Ask The Puss

Day One

Today is the day I have decided to become a Puss.

The reason why is because regular human life has become very dull and I want to get away from all that.

Also, being with Rudy for eight years now has inspired me to become like him.

Rudy, also known as Rudy Ru also known as Mr Ru, as well as Ru-The-Dragon-Slayer is a black and white Puss who is my friend and probably better than me in most ways (except for thumbs).

He has agreed to show me the ropes about being a Puss for a few days but that I shouldn’t kid myself - I will never ever be a true bred Puss like him.

I told him that that is an understandable viewpoint but that I’m keen to prove myself.

So, to start my training, we went outside and rubbed ourselves against a few walls and then after that we went and weed on a few bushes. After that we had a nap.

When we were done napping, we went outside and weed on some more bushes and ran around with each other for a little while. We did this again a few more times until it was time for our third pouch.

I said to him I’m really confident about the weeing on the bushes and the rubbing our bodies on stuff but I’m not sure I’m ready to eat cat-food yet.

He nodded at me.

I think he agreed.

Day Two

We did the same thing again today. It was fun but I did have to ask at one point, “Is this all you guys do? Just run around weeing and eating?”

He gave me a piercing look which told me I better shut it before I found out about the other thing he does well.

There was a bit of excitement at one point actually.

We saw this Big Puss just cruising though our garden.

Cruising right by us like he owned the place.

Of course this got me and Rudy quite riled up. Why spend the whole bleeding day marking our territory if some big balled Puss is gonna just roam through here and ruin all our scents anyway?!

I yelled at the Big Puss to fuck off as well as a bunch of other stuff I probably shouldn’t mention here, but he just looked at me like I was an inanimate object.

Like one of the walls he’d rub himself up against or piss on except he wouldn’t actually do either of those things with this wall, he’d just consider it before coming to the conclusion that it was a shit wall and not a wall worth giving the time of day.

I managed to chase him off eventually but he gave me a look at the gate that said “you may chase me off now - but you know I’ll be right back again before you know it.”

But that look he gave didn’t scare or intimidate me though. Not really.

The scary look, the look that would give me nightmares, came from the monochrome face stood beside me, a faint growling as its ominous soundtrack.

If looks could kill - that Big Puss would have been long gone by now.

Day Three

Our day’s work started somewhat differently this time.

It was 8:30am and instead of wolfing the usual second pouch, Rudy ignored his food-tray altogether and led me out to the top of the garden.

“Where are you taking me Rudy” I asked, but he ignored me and carried on trotting.

He got to the overgrown edge of the garden and looked back at me, waiting for me to continue. I shook my head and gestured at all of the gnarly looking brambles and then towards my bare legs.

He gave me that look again and I quickly tried to catch up with him, wading through the jungle-like terrain towards the bomb-shelter that he now stood upon.

I’d never actually been inside the bomb-shelter. We’d covered its entrance with a rusty sheet of metal a fair while back and not thought about it much since.

I remember inspecting it as a kid (maybe about six) and seeing a single chair with a big dusty teddy-bear sat on it. I could have hallucinated that to be fair, you know how delirious things can be at that age.

Once I stood on top of it too, Rudy did this kind of kung-fu kick with his back-legs and a section of the ceiling tumbled away. I was astounded and about to challenge him on his behaviour when I saw that what had given way had revealed a tiny set of stairs leading inside.

He gave me a cheeky little grin and winked at me the way he often does when I stupidly underestimate his skills like that.

Once I got inside a saw four Puss’s in each corner of the compact room. Rudy introduced each Puss to me;

“Bilal” - a fat ginger,

“Nye” - an intelligent looking Maltese Puss,

“Tuffy” - a bright pink Puss who has been traumatically dyed by his sadistic owner and

“Parks” - a stray.

We shared life-stories with each other for a while until it was time to go home.

And they say you can’t make friends at the back of your own garden.

Day Four

We had another meeting in the shelter today.

This time, Rudy filled me in on some slightly more juicy information about his secret organisation, it all came back to The Big Puss.

“Basically JG,” Rudy explained, “Me and the lads found remnants of Puss-Steroids that we believe we can use to destroy that Big-Balled Puss over there.” He gestured through a crack in the iron wall, were the Big Puss could faintly be seen shooting out a hot stream of unhealthy looking, diseased urine onto a patch of unlucky geraniums.

“We’re gonna fuck him up and he’ll tell all his friends hopefully - if he has any!”

We had a good little chuckle together about that one.

I should probably mention that I am able to hear Rudy’s voice when we chat with each other now. Before, I sort of filled in the gaps by looking at his body language and the tone of the grunts he made, now he sounds to me just like everyone else.

He sounds like a gravelly black-man from London. Which is confusing, because he was born here - in Sheffield.

He sounds like Idris Elba.

Day Five

Me and the Boys were talking about the Big Puss again today. We try not to, what with the lack of resources to destroy him yet, but we can’t help it.

I noticed a tinge of melancholy when we get onto how large his testicles are.

Tuffys head sinks to the floor in shame, Nye looks around nervously, Bilal stuffs his face to hide his pain and even Rudy sheds a single tear from the lack of balls that they all have.

Of course there’s always that one Smug Puss in the group.

Parks still has fragments of one left which he rubs into the whiskers of all the gents there (metaphorically).

“How did you lose the other one Parks?” I ask.

He goes on a long-winded anecdote about lying in a sunlit road one time and how he blacked out suddenly and believes his other ball was ran over in some kind of freak traffic accident.

Even to this day he still struggles to explain what exactly happened, he only gets more confused the more he talks about it.

We went for a walk after this dark conversation and stumbled across a local legend - Sammie The Three Legged Puss.

Nobody knows what happened to his front right leg. It just mysteriously disappeared one day with no scar tissue to be found. Of course we all give him shit for it.

“🎶Sammie The Tripod!🎶” Rudy started to chant in a Frosty-The-Snow-Man-Esque kind of way.

We all joined in.

“🎶SAMMMMIE THE TRIPOD!🎶

🎶HE’S AN UGLY KIND OF GUY!🎶

🎶HE’S AN UGLY GUY BUT HE DOES TRY-Y-Y🎶

🎶HE’S AN UGLY KIND OF GUYYYYY!!!🎶”

We repeat this a few more times to the non-plussed seeming Sammie, who I gather is probably used to it by this point.

Each time we repeated it however, I received increasingly violent thoughts about Sammie.

About what I wanted to do to him.

I don’t know why but this song makes me hate Sammie.

Makes me want to bite his fucking head off.

Day Six

I’ve realised today I’ve become too used to walking around on all fours I think.

I’ve tried walking around like I used to, on my back legs, but I just can’t do it.

It’s uncomfortable and if I do it for too long my tail starts to hurt.

Besides that realisation it’s been pretty uneventful.

Day Seven

I have been kicked out of the house for biting Ma’s leg today.

At first I thought I may have overreacted but having spoken to “The Ru-Man” I think I handled it pretty well all things considered.

She just wouldn’t see reason.

Rudy says it was unfair to kick me out like that, however he did also add that he won’t be sharing any of his food with me.

Even though he is the only one out of the two of us still allowed indoors.

I tell him this leaves me kind of fucked and he agrees, “yes.”

Day Eight

Me and the boys have finally gotten the resources together to seriously mess The Big Puss up.

I think it's about time personally, I’m tired of seeing his dumbass face.

So we had a meeting in the shelter this morning where we gave the Puss steroids a good go and did some working out together.

It was like a sweatshop after a few minutes in there, believe you me.

Things got a bit too heated at one point actually, I was lifting my dumbbells up and down up and down when Tuffy bumped into me.

“Watch it!”

All of the squeak had gone in his voice, there was just a gruff purr left.

“You bumped into me pal.” I told him, as calmly as I could.

“Don’t push it!”

His fur had changed colour too.

The steroids had turned his fur from pink to blue.

Blue like lightning.

“Listen you better watch your tongue Tuffy,” I told him, losing my cool a little bit.

“I’m the only one here with both bollocks so you better show me some respect!” I added.

“You won’t be for long if you keep it up!” he screamed.

“You wouldn’t dare Tuffy.”

“I would! I’d do worse too.”

The thought of having my testicles removed by way of claws made me throw up in my mouth a little, in that moment each Puss in that room could smell the last meal I ate, Bolognese.

“That’s disgusting…”

“No it's not.”

“Yes it is.”

“No.” he said, not even believing his own words anymore.

I sighed.

“Don’t you think this back and forth is getting a little stale now Tuffy?”

“Wrong again. Everybody loves the banter. Isn’t that right everyone?”

“I do actually.” Bilal said, already sporting a six pack at this point.

“Yeah, I do as well.” Said Nye.

“I enjoyed it.” Rudy agreed.

“Well! How Spartacus of you all.”

Or Pusstacus if you like.

Day Nine

We ran out of roids today.

Luckily we managed to find some more and carried on with our last session.

After we felt pumped enough we went looking for that Puss.

We found him, lurking in one of our raised beds. Without hesitation, Rudy immediately charged into him, mid flow. Rudy landed a good right Paw into him, then an even better left. It was brutal.

Then the other lads joined in.

Being the betas of our pack, they had a lot more to get off their furry chests.

I just sat back and watched.

After a while, Rudy gestured towards me, beckoning me to come and join in.

Of course you’re probably expecting me to go into detail about how I pulverised that poor oversized Puss and drenched myself in its putrid, dark blood… but no.

Not so.

You’re probably expecting me to tell you of how after slaughtering all of my brethren I stared up at the night sky and yowled at it like a Wild Puss.

Uh-uh.

No I just turned around and walked away.

I walked back into my house.

I walked through the kitchen.

Into the landing.

Up the stairs.

Finally, I opened the door into my bedroom.

And I just took a little break.

Because it’s all play-acting really. I’m not really a Man-Puss or Puss-Man. I’m just a regular guy, a regular Man.

And you know what…

Day Ten

… I think I’ve decided I’m going to stay human from now on.