I live here on the crowded streets where the road is my bed.

Where am I? I often ask myself, but never find an answer. Think you that I can read your people-signs with your jumble of language and words telling me things? Think you that I should die in a sewer or be put down because I am diseased? I am sly, the cleverest of fellows, but even I can not find myself a home - for whatever reason. I even bathe like no other cat! ...If you count rain to being a shower. I am chased, beaten down, deprived, whining, complaining, alone, fancied, spoiled rotten and starved mad, itching with fleas, confronting death daily, learning, and overall being the ratty, old, gray, fluffy cat who lives in the sour-sewer.

Life's not a rotten as it sounds, it just seems to look - and smell - that way. Besides, I am nameless, a free whisper of fur running the alleys at night. Well, I suppose you could just call me tomcat. Whatever, that's not how I slide. Jazz is my element, and every night when your neon lights are flashing aqua blue and blaring red, I find myself at the back door of your jazz club. I can hear the swing and the flare of trumpets, and I just purr with the saxophone melody! Let me tell you! Though you are so stingy with food, you are no fool when it comes to music! Say, if I ever were a person like you, I'd pounce right in there and dance along!

But what cat can dance? Only the ones on Broadway I suppose.

I believe I am rather scatter-brained. Oh dear. What was I saying? Oh yes, jazz. An American invention, or as I would like to say, it's the 'cat's meow'. Why do they call it a 'meow' anyways? Simpletons. We say much more than the simple meow that stereotypes your modern house cat. Pshaw! Our language is full of flourishes and rolls of the tongue. No person like you could replicate it.

So more about me, I laze away my days. You may find me on a street corner or shoo me off of your porch. I get many doors closed on my face. You all seem to think I am a dirty, horrible beast. It's not my fault! I haven't seen a mirror before! Well, perhaps if I haven't I shouldn't even know what that is. Whatever, that's not how I slide.

No more rambling, I must leave. The sun has set and I can hear the piano starting to roll! Perhaps it is blues night! Oh jolly, there's to be the bass and a lady in a dress, and some guitar! Another fine invention of you strange two-legged creatures!

Learn more about this author, Samantha Kingsbury.
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