Synaloepha (sin-a-lif’-a): Omitting one of two vowels which occur together at the end of one word and the beginning of another. A contraction of neighboring syllables. A kind of metaplasm.
It was a paw ‘bout as big as a Maple leaf. It was the track of a fairly big cat. Definitely not a house cat. Too small to be a Bobcat and no way a cougar—no way. No way. I had been wandering these woods since I was a little boy. Now, I was an old man. Now, before I wandered, I had to eat a handful of Advil to calm down my joints. This animal whose tracks I had seen was missing a toe—a definite consequence of a run-in with a steel trap. Then, I saw it up ahead. It was black with white paws and it was batting abound a chipmunk. It’s paws were huge relative to the rest of the of its body—the size of peanut butter jar lids, and he was wearing a rhinestone collar that glittered in the sun. This told me that he was lost—that somebody had put the collar on him at some point. So, he wasn’t totally feral. He saw me and made a little mewing sound and hopped across the snow to where I was standing. I was amazed. I had never liked cats that much, thinking they were stand offish and self-absorbed. This cat wasn’t! So, I picked hm up. He rubbed his face against mine and purred. I couldn’t carry him all the way home, so I put him back down to see if he would follow me. He did!
We moved into my little cabin. We spent our days napping—he in front of the fireplace, me in my big puffy easy chair. I named him Puss after “Puss in Boots..” I caught him fish through the ice and he would show up with a dead chipmonk every once-in-awhile. I ate freeze dried dinners, like I did in the Army. I sort of liked them—I wasn’t much for cooking so they served me well.
One day, Puss showed up at the door with a $100 bill! I asked him where he got it, and he started through the woods with me following. We came to a big uprooted pine tree. There was a brown garbage bag under its trunk. I pulled it way from the tree and looked inside—it was filled with hundred-dollar bills. I was elated and terrified at the same time. I was certain it was stolen money, or proceeds from drug sales. I knew it belonged to bad people, but that couldn’t stop me from taking it. We trudged back to the cabin, leaving our tracks in the snow. That night it rained and washed away the snow. My anxieties melted, and I started thinking about how to spend our windfall. We hid it under the floor boards under the couch.
About two weeks later, when the trees’ leaves were starting to bud, there was a knock at the door. I opened the door and he looked a saw Puss curled up on the couch. He yelled “Sydney” and “Sydney” hissed, “That’s my cat! I lost him up here around a year ago when I was bird watching. He got out the rolled down car window and took off. He ran past me where I was watching a bird and took off.” I sad, “Wow. That’s some story, but he’s mine now.” He said he’d be right back, grabbed Puss, and took off out the door. Puss was snarling. There was a gunshot. I looked outside, expecting to see puss dead on the ground. But, there was the man, dead on the ground. Somehow, Puss had shot him. I have a thousand theories about how he did it, but I still can’t figure it out, but I know he did it. It was a lot of work, but I buried the man deep in the ground by the tree where we found the money. We drove his car into an old mine shaft where nobody would ever find it. I got all of Puss’s vaccine certificates in order, we packed our $5,000,000 in a statue of the Virgin Mary, took a bus to Mexico City and flew to San Jose, Costa Rica where I had purchased a 6,000 square foot villa overlooking the ocean and a cook, a butler, and 2 servants. Me and Puss still spend our days napping with a clear conscience and a huge bank account.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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