My Dear Public,

I apologize for the lack of entries. This has been a bad week for me.

Sunday morning, I went downstairs to find a note addressed to me (assuming that I am 'big oranj basterd'). It was from the mice. Apparently, the one I killed has friends and family, and they're mad.

Some choice lines from the note:

'we guna kut yur faece intwo piesces'
'yur guna rigrette playin aginst myce leik us'
'we no whear yu sleap and we haev a guns'

I've called the police, but they claim there's nothing they can do for me. One female officer even insisted that she didn't understand what I was saying, and hung up on me. Another claimed I was prank calling and only 'pretending' to be a cat.

I have nowhere to turn. The system has let me down. There is a mob of angry immigrant rodents in my house, somewhere, and they're looking to cut me with their gun. I haven't been sleeping, I haven't been writing, I've only been watching. Watching and waiting.

We are at war.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

It is certain to the good and noble ears of this particular little orange fellow that never has a song equaled the simple and terrible beauty of Scott Walker’s ‘Face on Breast’. Firstly, I like faces and breasts. Also, he talks about a swan in the song, and I like swans – a lot. I have always wondered how best to eat one without it noticing and beating my tiny body into a tiny pile of pulp with its mighty wings. Sometimes the song makes me sad, especially the lines ‘Pledging my love / Pledging my love / What if I’m only / If I am only pledging my love?’ This reminds me of all the times my family promises me that I can go outside, but then they forget or tell me that it has gotten too dark out. So it’s sort of like they were pledging love and good times to me, but then they took it back. It makes me very sad when they do this, and I think it is actually animal abuse. I am looking into it, because I saw a thing on TV about it.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Liam Neeson,

I am very sorry about your dead wife. I understand that you are filming an Atom Egoyan movie in my country, and it is not far from my town, because you are in Toronto and Toronto is close to my town.

I am comfortable with my sexuality and I have no balls. So, Mr. Neeson, I guess what I am trying to say is this: let me be your new wife and we can raise your children and have lightsaber battles to save the Jews.

I have included rough composite photographs of my proposal. They are immediately below these words.




I understand if you want to take your time. So do I. We need to go slowly. I am small and orange and I can't handle being hurt again.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

We are so close to spring now that I can very nearly taste it. This is a time of renewal, when the grass grows green again, and I can spend more time on my tether outdoors.

Nothing quite beats stepping out the back door strapped into my harness, and murdering an entire family of mice (my record is 9 dead mice in one day). I can often be seen picking the babies up with my teeth, and then tossing them into the air and trying to catch them on the way down. I'm a regular biblical king when it comes to the baby killing.

Horses are very scary, though. I like to be kept away from them, because I am only small and they are very big.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

Another St. Patrick's Day has passed me by.

There is something quintessentially Irish about me. I get this a lot – being a ginger and so on, and having moderate-to-severe anger management issues. I also can't get enough taters, no matter how many there may be on offer.

Despite this, I am not to be found in the pubs on St. Patrick's Day. Instead, I lie under a rocking chair with my tail curled up around my sleeping form for safety. I don't know what this says about me. I don't know what it says about society. I just know that the milk I'm drowning my sorrows in isn't Irish.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

its difciult to tipe so i wills right onely a short entree abbut giong too outdrors of my hoese

i sawe cluods and teh sun and cars it was warme
yahnk yuo

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

This is a sketch I made of my disguise, because I know a lot of people must be wondering how I pulled it off. The box was very long on one side, so I put a counterweight on the other.



Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

Marvin's journal. March 13th, 2009. Unlucky Friday. Black Friday. Bikers in Port Dover today. Cold sun. Colder shade. They have a wharf down there, a jetty, what-have-you. Walked to the end, there's a seawall. A lakewall. Stood in it with heavy wind. The waves made it over the top. You're trapped beneath a crush of Lake Erie, the whole stinking, foul, polluted green mess, toppling onto your head. Liquid bricks. Frigid chunk of rain. No place for a kitten. Fish and chip place nearby, seems a safe bet. A stiff drink of milk, a scrap of breaded halibut. Wipe my tiny white beard on the leg of a customer I like. These people are cursed, they are tossed clay pots in flight, not aware that they've got to shatter sometime. Bikers. I drift through them, unheard, unseen. Ankle-height to them. Chrome everywhere, reflecting my distorted face, funhouse-crazy, eyes bulging sideways, body malleable. For a second, in the shining muffler of a Harley, I am a bonsai kitten. How many are One-Percenters? Smell of leather, body odour, beard. I make it through the scum, up the hill to the Tim Horton's. I hitch a ride with a middle aged woman with dead eyes, sunken cheeks, wispy grey hair hanging from her skull. This grim reaper takes me home. Home in time for my Science Diet meal. Home in time to escape cold, unlucky death.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

It is cold today, and the clouds lie heavy and oppressive over my small farm. The wind blows furiously.

I am indoors. It is not my problem.

I look out across the road, my eyes falling on a tree whipped by the wind. It is losing branches to this onslaught of rushing air.

I am indoors. It is not my problem.

Motion, organic motion, catches my eye. A robin, tricked out of his slumber, staggers slowly across the lawn.

I am indoors. This is a problem.

If only doorknobs were made for those without thumbs.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

'Watchmen: one of us died tonight.'

This is a line from a movie called 'Watchmen', and I saw this movie on the weekend. I was very excited, because I had never been to a motion pictures house. When I got to the motion pictures house, I was inside a box labeled 'papkern'. It was my clever disguise. It had two eyeholes cut out where the 'a' and the 'e' were in the word 'papkern'. They don't allow cats in the motion pictures house! Even in this day and age! Martin Luther X. must be rolling over in his grave! 'I had a dream' indeed!!!!

There were parts I liked in the movie but also parts I didn't. I wish the blue man was orange – he reminded me a lot of myself, but he was blue, so that was confusing, since I'm orange. So I was like 'are you me, or not?'

I liked it when the guy punched the guy's elbow and his elbow came out. I like blood and stuff. I also liked the big cat, but I know that it wasn't real, because its ears were too big, and it was in the motion pictures house.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

This morning at four of the clock, I was awakened. From the basement, there came the light padding of tiny feet. My grogginess dissipated instantly: there was a mouse in my house.

I made my way as stealthily as possible down the stairs (I am made to wear a bright red collar with a damned bell around my neck). Despite this handicap, I cornered my quarry. He didn't see me at first, approaching as I did from behind. Suddenly, he sensed my presence. Whirling on the spot, he gaped at me.

I smirked.

'Can I help you find anything, sir?'

His mouth opened slightly, his still-lit joint dropping to the floor. He spluttered. I laughed.

'What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?'

He screamed, and I was on him in a flash. He sat back on his haunches, waving his paws feebly in the air before my face. Pathetic. I batted him sideways into the water heater before carrying his dazed and helpless form upstairs. There I continued to entertain him for three-and-a-half hours before being cruelly interrupted. Deeming my pastime 'inhumane', my family removed the mouse from my care and released him outside.

These fucking hippies will never learn if we keep being so easy on them. This is my house. What's mine is mine.

The asshole had it coming.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

I try to act with decorum. With civility. It is surprisingly difficult, to be quite honest. I am orange. I am small. I am furry. I draw stares.

When I am out in my street clothes, don't point. Don't giggle and gawk. I know I'm a cat. I know I'm wearing clothes. Please let me be – if my be-cottoned presence is so offensive, it may please you to know that on any given day, I have but a few easily-avoided stops as I make my way through town. In sequence, they are:

1) The Olde Livery building – 10:33 am,
2) The Kissing Stone – 11:28 am,
3) The Footbridge – 11:47 am,
4) Frabert's Fresh Foods – 11:50 am,
5) Templin Gardens – 12:16 pm

Please bear in mind these times and give me a wide berth, for I cannot bear your cruelty.

Ever thine,

Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten

My Dear Public,

This day is Sunday, and it is in March. My friend and accomplice C. types my thoughts for me. I would like to, but I have no thumbs, and there are times when spelling is difficult for me.

That said, C. lives and works in the city, and as I can only get so many manuscripts delivered to him at a time, it is perhaps inevitable that I will, at some point, be typing my own entries. When that happens, I ask that you bear with me.

Ever thine,
Marvin Quincy Longbody-Horriblekitten