At the golf course and the convent

Today I wrote another adventure for my Tyger Bryan novel that is thrilling. In today's episode, my protagonist enjoys an incident on a golf course and then an incident at a convent.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Four

My next adventure is to visit a golf course and a nunnery. What happens is this: I prance over the hills until I reach Scotland. That is where all the rumors are coming from, which I have been hearing for years, about there existing a sea monster in the Ness loch. I sorta half desire to procure this rare find to go along with my collection of sharks, which I keep in the sea that surrounds my castle’s peninsula; but it turns out that the mystery has already been solved by a man who shares my name: Detective Bryan. He solved it in one of the chapters of his novella. Nobody will tell me what he did with the beast, because they don’t want to spoil the ending; and even when I tell them that I’m never gonna read his stupid book anyway, they refuse to yield up any info about the matter. So I am left devoid of a sea monster; thus the only thing re­maining for me to do is go and prowl around the golf course.

So I hop on the course and immediately a ball comes flying at me. The balls that men use when they play golf are small and white. I bat the thing away with my huge right forepaw, and it bloops into the pond. Now the golfer who hit this ball steps forward swearing with rage, but then he notices that I’m a Tyger and not just a regular defensive ballplayer or goaltender who happened to wander into the wrong sport. So he feels terrified when he recognizes that I am a wild beast from the jungle who truly means business. That’s when he starts to back up, and his friends back up as well. They all say “Nice cat,” and then most of them wet their trousers.

I chase these fools for a few meters until they reach their golf carts, and then I let them drive away — for, just then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a nunnery.

I’ve always wanted to visit a nunnery, so I leave the golf course and head over in that direction.

The convent is noble in appearance. It is made of alabaster, and its curved entrance is enormous. If there were five of me stacked one atop the next to form a living Tyger-tower, and we tried to pass underneath this archway, the very tips of our top cat’s ears would brush against the keystone. — I wonder why humans, who are so tiny, made such large architectural structures; and for a nunnery, of all places. (I do wish that there really were five of me — five Tyger Bryans — and that we could stand on each other’s backs and occupy edifices.)

Upon arrival, I meet some nuns, and they are all very nice. From what I can gather, their leader is the elderly nun who’s stern yet loving. She gets angry at me for devouring one of the convent’s guard dogs, which was spazzing just a second ago; and when I tell her, to excuse my rude action, “It was barking so annoyingly,” she answers “That is not a good enough reason to eat him.”

“But,” I reason; “I am a Tyger, and if I don’t dine on living creatures, I will expire: I cannot live on bread alone, or limit myself to eating only every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. For that would leave me hungry, and I would swell up with rank mist, like the housecat Zephyros whom I saved earlier — his owners fed him a diet of straight catnip; thus he ran away and got himself caught in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from which I saved him. Yea, were I to consume only eucharist wafers and christ-blood, I would rot inwardly and spread foul contagion. Cuz the wine is actually grape juice — did you know that? (I’m not trying to ruin Xmas for you by claiming that Santa is fake.)”

“Shh, kitty!” sez the friendly old nun. “All I was requesting is that you refrain from eating our convent’s four-footed friends.”

I now feign outrage (secretly I wonder if this nun and I have had this conversation repeatedly for ages, for the world keeps repeating like a film-loop of the Zodiac; and she and I appear to be enjoying ourselves greatly, despite the fact that we are arguing): “Are you sick!?” I yell; “recommending vegetarianism to an apex predator? Are you trying to ruin my brand, so that you can swoop in on my market share?”

I pause for a beat, but the elderly nun apparently can’t remember her line.

“Ah,” I continue, “but, now that I’ve had a chance to think a little, while I have been berating you, I realize that the reason you are attempting to harness me with such strict, nay, impossible codes of ethics, is that you are most likely a believer in Jain Dharma, or some goofy new form of Buddhism or something . . . ?”

The old nun gazes upon me with a loving know-it-all look and sez: “I am not an adherent of Jainism or Buddhism. I am a Catholic nun,” and she nods once firmly.

So I whimper away from the convent and go find a very high place on a nearby hill. I sit down and begin secretly and resentfully to spy on the con­vent from my vantage at the peak: I behold as the nuns go about their business. I grow absorbed in the story of their daily routines. For months I watch them: they’re like a TV show that’s so good it deserves to win an Emmy Award.

Then I snap myself out of my state of mesmerism and decide to cause some mischief. I note where they keep their little image of Jay Dot Christ: one day I prance down and take him up off his cross and rescue him. I kidnap him out of the convent, and I set him up on the pinnacle of the hill beside me. And he joins me in surveilling the nunnery for a while:

In the first episode of their stupid Nun Show, they discover that their Christ Figurine has been stolen, and they call Detective Bryan, who apparently lives in Rome now. (What a fraud.) So I turn to the Christ figurine and say:

“Hey, you’re made of wood, so you should be able to answer my burning question,” and I say unto him: “If you are truly the Son of God, why don’t you cast yourself in the role of that stolen figure in the production that we’re watching, so that we can get past this boring section of plot: for it is written, ‘He shall give his angels charge concern­ing thee: and in their hands they shall artificially inflate thy popularity, lest at any time thou take a dip in viewership’.”

And the Christ figurine faintly squeaks out an answer — he sounds like the Tin Man, from the Wizard of Oz (1939), when they first discover him, before he gets oiled: “It is written again, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God’.”

This ends the episode. It leaves us with a cliffhanger.

§

Now the follow-up episode begins, and a state of dismal woe:

I take the Christ figure in my paw and bring him up even higher on my hilltop, and I show him the next day that occurs at the nunnery; and I say unto him:

“You could rescue this awful production and save the convent a lot of ridicule and embarrassment, if you’d only agree to cast yourself off this hill and command them all to worship ME. — You know: pass the crown and tumble down.”

Then the Christ figurine answers, speaking very faintly and squeakily: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, ‘Nuns only worship the Lord God, and him alone do they serve’.”

So I lose my patience at this point, and I toss the wooden idol down the hill: it rolls and bangs into the convent’s wall. — Now, behold, all the nuns come out and set to work mending its cracks and fissures.