Archive for September 30th, 2005

My cats aren’t easily impressed (yes, catS — before you start imagining me as the quintessential cat lady I’ll just tell you it’s all true). What cats are, really, but mine seem to have an extra air of cynicism about them. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that my cats are secretly big Usher fans. I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I guess maybe it’s not too unusual, since Usher is so popular and all (and because he’s got the music that make your booty go < clap >, but I digress). Granted, I never really gave much thought to what kind of music my cats were into, but I would never have sensed they were the Usher type. But they are and they seem to particularly like the song “Burn”, then again, who doesn’t?

You might be asking yourself “How does she even know her cats like Usher?” I mean most likely you aren’t asking yourself that since odds are you’re not even here reading this, but you might. And if I happened to overhear you asking yourself such a question, I’d have to tell you that it all started when we went to buy a plunger at Wal-Mart. (Me and my boo that is, not me and my cats. The cats don’t really like to go to Wal-Mart, especially since they heard about Hilfiger.) You see, sometimes when you go to Wal-Mart, you just feel compelled to buy things. This is because of the happy faces, toxic fumes and the FALLING PRICES. Add in a love for all things karaoke to that and you’ve got a recipe for bringing the R&B hip-hop stylings to the felines in a one-night-only personal home concert. I don’t think even Dr. Doolittle can top that.

We ended up getting a nice little hip-hop karaoke CD and so, as goes many of my best stories, I’d had some merlot and decided that my rendition of “Burn” needed to break free from its gilded cage, a.k.a., my lungs. I sing a lot around the house and while I’m working … and the cats are used to this and tend to pretend they don’t know I’m there by just blinking a few times and rolling back over to continue their naps. (Oddly enough, I get that reaction in many situations.) However, this time was different, as I started belting out “when I’m hurtin’ baby, I ain’t happy baby”, a strange thing happened — the magical lure of this song prompted my cats to come and lie down in front of me … attentive, entranced, telling me with their big cat eyes that if they had a lighter and paws that could operate one while swaying back and forth, they would indeed be doing so at that very moment. It was a night I won’t soon forget. The night I discovered my cats loved Usher.