Grants Awarded To Cats, 2004

I'm sitting in my laboratory, trying to finish the last of my paperwork when Mittens comes sauntering in, looking like the you-know-what that ate the canary. (Mind you, if she stuck to canary instead of near-intravenous Nine Lives maybe she wouldn’t be so fluffy. "I’m a longhair," she says. Right.) In her mouth she's got the envelope from National Institute Of Health, not the narrow envelope we’re all used to, but the big fat kahuna envelope – the one with the cover letter that begins "After careful review of your proposal, we are pleased to inform you . . ." Seems like NIH is coughing up a hairball of grant money her way. Again.

I smile a tight little smile and try not to swat at her tail as she walks past. Stupid queen. Everyone knows her research is derivative. She plowed through the last $10,000 from the Bill Gates Foundation like it was a cardboard scratching post, some stupid study entitled "What’s Under The Couch?" She must have Carl Sagan post-humously writing her grant proposals, lord only knows how she got that crock to fit under their mission statement. Oh, I saw her at work. A lot of horizontal research on the couch, it looked to me. But the results get published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the press conference gets held, and you’re on the A-list the next time the money gets handed out. What was under the couch, you ask? One of those rabbit-fur mice. No catnip. There’s your tax dollars at work.

I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve used every minute of my four hours of waking time a day putting the finishing touches on one abstract after another. "What The Hell Was That Noise?" "Who Is Going To Get Me Breakfast?" "Why Is The Couch No Longer In The Corner Where It Always Is?" And can I get two dimes to rub together? "Publish or perish", I think to myself as I gnash my teeth. I can’t do this for much longer. I’ve got a staff to think about – 3 kittens, all of them post-doc. (Brilliant, every one of them. Punkin’s graduate thesis "Investigations Into A Paper Bag" was as good as some PhD proposals I’ve read.) These jingle bell toys and feather wands aren’t going to pay for themselves. I look at the disarray that might or might not become my next thesis – "Voiced Distaste for Cats Versus Lap Appeal" – and wonder what I’m doing with my life. I say the hell with it. If anyone wants me, I'll be on the windowsill with some fine grade catnip, watching the birds.

I hop up on the windowsill and get ready for some heavy-duty self-pity. And I nearly succeed, if only the view didn’t look down on Buford, that pathetic retriever mix next door. He’s got the application from Pew Charitable Trust upside down again, and he’s running in circles in his little concrete pen trying to make sense of it. Idiot probably couldn’t download it as a PDF, that’s why they sent him the paper copy. Hope he doesn't piddle on it. I smirk in schadenfreude. Poor bastard's been applying for grants for years on his one-hit wonder "Can I Eat This?" Forget that the question was solved much more elegantly by Nutmeg in her March 2003 publication "Variables in Sudden Changes In Supplied Edibles". But of course dogs don't read the journals, they just slobber and hanker and beg to get in them. I watch the moron chew an imaginary itch on his leg for a few minutes, then quit feeling sorry for myself and get back to work.

The deadline for National Science Foundation grants is the end of this month. I take a deep breath, lick myself, and survey the scattered data before me. For all the experiments our lab has done, there’s no clear smoking gun. Yet. But maybe if Tiger re-runs those tests on drapery cord tensile strength. And Annie-Poo can cross-match it with her water bowl data. Maybe we can tease some meaning out, get some focus, reword the outcome. The deadline’s coming up fast. I think we can do it this time. Yes, I think we can, if we get to work right away. And I will. Right after this nap.