Lady Who?

I've seen some unusual things at the local library, but yesterday was one for the books, no pun intended. I was in one of those romantic moods. You know, hot outside, humid, no energy or ambition to do anything physically or mentally challenging. I felt like spending the afternoon in the hammock, reading some tawdry romance novel, or maybe a few magazines loaded with Hollywood gossip. So I headed for the library to look for a few items to help rot my brain.

Everything was normal until I turned the corner toward the section that had all the steamy stuff I craved. Halfway down the aisle I saw a large cat pawing at the books on the bottom shelf. I figured I'd probably get more entertainment out of watching the cat than reading what I'd come for, so I backed away a bit and stood as still as possible.

And then the weirdness leapt to another level. The cat stopped pawing and turned his or her head toward me. “You do know that I can see you,” he/she said, in a high-pitched, but otherwise perfectly clear, voice. I jumped, and began looking around for another human, assuming a pretty darn good ventriloquist was nearby. But I saw no one. “Yes, I'm really talking,” said the cat. “And it might interest you to know that I learned how from some of the books in this library.”

Call me crazy, but at that moment I decided to toss aside any sense of reality, although I suppose the cat had already done that. “Are you looking for anything in particular?” I asked, keeping my mental fingers crossed that no other human was within earshot.

And then it got even nuttier. “Yes,” said the cat. “ 'Lady Catterley's Lover.' But I can't find it on these lower shelves.”

Crazy or not, I decided to continue the absurd experience until I either woke up or the cat told me it was really a very small human. That still would have been very strange, but it would be closer to something believable. So I addressed the cat as though nothing was amiss. “I don't mean to embarrass you,” I said, “but the title is 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', not 'Lady Catterley's.'”

I'm not sure what a perplexed look is in a cat's face, but I think the cat looked perplexed. It looked up toward the higher shelves as though an answer might lie among those books. “Is Lady Chatterley a cat?”

“I'm afraid not,” I said. “She's a human, just like me. Well, not just like me. But human, not feline.”

The cat looked toward the books again, then turned toward me with what I assumed was a cat scowl. “I was hoping for a nice cat story,” he/she said. “Would you be so kind as to direct me toward a section that might contain books about cats?”

Why not, I thought. Wherever I was at the moment was certainly not reality, so I decided to play along until I snapped out of whatever lunacy had taken over my brain. “Sure,” I said. “Do you want me to carry you, or would you rather just follow?”

I waited for an answer, but the cat just sat there, staring at me. Then it shot a hind leg into the air and started cleaning itself. And that was the moment I decided I'd come back to reality, so I backed away until I reached the end of the aisle, and headed for the stairs. My brain was much too shot to allow me to concentrate on any of the reading I'd planned to do. And no tale of fiction could match the story of my experience.

So an afternoon in the hammock became my only remaining goal for the day. But in case I do return to the library soon, I'm wondering if I should take along a nice box of catnip.