"Cats": A Monologue: Another piece written for an actor friend who was a big fan of David Mamet. Excuse the language.

My mother. My own mother—has gotten a reputation. O.K., alright, it could be worse. Yeah, I admit it; it could be a helluva lot worse. She could be the town drunk. She could be town floozy. She could be marching naked down mainstreet with communist banners. But this, this whole thing, is just fucking embarrassing. Embarassing.
My mother is "the cat lady" for christ's sake. The Cat Lady.  This is not fucking Batman I'm talking about, it's cats. 

My mother,  the woman who bore me, god bless her soul, the well of my genes; my mother with her poor, misguided, fucked-up heart and her twenty-three cats. Twenty-three cats. Twenty-three individual, gravel pissing, hair-ballchucking, tuna shitting cats.  There's no excuse for this much kindness.  The whole thing smacks of insanity.  

And the worst thing is, the worse thing, is that everyone in the whole town seems to know it. I don't know what she does. She must walk down the street whispering into every stupid, empty, goddamn ear: "I've got twenty-three cats. Yes, twenty-three!" Either that or she's taken out a billboard someplace. A billboard; a big, glossy, larger than fucking life billboard with photograph of a cat with our address branded on its ass: "1401 Mary Street, The Fucking Saint of Pussies House."

 Jesus Christ, people look at me, I tell you. They look at me. It's getting so I'm afraid to sign my name. "Parsons? Parsons? Is your mother the one with all the cats? What? Are you...? Boy, that's a lot of cats." No shit that's a lot of cats. That's seventeen tons of fucking hair per minute per day per room a lot of cat. Jesus! Sometimes I think I'd rather have her be the goddamn town drunk. A cleptomanic. A junkie! At least I might get some sympathy then. All I'd hear would be: "Oh, how's your mother doing?" "Oh, Mrs. Parsons . . ."  Instead of: "My sister has three cats and her house sort of has this, has this . . . Your mother's house . . . it must, well, it must . . .smell." Polite laugh. Little questioning glance. Yeah, it must. It must smell. It must fucking smell. It smells like somebody piled thirty years of shit under the rug. It smells like Jumbo the fucking elephant crawled up and died in the fireplace. And the worst part, the worse thing, is how they smile at you. They smile at you like you're the next goddamn timebomb. Like you're the next victim. I know their just waiting for the day I'll walk into their grocery store and say: "May I speak with the Manager? Excuse me, Sir. Can I get a discount if I buy ten cases of Fussy Miss Purrs Egg and Cheese Tibits?"

Do I look like that—do I look like that kind of person? Do I look like someone who subscribes to CAT WORLD MAGAZINE? Do I look like someone who'd  spend nine tenths of his salary on scratching posts and kitty liter, catnip bells and fucking personally ingraved ˜Whisker's Chow Chow water bowls?  Is this my inheritance? The new "CATMAN!"  

I go home; I look around and think, "This was once my home, my house; I grew up here." But whose house is it? Who does it belong to now? Twenty-three  freeloading, shedding, shitting cats who should chase their goddamn tails back to Egypt, or Mesopotamia, or Tibet, or wherever it was the first stupid fuck brought  the parasitic rodents inside.  

Well, I say, godbless the ASPCA and euthanasia. God bless trucks and cars. God bless dogs and bricks and sacks and deep, cold, fast rivers.  My house. My home. My mother. My own mother—the cat-fancier.

Cats—it's a fucking travesty.