<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: 18pt; "><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">February</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "> <br><br><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: 18pt; "><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">Winter. Time to eat fat<br>and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,<br>a black fur sausage with yellow<br>Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries<br>to get onto my head. It’s his<br>way of telling whether or not I’m dead.<br>If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am<br>He’ll think of something. He settles<br>on my chest, breathing his breath<br>of burped-up meat and musty sofas,<br>purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,<br>not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,<br>declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,<br>which are what will finish us off<br>in the long run. Some cat owners around here<br>should snip a few testicles. If we wise<br>hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,<br>or eat our young, like sharks.<br>But it’s love that does us in. Over and over<br>Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine<br>crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing<br>eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits<br>thirty below, and the pollution pours<br>out of our chimneys to keep us warm.<br>February, month of despair,<br>with a skewered heart in the centre.<br>I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries<br>with a splash of vinegar.<br>Cat, enough of your greedy whining<br>and your small pink bumhole.<br>Off my face! You’re the life principle,<br>more or less, so get going<br>on a little optimism around here.<br>Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: normal; "><o:p> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>- Margaret Atwood</o:p></div></body></html>