Becoming Himself
by Brandi Wells

My cat is growing into another cat. He has been eating his own fur,
tearing off great gobbing hunks of it and choking it down with water he
laps up from the sink. I see him gnawing at his paws, at the sharp
talons he often uses to tell me what he wants. He's heard that cats only
have ONE life and not nine, so he'll rebirth himself from himself,
wasting nothing. After fur and claws, it's whiskers. Then on to ears and
eyes and kidneys and heart until he isn't anything--- except a new cat,
which is really the old cat. Then he'll go back to punishing me with
those claws and I'll think everything is the same, but it won't be, not
for the cat who spent so much time becoming himself.

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