Hairy Walnuts
by E.L. Pout 

Monday, July 16, 2001
I fed my cat some hairy walnuts
My poor kitty doesn't like hairy walnuts
I forced the cat to eat those nuts
and then I watched him puke them up
He ran away when he was done
and hasn't come back yet
I don't think he ever will
that stupid cat
I never liked him anyway
He made me sneeze and he made my eyes itch
I used to buy the most expensive food
By the time he left I was down to buying hairy walnuts
This was back when hairy walnuts were common in every store
After a while I starting having a hard time finding them
I had to drive to the other side of town to get them
just so I could feed my cat hairy walnuts
Which the cat hated, of course
I don't know where I got the idea to feed the cat hairy walnuts
I never tried them myself
The cat, of course, hated hairy walnuts
I wouldn't shell them
I wouldn't even crack them a little
The cat had to pry them open himself to get at the nut
And the nut itself tastes shitty, so I hear
The cat must have had low self esteem
I can't imagine why he stuck around
all the time I was forcing him to eat hairy walnuts
He could have run away at any time
He had a little kitty door
but every night, there he was
waiting for me to feed him,
and getting more hairy walnuts
Those walnuts sure were hairy
I remember trying to shave one once
just to see what it would look like
It looked like a naked walnut, if you can picture that
It didn't look like anything I had ever seen before
Unshaven, the hairy walnut looks like a cat's hairball
Maybe that's why the cat didn't like eating hairy walnuts
Maybe they weren't really hairy walnuts at all
Maybe I was just feeding the cat his own hairballs
over and over again, every night
But how was I buying big bags of my own cat's hairballs
in supermarkets all across town?
It doesn't make sense
unless the cat secretly loved eating his own hairballs so much
he worked out a deal with the supermarkets
coughing up hairballs for them to bag and shelve
just for me to come along and buy
so I could feed them to my cat as hairy walnuts
What the fuck was that cat thinking?
If he liked hairy walnuts so much, why did he run away?
I can't make sense of cat thoughts
He must have liked eating hairy walnuts
or he wouldn't have done all that work to make sure he got them
every night, without fail
hairy walnuts in his bowl.