I would like to tell you about a bad time I had recently.

As you know, I have recently been bending over backwards to make a favorable impression on Jonathan Ticklebutt because I want very much for him to like me. This is due to the gorgeousness of his face, which is truly something.

Apparently, since his arrival in the human dimension, he has been going out to the movies every night. I figured, sure, they don't have movies in the elven dimension so why not? But then I found out that he goes to the same movie every night. He goes to see a movie called Cats which is based on a famous musical from the 20th century. I figured, "Huh, movie must be good if he goes this many times," but then I realized that Jonathan Ticklebutt isn't the brightest elf on the ferry.

I was intrigued by his obsession with this movie and asked if I might accompany him on one of his viewings. He seemed ambivalent.

"You wouldn't like it, Friend Behr. It is mental."

"You mean it requires a lot of deep thought? I am a scholarly man, you know."

"This is well known, your scholarship and such. This is not what I mean. The movie is mental."

"I do not follow."

"Come then, learn for yourself new learnings from the well of new learnings available to you in this world and others."

It was on this same day that Jonathan Ticklebutt would bring me Chopper in his new format. He was served to me in a shoebox (linked in case you don't know what that is for some reason I cannot fathom). Inside was a mass of quivering flesh that could speak some rudimentary phrases.

As you can imagine, I had a lot of questions about Chopper's new format. After all, he is by default my best friend, and I want to make sure he understands that he still is even as I am about to get married to Trixie Horn. I was able to learn from my questioning of Jonathan Ticklebutt that aside from being able to speak rudimentary phrases and break wind, Chopper could consume nutrients in his new format. This was a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief in one package.

Given what I learned about Chopper's new format, my first thought after getting tickets (Chopper gets into movies for free in his new format, which is a plus) was to get some vital nutrients for Chopper as Jonathan Ticklebutt wasn't sure when he'd last received any. There was a place to buy beer and wine and I brought Chopper over to that counter and ordered two beers. One was for Chopper, but the young lady behind the counter said I needed ID for the second beer. I was obviously old enough, having fought in World War II, so I opened the box and showed her the quivering mass of bloody flesh that was Chopper. "The second beer is for HIM" I explained to her.

Some thought was given to jumping over the counter and butchering her after she made a funny face at me, but I am trying to make better decisions, so I told her that I was a veteran of World War II (cleverly not mentioning what side I fought on) and she gave me the two beers. I picked Chopper's box (with him in it) up off the counter and followed Jonathan Ticklebutt into the movies after giving Chopper a couple of strong dousings from his beer cup.

"I find what you are doing to be absolutely nauseating," Jonathan Ticklebutt told me as he watched me pouring beer over Chopper and poking at him with my fingers and giggling like a rented schoolgirl.

"It has to be done," I explained, but then the movie began.

Due to being straight and rarely dating classy women, I haven't been to a lot of Broadway plays and I had no idea what Cats was about other than it probably involved cats. Now, as you know, I feel cats need to be slaughtered along with all other animal life on this planet so that we don't end up with any Planet of the Apes type scenarios developing. Still, I have been trying to keep an open mind lately and make better choices. Because of my rather stodgy background as a world renowned businessman and bestselling author, I had no idea what to do when all these weird looking cat people appeared on the big screen dancing around in some dark alley like crazed perverts. It made me very nervous to see this kind of thing and I started to panic. That panic caused me to jump in the air, spill both beers that I was holding, and throw the box that housed Chopper in his new format flying through the air. He would land seven rows in front of us in a theatre that was inexplicably crowded for a Tuesday matinee of whatever this was.

The logistics of getting my friend back were especially difficult, given that I am a morbidly obese man who is almost ninety and the theatre was standing room only even though that isn't legal in a movie theatre any longer. I was boxed in, and on the screen I could see creepy crotch bulges on the naked bodies of these cat people. Where the hell were their genitals? They were naked and covered with fur. What the hell was going on? Did one have to slice these cat people open to get to their goodies? I was horrified and I was boxed in. Not only that, I could see some people had picked up Chopper (no longer in his box) and were trying to pass him down the row to some people who offered to throw him in the trash container outside the theater.

I was fighting to get through the crowd, trying not to use my X-Man type hand to slaughter them all (due to trying to make better choices), as Chopper's fate hung in the balance. I cried out, "That is my friend!" but was told to sit down and to "shush." It was becoming horrifying, and then I broke down and cried.

When I did that, I felt the warm embrace of Jonathan Ticklebutt surround me. He'd seen my distress and came over to comfort me with a manly hug the reinforced our natural heterosexuality in ways I can never begin to describe. We kissed briefly, I told him how I thought he had the universe's most gorgeous face, and he told me, "You're not half bad, Friend Behr." That was touching.

This did not resolve the logistical nightmare that persisted in regards to recovering Chopper from the angry horde of people who were getting more and more freaked out by this movie by the minute. People were getting up, their pupils big and black, and moving in strange gyrations right there in the theater. There were howls of laughter from the other side of the theater. I didn't know what to do. The horde was converging and Chopper was being manhandled and thrown around like yesterday's garbage.

The crowd was becoming more and more crazed, jumping up, trying to run out of the movie but being boxed in by everyone else trying to get out. There was a near riot, and then I saw them. There were three individuals who had come to the movie dressed like characters n the movie and it was as if the movie had taken over the real world. I began pissing myself with such ferocity at that point as I fought through my endless tears that I tore right through my extremely thin material pants and my urine was shooting in all directions. There was absolutely no way to control it or stop it, and that drove the crowd into an even crazier panic.

Jonathan Ticklebutt tried to calm me by gently asking why I sometimes write "theatre" and sometimes write "theater" and I explained that some of my readers are English. He nodded in understanding and told me to remain calm. We would recover Chopper, but it would take time. We were in the middle of a very long row of seats and everyone was either dancing like they were possessed or screaming and trying to get out of the theatre. I settled down and tried to avoid looking at the screen, where some cat lady was doing stuff with cockroaches that I couldn't look at or I'd be changed forever.

One of the people who was dressed like the cat people in the movie was looking right at me from the aisle where he was gyrating unnaturally. I tried to look away, but he'd already zeroed in on me and was now climbing over the seats like a real cat trying to get to me.

"It is a hit!" Jonathan Ticklebutt cried out suddenly. "They're going to try to take you out!"

"On whose orders?"

"Can't be sure, but someone doesn't like that you've aligned yourself with the elves over your own people, probably the purists who don't believe the elves need to associate with any other species in any of the other dimensions, not even the Behr dimension."

"What do we do?"

"We need to get in touch with the centaur vanguard. If it is elven purists, as I believe, then they will also be opposed to the elven alliance with the centaurs."

"Indeed. That makes a great deal of sense."

"For now, we just need to get out of here. I wish we could stay and enjoy the movie, but this has never happened before. Usually I am either alone in the theater or a handful of old ladies is sitting in the back passing a reefer cigarette back and forth. You are going to have to utilize your X-Man type hand, but try to only take out the assassins."

"They're the ones dressed like cats?"

"Yes, a great cover that avoided them drawing attention to themselves in any way until the last moment." Jonathan Ticklebutt scanned the area and then grabbed my shoulders and shook me. "Some kids just threw Chopper up against the ceiling and he stuck there. I can talk to the maintenance people and explain that is an actual person with real feelings up there and not an old pizza."

"That would be a wise course of action," I replied thoughtfully. My problem at that point was that my motel room nightstand leg that I substituted for my lower left leg last month had gotten stuck between the row of seats in front of us and the step behind them. It was jammed in there good and there was nothing I could do. The cats on screen were singing and dancing and freaking me out and the cat man and his two cat lady friends were converging on my location.

Jonathan Ticklebutt took out his cell phone, and despite all the signs saying not to use your cell phone in the theatre, he began placing a call.

"Yes, this is T-Butt. Tell David we need a tactical response unit to the showing of Cats at the Oneida Movieplex near the junction of Routes 5 & 46. You got that?" Jonathan nodded before hanging up, indicating that the message had been received. "There will be a centaur tactical unit here within the hour."

"Within the hour? Those cat people are going to be eating me long before then."

An explosion of blue light happened down near the movie screen and bolts of electricity shot through the theater, increasing the panic while the movie just kept playing, making it so difficult to look away from the horrors on the screen. Then I saw it was the great Gadzooks, the elven mystic who had chartered my mission. She shot a bolt of electricity right at the projectors and the movie was finally put to an end. The cat people had turned away from me and ran out of the theatre, climbing over seats and walls as they made their catlike escapes. Once I relaxed, I was able to extricate my wooden leg from between the row of seats in front of us and could once again move relatively freely.

"I've redirected the centaur tactical response unit," she informed us after we got together in the Starbucks down the street from the cinema. "There is a new threat to the orderly takeover of this dimension."