I rented a cat one day when the persiflage wouldn't fly named Enid, who, like all cats, stood on ceremony and insisted that I call him The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow and who told me, "I dated Di, you know," and then The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow added that perhaps I could work on that, since anything about Di would sell, what with her not being quite alive anymore, and I was the image of polite attention bordering on contempt while The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow licked at his nether regions and considered the possibility that any human who would rent him doubtlessly did need his help and succor, not spelled sucker because no good English cat like The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow would use such a word except of course around lowly borne like me but I digress while he licks and I nearly forgot to say that I write fiction but very poorly and the idea was that cats, being wise, could help me to write fiction that was still poor but much more likely to sell because it had a cat in it although once I got him home I recognized that The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow was not an ordinary cat and was in fact a complete sodding bastard of a cat who was to snobbery what Don Rickles was to insults and I had just about made up my mind to take him back and demand a refund when The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow pulled a wallet out of his anal gland which is where cats keep their wallets you big silly and showed me a picture and goddamn if he wasn't sitting in Di's lap getting stroked by the then living princess and about then I decided that I had better pay attention because any writer who has got both a cat and princess died to play with is gonna make a million bucks and all I really needed in addition to all that was proof that Die was seeing Elvis on the side and so I mentioned this to The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow and he looked smug -- OK, SMUGGER -- and pulled out another picture with Dead and Deader in blue suede shoes together which would have been the happy happy retirement dream photo for every mama and papa Ratzi outfit in the uncivilized world, but then I realized that the reality of such a photo was exactly the same as having a talking cat named The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow, except of course that I did, and this confused me for a moment, until I thought to myself, wait a minute, I live on a volcano, so why don't I just take the cat and throw him in the fucking volcano and call him a sacrifice, using the cat since the only thing virgin is the first page of my next novel, and volcanoes and critics are both tough on such things, but then The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow brought me to heel by pointing out that he was in fact a talking cat, which caused me to stop and say, oh yeah, and glance hopefully in the direction of my typewriter, and here I am with pictures of deader and deadest and a talking cat who isn't residing inside a volcano, and I can't make a best-seller out of that, which leaves me wondering if I shouldn't get out of the writing business altogether and sell snow removal implements of injustice to the folks upon whose head the snow, but not my prose, is falling, and it is snow and not ashes from the volcano and the goddamn cat is still talking, only now he's telling me to cease and desist all thoughts of immolation of the feline line or he'll piss in my typewriter and that will be that for that and after a couple of minutes thought and watching the snow fall I decided I would rather have an unlikely plot outline instead of a dead, scalded cat named The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow, who does not live in a volcano with dead celebrities or at least they would be celebrities except that they are, as mentioned, dead, and therefore not celebrities or even in my novel yet and it's starting to snow -- ash, whatever -- really hard and The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow is gazing out at this with undisguised contempt, and the photos are still there (I can see them, except I can't see what's on them) and The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow is telling me that if I want to write the great western novel that will save civilization I only have to be the great western novelist who will save civilization and the rest is, as they say, in the anal sack, and I shouldn't be talking to cats about pictures of Very Dead and Stone Dead, and how anybody who would throw a live cat into a volcano is a real ash hole, and then the white reaches the top of the window and both The Fifteenth Earl of Venenidsgate at Lochhamptonrow and the lights go out.