David Sedaris: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

“Thank you,” the mink said at the end of his little speech. “You’ve been a terrific audience. Now don’t forget to tip your waitress.”

After the meeting, the alcoholics congregated for treats washed down with burnt coffee. The cat was just going back for a second cup when he overheard a mouse talking in a low voice to the bullfrog, who served as the prison chaplain. “He might be amusing, but I don’t give that mink a snowball’s chance in hell. In here, all right, but out in the real world, he’s a ticking time bomb.”

The cat didn’t know what this mouse was in for, but he was willing to bet it was something boring: fiddling with his taxes or mail fraud. He wouldn’t know a good time if it slapped him between the ears, but here he was, ragging on the hairless mink: “Refuses to take his recovery seriously,” “A classic example of a dry drunk.”

Give the guy a break, the cat thought. The poor bastard is permanently naked. His wife left him, his chop shop was confiscated, so who the hell cares if he starts drinking again? It beats wasting time with the likes of you.

The cat didn’t say any of these things, but he thought them, and it must have shown on his face.

“Do you have a problem?” the mouse asked.

And the cat said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.”

Sensing trouble, the chaplain moved between them and held out his webbed hands. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, “let’s just take this down a notch.”

“I’ve got a problem with certain rodents,” the cat continued. “The kind who think that unless you’re as pompous as they are, you’re going to wind up on the trash heap.”

“Is that so?” the mouse said. “Well, I got a problem with cats who try to take someone else’s inventory before they’ve taken their own.”

He was a spunky little thing, you had to give him that. Here he was, no taller than a shot glass, yet he was more than willing to mix it up, and with a cat, no less. “Don’t think I’m going to forget this,” he said as the chaplain pulled him back.

And the cat said, “Oh, I’m so scared.”

When dinnertime came, the cat joined the mink for burgers and fries in the prison cafeteria. The mouse was on the opposite side of the room, sitting between a rabbit and a box turtle at the vegetarian table, and every few seconds he’d look up from his plate and glare in the cat’s direction.

“I don’t know what’s going on between you two,” the mink said, “but you’d better find some friendly way to straighten it out. I’m telling you, brother, you do not want that mouse as an enemy.”

“What’s he going to do,” the cat said, “steal the cheese off my hamburger patty?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I know what he did do,” the mink said, and he leaned his raw, seeping head across the table. “They say it was arson. Chewed through some wires and set a police building on fire. Four German shepherds killed on the spot, and two more so burnt their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them. Now, I don’t know what you’d call it, but in my book, brother, that’s cold.”

The cat dragged a fry through a puddle of ketchup. “Dogs, you say?”

The mink nodded. “One of the burnt ones was two weeks from retirement. Had him a party lined up and everything.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” the cat said.

The next AA meeting started like the rest of them. Not a decent story to be had. Someone said he was dying for a drink, and then someone else said the same thing. When that got repetitive, a member told the group why he wanted a drink. “Anyone else like to share?” the chaplain asked. “Any new voices we haven’t heard from?”

The cat closed his eyes. He usually drifted off to sleep and came to during the serenity prayer, but today he stayed awake, waiting for the mouse to pipe up and say something stupid like “Easy does it” or “Fake it till you make it”-aphorisms he couldn’t go two minutes without repeating. “Boys,” he’d say, “when things get tough, I just have to remind myself to let go and let God.”

Then everyone would act as if they hadn’t heard this five thousand times already. As if it weren’t printed on flea collars, for Christ’s sake.

Today, though, the mouse skipped the slogans and talked about a recent encounter that had tested his resolve. “I won’t name names, but this was between myself and the sort of individual I call a nosey parker, the kind who likes to creep around and listen to conversations that are none of his business. That’s how he gets his kicks, see.”

The cat said, “Why, I oughtta-,” and the chaplain pointed to a sign reading, NO CROSS TALK. Of all the rules, this was the lousiest, as it meant you couldn’t directly respond, even when someone was obviously trashing you.

“Now, I didn’t know this individual from Adam,” the mouse continued. “I’d seen him around, sure, but aside from his plug-ugliness, there was no reason to take much notice. He was clearly no smarter than this chair I’m sitting on, but that didn’t keep him from running his mouth-in fact, it was just the opposite. Pushed every button I have, he did, and just as I was about to rearrange his face, I remembered my fourth step and let it slide.”

There was a general murmur of congratulations, and the mouse acknowledged it. “I can’t say I’ll be so forgiving the next time, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Then a goat raised his hand and recalled getting drunk at his nephew’s bar mitzvah. A guinea pig said some crap about insecurity, and a leech wondered if the Big Book came in an audio version. He’d just finished talking when the cat stuck his paw into the air, saying, “Hey, everybody, I got a little story to tell.”

“That’s not the way we do things here,” the chaplain said. “Before you speak, you have to introduce yourself.”

“Okay,” the cat said. “I’m a cat, and I got a little story to tell.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” the chaplain said. “Come on, now, it’s not going to kill you.”

The cat stared across the table at the mouse and saw the same expression he’d observed the night before in the cafeteria: smirky, defiant-the look of someone convinced that he had already won.

“All right,” the cat said. “I’m a cat and… aw, to hell with all of you.”

The mouse put his little hand over his heart as if to say, “You’re killing me,” and the cat pounded his paw on the tabletop. “I’m a cat, all right. I’m a cat and I’m a… I’m a goddamn alcoholic. You happy now?”

Then everyone said, “Hello, Cat,” and waited, their eyes politely downcast, as their fellow drunk, an official one now, struggled to regain his composure.

“… So that’s how I met my first sponsor,” the cat would later say-this at meetings in damp church basements and low-slung community centers, years after he was released from prison. “That little SOB saved my life, can you beat that? A murderer, an arsonist, and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him.”

It maybe wasn’t the best story in the world, but, as the mouse had told him on more than one occasion, it wasn’t the worst either.

I was flying past a house the other evening, and because the lights were off and there were no curtains on the ground-floor windows, I stopped to take a peek inside-which I do sometimes, just to see how people decorate. This particular place was made of stone, not old, just made to look old, with a reproduction carriage lamp in the front yard and one of those roofs that appear to be slate but are actually made of recycled rubber. From the outside it screamed Wagon Wheel Coffee Table, but it turns out they had some pretty nice furniture, at least in the living room. A lot of painted pine-English, from the looks of it.