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Jack's Adjustment

 

Jack felt that his life had little point; that is no matter what he did he wouldn't be able to ever achieve any goal, any benefit to society. He would often go to a nearby park and marvel at the age and stature of the magnificent trees there and would feel inspiration in their ultimate indifference to the wind.

 

Jack  remembers the day when he realized what he needed to do. He acknowledged that he had a power to heal but it really didn't seem to make a difference to him whether he actually healed or just traded one calamity for another in their lives. So Jack decided to become a chiropractor.

 

He stepped out into a fine May spring morning and enrolled in the college across town. His mother was pleased since she was going to be able to call her son a doctor and was already wondering if it mean she would be more popular at the golf club. His father fretted over the cost but Jack got a nice job as a shoe salesman at a nearby store where he was talented at hawking their poor footwear. It made for a fine life as a student—studying spinal conditions during the weekdays and causing them selling cheap footwear on the weekends. He made enough money to cover most of his tuition while he continued to live at home.

 

Jack was nearing graduation when he took the required ethics coursework. He struggled with ethics at first—he liked the discussions of various issues in class but seemed to always fail on the essay tests. This problem corrected itself when Jack realized that the ethics class was all centered around the concept of teaching students to not cheat patients. Once Jack mastered this he went on to graduate with honors.

 

Young chiropractors have to work several years in an established practice before being able to strikeout on their own so Jack went to an interview at a popular clinic run by a group of doctors. Their company bylaws required them to elect one of their membership as the Chiropractor-in-Chief. The current Chiropractor-in-Chief was a well known and popular on the internet as a staunch conservative. He lived over in the hill district and drove a fancy foreign car and believed there was nothing wrong in using the nearby lake as a convenient storage site for mine tailings. After a few perfunctory questions he asked about Jack's specialty which he listed on his application as Psychiatric Chiropractic Care. “What,” the chief doctor asked, “is a psychiatric chiropractor? "

 

“I change how people believe.” Jack told him.”I can make someone who is a conservative believe in a liberal cause. I can also make liberals believe in conservative causes.”

 

“How do you do that?”

 

“It's just like adjusting their spine. It's just that I somehow can reach up further and adjust a patient's perception. If, for example, they believe in concealed carry laws then I show them how those laws lead to innocent children being killed, causing them to change their position to that of strict gun control.”

 

The doctor looked skeptical. “What if they are already a gun control supporter?”

“The procedure's the same,” Jack said, “but the focus changes. Then I show them the instances in which innocents would have been protected by legally available handguns. They can't bear the thought of innocents being hurt so they want to protect them.”

 

“That's incredible!” said the doctor. “I want to see you do it. Can you do it to me?”

 

“I can but you won't recognize the change.” Jack said. “You'll think you believed that way all your life.”

 

“Ah,” said the doctor and then made plans for Jack to demonstrate his ability on a patient. He brought in his own mother who supported gun control and a general handgun ban but after Jack's adjustment but came away with a desire to own a small .22 automatic to shoot the snakes in her yard. So the Chiropractor-in-Chief hired Jack and gave him a small treatment room in the corner of a building clad in marble. Through his quiet network a steady stream of liberals were brought in and adjusted into conservative supporters, treating maladies such as the love of communism, environmental causes and single payer healthcare.

 

This went on for a year or so and then the chiropractors who owned the practice got together and voted in a new Chiropractor-in-Chief. Shortly after he was appointed he discovered the truth about Jack's adjustments. Unlike the original Chiropractor-in-Chief this one was pretty liberal but burdened with a mother who believed that unemployment and foodstamps were tools minorities used to avoid gainful employment so he brought her in. When Jack was finished she was advocating legalized marijuana to help finance services to undocumented immigrants.

 

So it continued for several more years with Jack in his small office in the marble clad building treating a steam of patients with such maladies as believing in the sanctity of marriage or wishing to exercise their right to bear arms and were changed into people who thought gay pride parades were a lot of fun.

 

This went on for quite a few years—the bylaws of the chiropractic practice required elections every four years and whoever would win the election would then make use of Jack's abilities to attempt to mold society into the politically fashionable direction.

 

Now I suppose you think something will happen and yes that's the case as I entered the story in a way more then just narration. My name is Katie but people usually just call me Kate because it's faster to say and quite frankly I'm a fast person. I was brought to see Jack to have my position on abortion changed. I came to him believing in choice.

 

Jake had me lay down prone on a table and he gently felt my back for the right spot. Once he located it he applied pressure, but there was no crack. “Hmm, you seem to be a little tense.” He said as he pressed harder. I was getting uncomfortable and told him so.

 

“That's okay we can try it a different way.” He then found another spot and pressed but, once again, there was no relieving click indicating a shift in my backbone. He tried a few more times and then gave up. “I don't understand,” he said, “I'm doing all of the right things.”

 

I sat up. “What are you trying to do?” I asked him.

 

“It says here you believe that abortion should be an individual's right to choose. I'm trying to fix that by showing you the tragedy of the victims.”

 

“Of course there's tragedy in an abortion, especially for the victims. It's tragic for the unborn child and for the mother. Ending a life is always a horrible and sad thing.”

 

“Oh,” said Jack, “It worked. Never mind.”

 

“But then one has to look at the other life in the equation—that is the life of the mother. Her life is radically altered, sometimes even shortened by the child she carries. Surely she is the one best empowered to make such a sick and tragic decision.”

 

“Oh,” said Jack, “I guess it didn't work.” Jack began to try another adjustment on me.

 

“So what is it you believe?” I asked him.

 

“I don't think that it really matters.” Jack replied, his fingers looking for that right spot on my spine.

 

“Don't you feel bad changing the way people believe in things?”

 

“No I don't—because it's what they really want. People say they want this or that but what they really want is to be able to disagree—to argue—to make themselves think they're making a difference.”

 

“But of course they're making a difference—they're making a difference of their own choosing.”

 

Jake laughed. “You think the way you believe is your own choosing?”

 

“Well of course I believe in what I want to. Isn't that a fundamental aspect of freedom?”

 

“Yes. But it's not the opinion that's important. It's the issue. You don't have a choice in deciding what the issue is.”

 

“Oh, I see what you mean.” I said because I actually did. “And that's why you can't make that adjustment on me because I understand the difference between an opinion and a response in such circumstances.”

 

“I think I can fix you, though. Let me try something.” He pressed upon my back and I heard a click and then we were madly in love.

 

 

We still are in the corner of the marble clad building. I'm Jack's secretary now and because I'm fast we can see a lot of people every day. We own a couple of cats that stay in our nice home when we go away for the weekend to a park where we look at trees together and feel love.

 

I can lick you clean of sin

There wasn't really very interesting about Sam other then the fact that he was missing part of his ring finger on his right hand. It didn't give him any problems though and people generally didn't notice unless he pointed it out but it did make him feel somewhat inferior. What was extraordinary about Sam was the fact that his cat was the Messiah.

 

It wasn't simply the fact that he often called his cat Jesus—that was just a mere coincidence. His cat was the actual second coming of God in feline form complete with the virgin birth, three wise men, the wedding in Cana and even walking on water. Of course as you might imagine there is a slight problem with the miracle of the loaves and fishes but that is simply a matter of detail that can be quietly burnished by a century or two.

 

Now some people are often skeptical of this claim and when I tell the story they're like 'you don't know anything—you're just a cat named Paul' but from what I understand Saint Paul was some kind of bastard in the sense that he was really badass but then I remember that only G-d knows who the real saints are and our efforts at identifying them is just a wild guess.

 

And of course it was a good thing to have a pet that happened to be the actual son of man as a housecat. From the day the little fuzzy prince of peace was found mewing under Sam's car things began to change for him. Sam was so smitten he took Jesus home and convinced his skeptical landlord to allow cats just this one time. Sam took several days off from work to make sure his newfound savior was well adjusted in his new home.

 

One day Jesus told Sam who he was. “You know that I was put here to obtain forgiveness for your sins.”

 

“What sins?” Sam asked. “I don't recall doing anything bad. How can I be guilty of sin?”

 

“Not just the sins you have already committed. I can forgive the sins that lie in your future.”

 

“But what if I don't commit sins in the future?”

 

“What kind of man are you? Do you not at some time in your life feel selfish? Maybe have a wave of lust for that young woman who lives down the hall when you get a glimpse of her body when she forgot to close the curtains?”

 

“How did you know that I saw her today?”

 

“Because I come directly from the Father and I wish to show you the way to Heaven.”

 

“Ha!” Sam scoffed. “You make it sound so easy. What if I am always plagued with these lustful thoughts. You going to forgive that, too?”

 

“Her name is Nancy. You should take laundry down to wash for the next three days. There you will find her also doing laundry, but she will not speak for three days. On the third day she will introduce herself to you.”

 

So Sam followed his cat's instructions and took his laundry downstairs where he found Nancy emptying a dryer. She left before he could speak to her. The next day when he went down, the room was empty and she came in just as he was leaving. Meanwhile the cat that was the Messiah slipped out of the window, went down to the temple and chased out the moneylenders.

 

Of course Sam and Nancy got married and she was also somewhat skeptical about Sam's cat being the Son of Man but then he performed the miracle that allowed Sam to grow his finger back. This, of course proved to be one of the first miracles that eventually garnered media attention. Things kinda went downhill from there and eventually Jesus got an urge to ride a donkey but being a cat in modern times he ended up on a skateboard instead.

 

Cats and skateboards generally don't work well together.

A crusty situation

“You’re not allowed out so you’ll have to relax.” Stanley almost didn’t hear the words at first—he was still traumatized by the whirlwind events that had just happened—plucked off a log near his home and put into a series of boxes and cages until an ominous small white coffin carried him here. The voice was thin, questioning, feminine.

“But I got to get back!” Stanly rushed and pressed against a barrier that was hard yet seemed to allow light. His antennae said it was there but he couldn’t see it. On the other side were the mysterious shapes of a world unknown. “The tide’s going to be coming in soon and there’s a full moon tonight …”

“—There is no moon. There are no tides. There is no ocean. ” The voice was firmer, stronger now. “There is just here and now and we are. “

“What do you mean?” Stanley asked, still coming down from shock. He’d just spent several weeks in proximity two or three hundred other crabs which seemed to want to do nothing other than kick his ass. Somehow this place was better: the ground appeared to be some kind of soft sand and earthy material not familiar to Stan but still somewhat comforting. Some of the food that humans typically left lying about on the beach was there along with some rocks and garbage and shells. Stanley rubbed his eyes and looked harder—and was startled when he realized that they were all empty.

“You have ascended into a new world. Perfect bliss has come your way. We all shall be as one. ”

“We?” Asked Stanley. He waved his antennae towards the voice, which appeared to be coming from some kind of garbage shaped like a plastic flower.

“There are  three of us now.” The voice said.  He peered closer and saw a green shell begin to emerge. “My name is Sarah. Jessica is down somewhere over there molting.”

“But we’re all trapped in this box! There is no ocean! There’s no sunlight? What is there?”

“The human. He comes and gives us all we need. All the food, all the water, all the knowledge.”

“The knowledge?” Stanley asked. “What’s that?”

“New words for things. That is not sand beneath your claws—it is substrate. This piece of plastic shaped liked a flower—it’s not garbage it’s decoration.”

“But there’s no water!”

“There is,” Sarah pointed with a claw to an overturned shell that had a small pool I it. “You can drink all you want.”

“There’s not much there. And I don’t smell any rain to replenish it. And there’s certainly not enough to take a bath.”

“The human provides the rain. He fills it with fresh water daily. And he gives us baths in water that’s perfectly warm. “

“But there’s no ocean? How can we reproduce without waves?”

“One day soon our human will take us to the ocean so we can continue our lineage.”

“But that—that means—“

“Yes. I need to stock up on sperm.” She waved her antennae coyly. “You, um, don’t happen to have any?”

“Do you know why kittens have big ears?” He said, gently scratching behind her ears and careful to avoid the tick gently slurping. 

“It's so they can hear well.” I said. “Everyone knows that. They hunt at night and having sensitive hearing is a big advantage. 

“And you'd agree that it's an evolutionary trait that allowed for this to happen?” 

“Of course,” I said not knowing where this was leading. 

“It's really for the ticks.” He said. “They have big ears to feed the ticks. They have been this way for thousands of our years, gently living in this glen. The cats provide the perfect host for the ticks, who repay them by bringing the chipmunks in for them to feast upon. 

“They worked to create this environment eons ago by planting this forest and allowing it to develop as it is. They're still somewhat early in the process that will ultimately take place in millions of our years.” 

I chuckled. “But they're just bugs, dude.” 

“Because you don't see them as I do,” he replied. “To you, it's just a tiny bug on this cat's ear but inside it's brain is a complex strand of DNA that will, over time, direct the eventual evolution of an intellect that is vastly superior to ours. It's superior because they can correctly interpret time.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“They comprehend time in a different matter then ourselves. Rather then seeing it tick by moment by moment on a small scale their evolved intellect absorbs it in a grander scale, where a single tick of the clock actually lasts a million of our revolutions around the sun.” 

“I know the universe is moving fast but to imply that a second is a thousand years is a bit off.” I said. 

“Maybe I should explain it another way. It's the scale of things that can happen in a second. It's possible, for example, for there to be a huge explosion on Jupiter causing it to turn into a second sun. Now, when that explosion happens, it's so big that it's going to take us several years for us to even figure out what's going on and then almost forty or fifty years before it settles down to a regular orbit. But in astronomical time, that would be an event that would take place literally in a second.”

No, no rest for the weary.

He thought it must be a crime when he saw her. It was the way she was dressed, black spandex and a blouse that appeared at first glance to be made of feathers. Deep russet the color was but he couldn't help but to think of her as a bird, bright and small so he called her Canary.

 

“I still don't believe you fell in love with me on the day we met,” she said on their wedding night more then two years into the future. She admired the shape of his face in the blue light of the hotel room. He hugged her deeply and told her once again that it was true. Canary fidgeted with the love she knew she had and let her thoughts wander to the future. The children they would have and the home that they would make together. They would go to church weekly until their youngest was a teenager ridden with angst that they wouldn't be able to see and then they would begin slowly to feel free again.

 

Of course it wouldn't be all cream and peaches. There would be the affair he would have, a women he met at the office and then later at the health club. She would also discover that seaweed didn't cure cancer and felt the true meaning of pain when it had to be cut from her body.

 

And there was the accident, a dark night on a highway that had been pelted with rain. He was too eager to hurry home did not see the water upon the pavement until it was too late. And from one moment her happy family had been ripped and shredded by the tree planted next to the roadway to make it more beautiful. She would sit crying with the body of a child in her lap unable to do anything to stop the pain it would feel as it died.

 

He would simply clutch her body tighter, burying his face into her breasts as he recoiled from this knowledge. Surely to know such things would be criminal.

Rex1

It was rare for the wind to blow from the north but on a certain Thursday it did and that's when the stray cat in the abandoned garage across the street gave birth to three kittens. That east wind also brought cold to that late march and the mother struggled to feed herself and her kittens through a cold and rainy April. But the weather warmed in May and the kittens began to sun themselves daily. 

The orange tabby was the first one out. He would go on to do great things but this story isn't about him. He would pause every two or three steps to lick himself—even then being caught up in his own vanity that would be truly revealed years later in his tax returns.

Then came the the dark one—a kitten not quite black but a dark slate gray with a whitish tip to her tail. She, too, would make her own rich and luxurious history and be singly responsible for the return of beaver pelt fashions.

The third one did not peek out timidly or slowly emerge into the sunshine with caution but rather strutted. He stopped when he was full in the sun and stretched and extended his claws. The warm sun was showing him his world and it was time to make his entrance. It was as if he knew what was going to happen next and he was not just simply offering himself up to fate but actually looking fate in the eye and smiling.

And so fate smiled back and brought the little boy who lived down street to walk by at that moment. With the unfamiliar sounds and shape looming into their world the orange tabby and dusky kitten both darted back under cover. But not the third one. He kept sunning himself. It was easy for the boy to spot him—his stark black and white patches made him extra visible against the rock and wood background.

The boy stopped and called to him. “Here, kitty kitty.” The black cat looked over at his two littermates for a moment then trotted up to the little boy and allowed himself to be picked up and taken home.

“Did you see that?” Said the orange tabby. He came when he was called.”

“I did see such a thing,” said the dusky kitten, “and I feel that it has shown me a new way, a different way.”

Outside the weather had turned again and it began to snow.

Catseye

Frederick didn't like cats. This wouldn't have been a problem if cats also didn't like Frederick, but they did and so when he would find one they would immediately rub up against his leg as if he was the only person on the planet to ever pay attention to them. It didn't matter if he tried to ignore them, they would rub anyway and cover his dark clothing with a layer of cat hair that seemed to never go away.

It was taken all into stride until the day in January when the temperature got really cold and Frederick slipped upon the ice. He felt himself going and was able to gently lay his packages down before hitting the ice coated concrete. Despite his best efforts he still went down hard, but initially felt that he was unscathed. It was a cat that let him know otherwise.

“That was pretty funny.” He said. He was a large cat and his fir was a gray tiger stripe. Frederick was surprised that he was able to tell—no smell-- that this was a male cat with his testicles removed. “I didn't know humans can fall.”

“What?” Asked Frederick, still confused.

“Humans seem to be so sure-footed. Their balance is awesome.” The cat flicked it's tail. “Like some kind of gymnast.”

Frederick thought about it for a moment—it challenged him because he had always thought humans were clumsy. “But you guys make these incredible jumps onto narrow surfaces. They're incredible.”

“I once was taken into a metal box which then appeared to accelerate. I would then put my nose next to the edge and there was scent of many places at once, so rapid that it seemed as if I was traveling through time itself. And I was because when I left the box I was in a place much greater the before.”

“Greater?” Frederick asked. “You mean it seemed like you passed over a great distance.”

“And water.” The cat flicked it's tail again. “But I remembered that I was supposed to be there, but had always wondered how I would spend the time getting there. I know how I get home but don't understand how I started so far away.”

“What's your name?” Asked Frederick who felt that he needed a different kind of reference.

“I could tell you Tom Tiger,” The cat replied, “But it really wouldn't make any difference. For just like my appearance here the labels attached are only a passing description. Whatever name I give you will only help you identify me in easy conversation. It's only your understanding that can apply meaning.”

So Frederick scratched behind the cat's ears and thought ahead as to what he would do when he met another cat. He would think of each situation in which he would meet a new cat and hear it's story—but knowing that if he conditioned himself he would understand that each unique moment would, in itself, represent a cliche. And in taking that simple social affront would be actually converted into knowledge and he would totally understand why some cats would, for example, defecate on the bed of their affiliated humans because of a rapid change in the price of fossil fuels.

After a few months it got worse—cats began to tell him such mundane aspects of the future like weather reports or the occasional newspaper horoscope. Soon the cats would tell him everything. It began to be too much when his girlfriend's cats detailed her bathroom behavior when he wasn't around in exchange for cleaning a litter-box.

His girlfriend had two cats but he only would speak to Jake the dominant one. Early in Frederic’s enlightenment Jake explained how he had once hitchhiked across the country once in an effort to find some place in which no one else had ever seen before.

It wasn't Jake that made a difference, though. Frederick learned that he could understand the story of every cat he met. He could patiently listen to an orange tabby explain how they fought in the war in the desert and then have a tuxedo cat explain how he used to tour with the Dead.

And so Frederick was able to take a step back from the onslaught of truth spewed by random cats. He was able to filter and with the flowing clarity he saw their message reaching a crescendo that sounded important but was just more babble in the soundtrack of life.  

I happen to get all my news from unicorns.

Across the street from my home is a house made of red brick. Behind that is a large oak tree which spreads it's great limbs across several yards, including the home just behind the red brick home. In that house lived a cat.

He came to me one fall afternoon during the weekend before it really got cold and people started getting glum for the upcoming holidays. He was going from house to house, an orange tabby affair who looked like he had spent a little too much time with his nose in the wet food.

He finally made it to my front door. “Please, sir,” he said in a fake English accent, “I'm selling these cookies to pay for my airfare when I join the foreign legion.”

“You're not going to get into the foreign legion.” I scoffed. “No one would trust you. At the first available opportunity you're going to go to sleep. Terrorists at the embassy? Snooze time.”

“You're quite mistaken, sir. Once they see how hard I worked to get there they'll let me in.” He looked up at me with those big cat eyes—the ones you see all over the place that come with pathetic little stories about how Mondays suck or how your check engine light is on. “Please, sir, buy my cookies?”

I looked at what he had brought. Typical cat fare—a couple of bottle-caps, a slow moving brown bug of indeterminable origin and something that looked like a choice morsel of leftover mouse. “I don't think so.”

“Please sir—I don't need much more.” He began to rub against my legs.

“If I give you a quarter will you promise to never come here again?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, I prrromise.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out a coin that was fully silver and had my birthdate. I handed it over to him.

“Thank you, sir. You're very kind. I shan't be any more trouble.” In that same annoying fake English accent. He left his pouch of 'cookies' and dashed into the underbrush.

I might have been seeing things but I think he was actually wearing a saber in a scabbard. I learned later that his name was Birdie from the missing cat sign that was posted on the light pole.