Here lies but another exerpt from the upcoming book version of I Has the Parkinson’s, one which tells of the origins of “Bad Kitty Fridays”…

From the chapter BAD KITTY:

There is just so much you can take from Parkinson’s disease before you begin to realize that it has a mind of its own and will do pretty much what it damn well pleases. 

This, of course, I came to recognize as a supreme truth of the universe. It was like being exposed to transcendence that I could finally put into words, as if all the answers to life’s mysteries had been given to me in the whisper of an angel, something like an epiphany once forbidden to mortals but now granted to me from the very throne of God, or like being able to sit in on next fall’s television program scheduling meetings among NBC executives.

And this ultimate truth, of what does it consist? 

Parkinson’s disease is like the last pet cat I owned, Austin. 

The house revolved around Austin. Austin was the sun and I was a comet on a strange orbit that went in and out and around Austin at his whim, losing bits and pieces of me to this “sun” each and every time I came around.

 Let me explain.

Austin disturbed my regular sleeping patterns. He used to crash through my bedroom door with a loud thud every morning around 4:50 AM as if he were a cop from vice and I was some drug dealer trying to hide out on a Sealy mattress covered by a comforter from Sears. The cop would jump up onto my chest and proceed to question me with an onslaught of “mews” until I got up and fed him his breakfast. 

As soon as I was used to this disturbance of my slumber, Austin would change his habits and break in an hour earlier, or twice a night, or not at all (which would make me wake up when I suddenly realized I wasn’t having my sleep disrupted).

Austin also found it sport to find ways to trip me. No longer was this the nice kitty who once liked to be pet until a constant purr arose from his warmed heart. No, now the heart was gone, and all that was left was a dark hole wherein resideth evil, from which nothing could escape, nay not even light. 

To further illustrate: I would be minding my own human business walking from one room to the next when Austin would leap out from hiding and pounce upon one of my feat, attaching himself to me for but an instant of a second. This would not be near enough time for even a demon from the bowels of Hell to engage in a machination or two, but it was enough for Austin to plant his vampire teeth into my ankle and plant a bite. 

When you aim an axe at the foot of a tree and chop, should you be surprised that it falls down? Austin was. Regardless of the fact that he had just gnawed through my tree trunk with a chainsaw, he acted surprised when I would scream out in pain and fall to the floor with a crash, usually catching his tail or at least a paw of his under me in the process. 

How could this be? Austin would scream out in startled agony as I tumbled on top of him. For what reason should this idiot be falling on the floor wincing in pain atop innocent me? 

Have you ever fallen onto a cat? It is worse than a car accident or a plane crash. And if you survive either one, the vehicle doesn’t then screech in your ear and scratch at you in response for being involved in its own self-constructed demise. A cat will. 

You nincompoop! Austin’s response to me would be. How dare you fall upon me? I don’t care that you were startled into cardiac arrest when I pounced upon you from my hidden base behind the sofa as I then stuck my fangs into your fleshy ankle in order to draw blood. That is no reason for you to fall on me—so take that! MEOWRR!

Yes, Austin had grown from a nice kitty into a bad kitty, an unpredictable kitty, a kitty from which there would be no escape. 

How like Parkinson’s disease, I had thought to myself. The cat acted as if they were both one and the same. 

In fact, they could be, I then told myself. It has just dawned on me that not only have they never been photographed together, neither Austin nor my Parkinson’s disease was ever in the same room at the same time. 

I then knew I was on to something.

Exerpt from I Has the Parkinson’s courtesy of Bogus Productions and Lulu, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Carl Hernz. All rights reserved.