I Made Mrs. Alito Cry

This morning, I played with my handsome new catnip mouse, Alito, in the dark living room. I washed his supple yellow felt body with my tongue, flicked paws at his delicious construction-paper red ribbon tail.

He skated on the hardwood floors. I pressed him to my whiskers, rubbed dander along his yellow pelt.

Alito overtaken in my arms. I belly-rolled in my shadow.

Catnip sleeps inside him.

At the edge of the living-room rug, I pretended to walk away. Alito said, "I am a life-long registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to Republican candidates and conservative causes. I just wanted a job in the Reagan administration."

Come to me! Hop in the spoon of my paws! I pushed him under the rug.

My mouse, I know all about your rugged membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Take off your eyeglasses. Come to me, my little reactionary babushka.

I lunged my gorgeous furry arm under the rug, swatted the glazed floorboards.

Where's my bag of moths?

I know all about the 1980s. You can't fool me, Alito- mouse. Not when I stare into your vainglorious eyes.

Ed Meese is hiring judges to serve at abandoned soccer stadiums. Now's the time, mousey.

I know how you look at me.

(It's kinda humid under the rug. I'm wiser now. I just wanted a job back then. Do you know how hard it was for right-wing judges to find work in the Reagan era?)

Nancy Pelosi watches bare trees sway out the living room window, her eyes follow the arc of a pigeon flying to the alley dumpster.

But the squirrel family lives in the tree outside the back window. You get there by jumping on the spare-room bed and walking along the north side of the window sill -- but check to make sure the air-conditioner isn't there. Look, there's a water bug.