cats at Acton

Richard was one of my cabin mates. He liked cats and had adopted one of the creepy feral ones. He’d bring it in at night so it didn’t get cold. I don’t remember if the cabins were heated at night, it doesn’t seem likely. It did get cold, and even snowed one night. I don’t like cats so when he wasn’t around or wasn’t looking I’d toss it out the front door. Next to cats, crystal meth was his favorite thing, so when he wasn’t going on about his cat back home, he told the usual meth-head paranoid conspiracy tales. Copters hovering above his house, dropping balloons filled with anthrax spores. Mexican ninos crawling into his yard with explosives strapped to their backs. He claimed a DEA agent posing as a mailman had tried to kill him by slipping a rattle snake through the mail slot in his front door. His storytelling was detail oriented and the stories were always long. He didn’t need us to respond so it was sort of calming to sit there in the sun with his voice as soundtrack. He said he wasn’t there from court, that he wasn’t hiding out. I didn’t really care. I worked from the perspective that everyone was telling the truth. It was easier.