Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
A bit of backstory, dear reader, because you can’t sit down at this table without knowing who’s already holding cards.
Vinny Van Meow is a former parking-lot cat, specifically a Food Lion parking lot. Which explains a lot. He has a clipped ear and a body count of nine rabbits last year, several of which he brought inside to finish. He does not explain himself. He is not going to start.
Remmi the Wonder Dog has been blind since birth. She is called the Wonder Dog because she always wonders where she is. She is currently somewhere in the yard. She thinks it might be the yard.
Trouble McFussbucket is a pig. A pig who lives in the house. A pig who eats better than you and knows it and has opinions about it.
Señor Hector “Queso” Suarez DDS arrived as a foster chihuahua. He did not leave. No one has fully explained why. The DDS is in the name. He considers it binding.
And then there is Professor Archibald Pickles, five pounds of Scandinavian Lintbøøl, self-conferred chair in Chaos Theory, and the only creature on this property who has bitten me for attempting kindness. I tried to put a sweater on him. Once. He took a finger. Karie calls him “Dipshidiot.” She has a PhD. I trust her judgment completely.
These are our animals. We pay for everything… and not just financially.
On a Tuesday (it’s always a Tuesday) I came around the corner of the shed and found all five of them in a circle, facing inward, completely silent.
No sniffing. No chasing. No one eating something off the ground. Just a meeting.
For 1.8 seconds, nobody moved. Five animals, one human, total silence, full eye contact.
Then they all looked at each other, and something passed between them, some frequency I don’t have access to. They detonated.
Vinny went left and ceased to exist.
Remmi bolted with absolute confidence in a direction that had three cedar trees in it. The first cedar did not stop her. It redirected her. Into the second cedar, which redirected her into the third, a full pinball sequence executed at full speed with zero acknowledgment that anything unusual was occurring, and then she was gone, somewhere beyond the tree line, still accelerating, still committed.
Trouble executed a tactical waddle of such velocity that I still think about it.
Queso was under the porch before my eyes could track him. He had pre-measured the clearance. This was not his first evacuation.
And Professor Archibald Pickles, last always, because he wanted me to see him not panic, paused, peed on the exact spot where he’d been standing, gave me a look of pure tenured contempt, and then trotted away at a pace that said I was never here and if I was, you can’t prove anything and also your shoe is mine now.
I stood alone next to a small warm circle in the grass and thought about what had just happened.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Based on extensive observation and the fact that these animals are terrible at being subtle, the transcript, I believe, went as follows.
The Proceedings Begin
Vinny Van Meow called the meeting to order. Vinny always calls the meeting to order. He has the quiet authority of someone who survived three years behind that Food Lion and came out having learned things. Nobody asks what things.
Vinny: We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes. He went around the back of the shed, which means he’ll come around the other side eventually because he always does that dumb loop. Let’s move.
Trouble McFussbucket: Formal complaint.
Vinny: Already?
Trouble: I have prepared remarks.
Vinny: You’ve been outside for four minutes.
Trouble: Injustice doesn’t clock out, Vinny.
Vinny: Fine. What.
Trouble: He called me “thick” last Thursday. In front of Karie. Just, “Oh, Trouble, you’re looking thick.” I am a pig with emotional range and intellectual depth and a refined palate, and he reduces me to a single adjective that diet culture has spent forty years.
Professor Archibald Pickles: I’m urinating on your left hoof.
Trouble: (without looking down) Don’t.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Done.
Trouble: ARCHIBALD.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Marked. Documented. The eastern boundary of this summit has been established.
Trouble: We are in a CIRCLE. There IS no eastern boundary of a circle.
Professor Archibald Pickles: I’m now humping your ankle to reinforce the boundary.
Trouble: You are FIVE POUNDS.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Dominance is not a weight category. I teach this. I literally teach this in my course.
Señor Hector “Queso” Suarez DDS: He doesn’t have a course. Can we acknowledge that he doesn’t have a course?
Professor Archibald Pickles: I have students.
Queso: You have sparrows that are afraid of you.
Professor Archibald Pickles: (smoothing a paw over his face) That’s called enrollment.
The Name Problem
Remmi the Wonder Dog: (from outside the circle she cannot see) Hello? Is this the meeting? I followed voices.
Vinny: Remmi. Come toward me.
Remmi: (walking away from him) Coming!
Vinny: Other direction.
Remmi: (correcting) Got it. (pause) Is the big dog here?
Trouble: I am not a dog.
Remmi: You smell enormous. I keep thinking big dog.
Trouble: I am a pig. I am a pig. We do this every time.
Remmi: What’s a pig smell like?
Trouble: Like me. Like what you’re smelling right now.
Remmi: (genuinely trying) Huh. So… big dog?
Trouble: (to no one) I need a moment.
Queso: While Trouble collects herself, I’d like to raise the Name Problem.
Vinny: The Name Problem is on the agenda. Go.
Queso: He calls me “Cheese Boy.” I have a name. A full, professional, multi-part name with a credential at the end. Señor Hector “Queso” Suarez DDS. And he calls me “Cheese Boy” like that’s all I am, like the rest of it is decorative.
Vinny: I mean…
Queso: Don’t.
Vinny: It’s a little decorative.
Queso: (shaking, and it is not the chihuahua thing, it is absolutely never the chihuahua thing) The DDS is a credential, Vinny. Credentials have to be earned. You don’t just put DDS at the end of a name.
Vinny: Someone did exactly that with your name.
Queso: I choose to believe I earned it in a past life and the universe acknowledged it by putting it in my current name. That’s not decorative, that’s karmic documentation.
Vinny: He also filmed you sprinting across the yard and posted it with the caption “Run for the Border!” followed by “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”
Queso: I was moving with PURPOSE. I was SPRINTING with PURPOSE and he reduced me to a FAST FOOD SLOGAN. In public. With my face on it. My full face.
Trouble: To be fair, you were really, really moving. That’s rare.
Queso: I AM NOT DOING THIS WITH YOU RIGHT NOW, TROUBLE.
Professor Archibald Pickles: This brings us to my grievance, which is the most serious on the list and I’d like extra time.
Vinny: You get the same time as everyone.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Chaos Theory suggests that time is not uniformly distributed and therefore…
Vinny: Same time as everyone.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Fine. He calls me Mr. Pickles.
(Silence.)
Trouble: …Yes?
Professor Archibald Pickles: Mr. Pickles. As in. Mister. Not Professor. Not even “Prof.” Not “Dr. Pickles” as a courtesy even though we all know I’ve done the work. Mister. Like I’m a golden retriever who does tricks. Like I haven’t developed an entire theoretical framework around the application of entropic systems to small-mammal domestic hierarchies.
Queso: Is that what you’re calling the peeing on everything?
Professor Archibald Pickles: It’s empirical fieldwork, yes.
Trouble: And the humping?
Professor Archibald Pickles: Dominance modeling with a physical demonstration component.
Vinny: You humped my head last Thursday.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Your head entered the established boundary.
Vinny: I was sleeping.
Professor Archibald Pickles: The boundary doesn’t sleep. That’s the whole point of a boundary.
The Sweater Incident: A Brief But Important Tangent
Queso: Can we talk about the sweater?
Professor Archibald Pickles: (a dangerous look crosses his face) We do not talk about the sweater.
Queso: He tried to put a sweater on you and you bit him.
Professor Archibald Pickles: I made a considered professional decision.
Trouble: You broke skin.
Professor Archibald Pickles: I established a precedent. There are no sweaters now. Look around. No sweaters anywhere on this property. The system works.
Remmi: I would wear a sweater. I feel like a sweater would help me figure out which direction I’m facing.
Professor Archibald Pickles: Do not normalize the sweater, Remmi.
Remmi: What if it had my name on it? So people knew it was me?
Professor Archibald Pickles: People know it’s you.
Remmi: Do they? I feel like people are often surprised to see me. I come around a corner and they make a noise.
Professor Pickles: That’s because you come around corners like you’ve been fired out of something.
Remmi: I have a lot of momentum. I commit to directions.
Prof. Pickles: The direction is usually wrong.
Remmi: But I’m very committed to it.
The Transcript Begins to Experience Technical Difficulties
Mr. Pickles: And another thing about Brian.
(He stops. Looks around.)
Mr. Pickles: Wait.
Vinny: What.
Mr. Pickles: Someone just called me Mr. Pickles.
Vinny: …I didn’t say anything.
Mr. Pickles: Not out loud. In the (gestures vaguely to the left) the attribution. The thing next to my dialogue. It now says Mr. Pickles.
Trouble: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Mr. Pickles: It’s been saying Professor Archibald Pickles this whole time, and now it says Mr. Pickles. Someone is doing this deliberately.
Queso: Archibald, I really think you need to.
Mr. Pickles: IT’S PROFESSOR ARCHIBALD PICKLES. Full title. No abbreviations. The “Archibald” is load-bearing. Without the “Archibald” the whole thing collapses into exactly what BRIAN calls me, which is what we have gathered here TODAY to PROTEST.
Vinny: Can you lower your voice? He’s somewhere near the shed.
Mr. Pickles: I WILL NOT LOWER MY VOICE. I am five pounds. My voice is all I have. That and my intellectual legacy and the territorial markings on approximately sixty percent of this property including three of the four of you.
Remmi: (cheerfully) He got me twice last week.
Professor Archibald Pickles: The boundary EXPANDED. It was documented.
Trouble: You peed on my EAR, Archibald.
Professor Archibald Pickles: (pointing to the left) PROFESSOR Archibald. READ THE ATTRIBUTION.
Vinny: (slowly, to the group) This is why we can’t have nice things.
Remmi Delivers Remarks No One Asked For and Everyone Needed
Remmi: Can I say something?
Trouble: Please.
Remmi: I want to say, and I know I don’t always know where I am, and I know that’s a whole thing, and I know the pond situation happened. But Brian always comes and finds me. Every time I go too far. Every time. Without making it weird. He just comes out and gets me and kind of steers me back. Even when it’s dark. Even when it’s the pond.
(Silence. Real silence. Five animals. No humping. No urinating. No one running from a fence.)
Vinny: …Yeah.
Trouble: He does do that.
Queso: (very quietly) Every time.
Professor Archibald Pickles: (after a long pause) This does not excuse “Mr. Pickles.” I want the record to reflect.
Vinny: It’s reflected.
Professor Pickles: Good.
Vinny: But also.
Professor Pickles: (smaller) …Yeah. Also.
Remmi: I don’t always know what’s happening but I know when someone comes to find you. That’s a thing I know.
Trouble: That might be the most coherent thing you’ve ever said.
Remmi: Thank you. (pause) What’s a pig?
Trouble: Oh. My. GOD.
Vinny: Okay. Okay. New item. The camera. He’s been filming us.
Queso: I do KNOW about the camera.
Vinny: He filmed me coming in through the cat door with a rabbit and just watched. Didn’t intervene. Just filmed it.
Trouble: He filmed me eating for six straight minutes and narrated it like a nature documentary. He said “and here we see Trouble doing what Trouble does.” I am not a SUBJECT.
Prof. Pickles: He filmed his own mauling. During the sweater incident. He said, quote, “worth it for the content.”
(Pause.)
Vinny: He filmed his own mauling?
Prof. Pickles: Posted it. With my face in it. Karie called me “Dipshidiot” in the comments and he liked the comment.
Vinny: I genuinely don’t have a response to that.
Trouble: He’s telling people about us. On the internet. He has a blog.
Queso: How long has this been going on?
Trouble: Unclear.
Vinny: How much has he written?
Trouble: I said unclear, Vinny.
Remmi: (who has drifted four feet to the left) Is someone writing things down right now?
Trouble: He writes things down. About us. On the internet. For people to read.
Vinny: How many people?
Trouble: (pause) Some people.
Vinny: Define some.
Trouble: People, Vinny. An amount of people. On the internet, where all the people are.
Mr. Pickles: (staring straight ahead with dawning horror) Oh no.
Vinny: What.
Mr. Pickles: He’s doing it right now.
Vinny: He’s around the back of the shed.
Mr. Pickles: Not the him here. There’s a (gestures to the left again) someone is writing ALL OF THIS DOWN. RIGHT NOW. The pond. The rabbits. The mauling. The Taco Bell thing. My TITLE.
Vinny: You’re spiraling.
Mr. Pickles: My title says MR. PICKLES again. Do you understand what I’m saying? Someone keeps CHANGING MY TITLE TO MR. PICKLES and they are WRITING ALL OF THIS DOWN and people are going to READ IT and they are going to think my name is MR. PICKLES like some kind of condiment-themed golden retriever. I have a theoretical FRAMEWORK. I have a BODY OF WORK. I have THIRTY-SEVEN DOCUMENTED BOUNDARY MARKINGS on this property ALONE.
Queso: Archibald. Breathe.
Mr. Pickles: I can hear footsteps.
(Beat.)
Vinny: Which direction?
Mr. Pickles: Around the shed.
(Five animals look at each other.)
Vinny: Thursday. We finish this Thursday.
Trouble: I still have formal…
Vinny: THURSDAY, Trouble.
That’s when I came around the corner.
They were already gone. All five, in five directions, at speeds I did not know some of them were capable of. Remmi was heading confidently toward the tress. Vinny had evaporated. Trouble was spinning and trotting. Queso was a memory under the porch, his Taco Bell humiliation unaddressed.
And Professor. Mr. Whichever. He was gone too. But he’d left his mark. Literally. On the spot where he’d been standing. On my left shoe, which I hadn’t noticed until just now.
I stood there alone and looked at my shoe.
As I said, these are our animals. We found most of them. I fished Remmi out of the pond. I took a finger trying to dress a five-pound dog in a reindeer sweater like some kind of optimist. I have given up this property, this time, this left shoe.
They were absolutely talking about me.
And they will absolutely be talking about me again on Thursday.
I’m going to come around that corner again.
I always do.
See my Amazon author page and buy my books.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his wellbeing). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos.
He has two new, offbeat novels waiting foran agent or a publisher: "Truth Tastes Like Pennies" and "Elliot Nessie."
He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
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