It sits outside our bedroom window (beginning at 5am) with its little jingle bell jingling, hunting its morning prey.

Well, I decided to hunt as well. I went out to see if the cat was interested in being spray painted or varnished. It didn't seem to care for that idea. I inquired to whether or not it might like to be in our breakfast omelette. Still not interested. And actually, that's okay, we really don't like cat in our omelettes. We just end up coughing up fur balls the rest of the day, which always ends up being embarassing, inconvenient and messy, so that all worked out.

I should probably preface for the record that I have nothing against cats. I actually love all animals and really couldn't hurt any of them. I truly believe in respecting all life...or trying to. I even try to get flies out of the house without killing them. However, the animals' owners? That's a different story.

I'm always up for spray painting, varnishing or cooking inconsiderate pet owners, or just inconsiderate people for that matter. Whether or not they own pets is usually beside the point. I do happen to be a really nice person. I strive to be a patient, compassionate, empathetic and loving person. However, sometimes people mistake kindness for weakness. The two are not analogous (oh no, the search engines are now going to route people looking for anal, log and us, right on over here). And I usually have to correct their mistake.

So, this morning, I marched my big homo ass over to the neighbor's, following the cat, who no doubt was going to tell its folks all about my propositions to laquer it. The woman is afraid of people and demonstrates this by trying to run everyone over in the complex when she's driving through. The man lost a couple of limbs (along with the portion of his brain that would be home to a personality) during the Civil War. He hobbles around the compound rather lecherously on his canes peering around corners and trying to pry into everyone's business. It makes me sick. There's just something about him that makes my skin crawl, it may be the scabies. And now, I was homing in on their fort all prepared to catch them unawares and shove their cat up one of their asses.

As I followed the cat around the corner, I could hear its momma welcoming it home into the front door (because the cat was running - it knew to run) and as I rounded the corner, I reminded myself that I hadn't had any coffee yet and shouldn't be doing this until I do. Before coffee, Kevin = Genghis Khan. So, I quickly tried to take a breath and be calm.

I startled her. She was in her nighty (which startled me - yuk), saw me, gasped (either because I'm strikingly handsome or the go-go boots and bustier that I was wearing - she found to be astonishingly impressive) and clutched her chest (because she knew that I was going to try and lick her boobs).

I told her why I was there. I was relatively calm, after all, she didn't know what the cat was doing. But in a condo complex, people really should be hyper-sensitive to their fellow neighbors - all of us living in such tight quarters. I even used the words please and thank you when addressing the issue. She didn't apologize for any inconvenience. That's okay, I caught her off guard. She was eyeing my boots more than anything, I knew she was jealous.

But what I really tried to convey in my communication was my assertion, not aggression. Because although kindness doesn't equate to weakness, neither does aggression correspond to strength.