the terror that flies by night, aka the nocturnal nuisance, aka aidsy, aka beast, aka leo, aka the big yellow cat that lives on my dad's bottom floor

during the day, you see him: a slow moving, gargantuan chunk of goodwill in the form of a cat. he's got the hiv, but his body doesn't know it. he just keeps getting bigger and stronger. he walks around at a slow pace taking a nap here, sneaking another over there, welcoming any affection from any passer by, and therefore wins the affections of every visiting guest. "he's just so big and gentle. i love that cat." they would say.

the truth would beg to differ... you see the light switch is connected somehow to a switch in the big animal's brain.

under the veil of darkness he terrorizes his world. he makes an uninterrupted circuit around the entire floor. he starts, for example, leaving a big smelly poop apparently uncovered in the litterbox, then proceeding to attempt to dig to kitty-china through the opposite corner of the litterbox. seemingly unaware that he's reached the plastic bottom of the litterbox, he just keeps on scratching and scratching. once he's had enough of that, he moves to the sliding glass doors of the shower, scraping his claws over the glass again and again as if he's trying to understand this giant invisible barrier. once he's got a satisfactory feeling that those doors really are there, not just part of his little feline imagination, he finds the nearest cell phone charger and first meows twice in warning, then engages in a battle to the death with the piece of plastic at the end of the cord. as soon as he realizes the stupid thing was dead all along, he moves silently to his food dish, containing an endless supply of very dry cat food. there he chews with his mouth open at a volume even my grade school's computer keyboards would find offensive. after a nice four hour meal, the big dolt moves to the back door and pretends like he wants to go out into the frigid world beyond and lets that world know by scratching on that door for a while until he's ready to go find his litterbox start the circuit all over again.