The reason I wrote this is not important - let's just say that it is for an audience older than my children, but younger than I am, and leave it at that. I'm posting it here in the hopes that you'll know that I'm not, well, dour is the word that comes to mind . . .
He was a tired, old Tom. He’d seen enough alley scrapes to fill 9 lives. He took another pull from his bottle of Night Train, and wished that sleep would overtake his aching bones. He’d known that it was going to be a long night when he saw the three of them coming down Second Avenue. He wasn’t sure how many of them it was going to take to kick his ass, but he knew how many they were going to use. The orange one had come at him first - he was fat and soft, and soon turned tail to nurse the new gash in his left ear. "Sticky" was next, a patchy mongrel who seemed to always be scrapping just to fit in. His problem was that he couldn’t fight, and was dispatched with only a couple of swift kicks to the head and the promise of lost blood. That left only Art – a badass black and white with attitude to match his sharp claws. "Lessssss getiton, essssssayyyowww" he hissed, hunkering down, his tail hairs standing on end, waving slowly back and forth. El Gato turned, and let loose the kind of ‘green cloud’ fart that only an old, dumpster-diving, unwormed alleycat can muster up on a Saturday night. Art hesitated, and it was his undoing. Old Smelly dove under the two-tone, and swiped a clean gash across one of Art’s testicles, long ago rendered useless by the Veteranarian’s knife. They were his pride and joy, just the same. The one-two punch was more than he could take, and he skittered off sideways toward the Hardee’s at the end of the block. Gato hated Hardee’s, and Art knew it. "Eessss not over, fatso!" Art screamed, as he led the battered trio past the battered cans and creosote-stained fences.
"God, I could use a drink" he muttered, and limped back to his lair behind the BBQ Pit. The food and the accomodations were pretty good, and the owner kept him in beer and cheap wine as long as the rats kept their heads down during inspections. "Come on, Night Train," he thought, as he slipped into another fitful night’s sleep. Purrrrrrrrrr.
Good night, young punks, wherever you are.
