Sliced Cheese
So I was having this chat with Claude, one of my cats. And I knew I had his attention because his eyes were fixed on mine. He was intrigued. Anyway, I was talking about my situation, you know job and kids and ex-wives and parenting and money and stuff. And about having to have conversations with myself to get an alternative view. (Now you can see that working.) And talking about making a new start and blockages and risks and zero support, only animosity and self-preservation. And wondering how I caused all that to befall me.
[Claude continues to stare with cat size]
And I’m saying how it doesn’t matter, that you just have to have some faith and push through to the thing you are called to do, to the person you are called to be. And that every now and then you have to fake the certainty that it will be ok in the end. And then I’d go off on another tangent about something else that gotten under my skin, completely losing the plot, the thread and a needle in a haystack.
But now Claude’s look has changed. He wants to respond. He wants to say something reassuring to me. (Not that he really says things. It’s more that I can sometimes read his mind. It’s a knack I have.) So I’m tuning in to him and getting something. It’s not all just white noise. It seems like a chant of some sort.
But the enunciation is all wrong. It sounds like Tom Waits doing Tiny Tim. And Claude sees I’m stumbling and not getting it, so he alters his approach. Chin further down now. And behold Sean Connery doing Homer Simpson. A little more palatable. And yes, in the end, it was quite clear what he said. He said
“Sliced Cheese”
That was it.
So I had some, and gave him some as well, which he seemed to relish. And I felt better too.
Weird!
So I’ll know for next time now. I’ll know just to have some sliced cheese. Handy that. Must get some more.
Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and full-time tinkerer of tags. He once wrote a poem about recursion that never ended, and a JavaScript confession that crashed three browsers. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and nostalgic detours. He believes in the transformative power of satire, the elegance of well-placed meta tags, and the occasional necessity of poetic nonsense.
A stream-of-consciousness confessional wrapped in feline telepathy and existential snack therapy. It’s tender, absurd, and quietly profound, with Claude the cat playing both therapist and oracle. The punchline lands like a koan: “Sliced Cheese” as both literal comfort and metaphorical balm.