Read Online Attempting Normal by Marc Maron - Free Book Online

parents’ marriage was sleeping upstairs. In the middle of the hungry, grasping intimacy of two strangers having a go at it I heard Garfield come into the room. I lifted my face up and saw that he was carrying the corpse of the biggest field mouse I had ever seen. The thing was almost as big as the cat. He took it under my desk. The woman did not notice any of this.
    I was stifling my sex noises, she was stifling hers, and Garfield was savaging a rat-sized mouse a few feet away. I could hear his snorting and tearing. I came like a teenager in his bedroom, a compressed and quiet climax so as not to wake up my parents. The woman and I got dressed and I walked her out. As I was walking down the hallway back to my room I saw Garfield walking out. I went in and looked under the desk and there on the floor, neatly arranged, was the tail, the head, and what looked to be a fetus of a field mouse. I wasn’t disgusted. I was impressed. I felt that we had connected on the great timeless arc of animal drives. I didn’t read too much into it other than the hope that it was a good omen. I hadn’t used protection.
    I went years without any pets, but in the middle of my divorce from my first wife, Kim, my then-girlfriend Mishna brought me a tiny black-and-white female cat I named Butch. I called her Butch because she had swagger. I was seeing Mishna while my divorce was being processed but she wasn’t living with me. It was just Butch and me. She was a very small kitten and I wanted her to have everything. I went to holistic pet food stores and got her raw food so she would have the right bugs in her guts to survive outside if necessary. I even made her fresh cat food for a while but that proved to be ridiculous and she really didn’t like it much. I think I wanted to treat Butch the way I wish I could’ve treated myself. I wanted life to be perfect for her since mine seemed to have crumbled. I invested a lot of love and caring into that cat.
    When my divorce was complete Mishna and I moved to LosAngeles from New York City. She left her Forty-sixth Street walk-up and I sublet my apartment in Astoria. It was a big ordeal. We rented a U-Haul, put all of our stuff in it, and set out. I had to get there in three days to make a meeting for a show I was trying to sell. In light of all the chaos, including the truck breaking down, our primary concern was Butch. I drove the truck and Mishna drove my old Honda Accord with the cat. Butch rode in the back of the Accord with a plant she had taken a liking to. She always slept in the pot of this plant, which was adorable. Of course in the car she had no use for it but I still have that plant.
    After we made it out to L.A. we adopted a shelter cat called Boomer to keep Butch company. The cats at the shelter were mostly older cats. They looked as though someone had forgotten them or had had enough of them. There was one cat that seemed to be out of his mind. Completely nervous and unfriendly but young. I wanted that cat. That was Boomer. Having dealt with other cats since then, I know now that Boomer was feral. I liked his energy. I like anything I have to fight to get to like me. During this time we also found out that Butch had a genetic heart defect. Her heart was too big. The vet told us that she wouldn’t live long.
    Mishna and I got married in our backyard in L.A. and tried to build a life there. The problem was I wasn’t working very much, so I decided to take a gig as the morning host on Air America, a new liberal-oriented radio network. I took the job hoping to take down the Bush administration but definitely to make money. The show was based in New York, but Mishna didn’t want to join me—she was an actress, comedian, and screenwriter. An aspiring actress, comedian, and screenwriter. She wanted to be in L.A.
    I still had the lease on the old beat-up apartment in Astoria so I moved back in, furnished it with IKEA garbage, and started the hardest job of my life. I would go to sleep at