Cats Again · 21 October 2001
At the Super-U in St Hippolyte du Fort I’m calculating the rough total of my cart & wondering should I have taken more liquide out of the machine when I notice the guy in line ahead of me is a dead ringer for Jon Polito, working this sort of Jon-Polito-in-repose groove with slacks and loafers and not a thing between him and that v-neck sweater but a couple tasteful gold chains nestling in chest hair. He’s popular, this dude: twice people call out Salut! from across the aisles and he turns and smiles, waggling glittering sausage fingers.
Rocking back and forth on my heels I start to register that this popular, bald and round man with a pencil moustache has a cart filled with at least one of every single item in the cat food aisle: tinned, bagged, blister-packed, things for kittens, things for old cats; a mountain the stuff, and nothing else.
A great deal of imagery begins to run through my head and suddenly I’m making a very visible show of having forgotten something and I navigate my cart into the booze aisle and take several deep breaths.
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