BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

She was a hard-boiled egg overdue for a lay. A plain jane with a kisser like yesterday’s liver, she belonged in a beauty shop like pork rinds in a smoothie.

"Well, if it ain’t the head doc," I said.

"Shut your yap and gim’me the works." Behind the Ray-Ban cheaters, her eyes were cold bullets looking for a mark. She had a schnozzle for palookas, weak sisters, dumb mugs with giggle juice inside their veins instead of blood.

"Still running the scam, I take it," I said, inspecting the Brillo pad she called her hair.

Her specialty was felines—the furry type with tails. She ran a caper in a clip joint near the city pound. A tough sister with an eye for saps, she would finger her own grandpa for two bits. When mugs toted their pussycats into the doc’s place, they left without their spinach.

She took in a cool grand a day swindling suckers. Her moniker was Dr. Edith Hudson, Cat Psychiatrist, specializing in kitty addictions and sex therapy. "Pet psychiatry helps the cat with low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness, shyness or social phobia," ran her spiel on the back of the hometown rag.

I dunked her ugly mop in the bucket. "When you going to put everybody wise?" I asked.

She spilled the beans while I tried to turn a dowdy dame into a classy tomato that rates with the dons.

Confessions of a Cat Psychiatrist:

Cat trouble is my business.

The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door to my office. The voice on the other end sounded desperate. "Spike is having trouble accepting Atticus. He stays under the bed all day long."

I had gotten the call a hundred times. The story was always the same. These cats would need therapy. Years of therapy.

"How soon can you get here?" I asked. "Bring their kitty toys. And cash. Lots of cash."

It was an epidemic. The new cat wants to tumble and the old cat takes a swipe at him. I was seeing thirty to forty cases a day. Dispensing catnip and sympathy to distraught cat owners. Should I lay it on the line or let them find out for themselves? They’ll never get along. You’re facing years of inappropriate urination and defecation.

I tell a couple of jokes. A shaggy dog story and the one about the Siamese twins. Then I blurt it out. The look on the owner’s face is always the same. Shock at first. Then a tiny tear in the corner of each eye.

You have a kitty sociopath, I’d say. He’ll have to be sedated. I don’t tell them this--but a sedated cat is one step above a doorstop. You might as well get a turtle.

The worst part is you’ll have to give your cat a pill. Treat every infection with antibiotic ointment to avoid having your arm amputated. The longer you try to cram a pill down a gagging cat’s craw, the stickier it gets. And if you forget and put your fingers in your mouth, you may become sedated too. You’ll wake up four or five hours later. Your boss will be furious. People have gotten fired for less. If that happens, you won’t be able to afford cat therapy. Years and years of therapy.

I set them up three times a week. "Pay on the way out," I say. "Next!"