Jack food, Maggie food and fear

My wife Deborah and I have two cats. One is a curvy, entitled calico named Maggie. The other is a gray tabby of no great intelligence named Jack.

Cats are the ultimate recipients. No thumbs. No jobs. No money.

Deborah and I are their public housing. We are their food stamps. We are their free medical care.

Jack is not very smart, not even for a cat. It's my belief he spent a little too much time in the birth canal. He has every right to be supported for the rest of his life. Maggie, on the other hand, is smart, smart enough to learn a number of commands and a couple of simple tricks. I've worked for people who had fewer skills. Maggie is, in short, the furry version of the welfare queen whose picture is carried in the mental wallet of every Ronald Reagan fan.

Now that I'm semiretired, I am often sent to the grocery store to find food for either Maggie or Jack, or both. This is because there is a national shortage of cat food. Deborah tries to buy their food when she goes grocery shopping on Friday night, but if she can't find it, I am sent out to hunt.

"When you get done with your podcast, could you go to the grocery store in the North End and see if they have Jack food?" Deborah says.

Or the text.

"I forgot to tell you, but I couldn't find Maggie food Friday," the text reads. "Could you check the Market Basket?"

So far, my record is five stores, looking for Jack food.

And it's all right. It really is. I'm most of the way retired, so my time is now nearly worthless. Deborah sells real estate, and that's a busy business. I write a little and do a podcast. I can drive from store to store, eyes bright for the right flavor of Fancy Feast.

While I'm hunting, I usually take a swing down the ice cream aisle, looking for a flavor of ice cream I like. It's been hard to get for several months now.

Kinks in the supply chain. Missing workers. COVID-19. Employees unwilling to be loyal to disloyal employers.

Cat food. Ice cream. For a while, there was even a shortage of lottery tickets, and in my battered vinyl-sided Massachusetts hometown, lottery tickets are as much a necessity as tattoos. There remains an abundant supply of heroin.

Some tell us these food shortages are symptomatic of a communist economic system, but America doesn't have a communist economic system. Every shortage, every price hike, has happened in a robustly capitalist America, where corporations pay less in taxes every decade. This isn't communism coming to America. This is capitalism failing America. My retirement income stock portfolio made 10% profit last year, but hunger and homelessness are increasing even as I scuttle around the city, spending some of my dividends on scarce cat food.

So, I fear the future. I'm 64. The older you get, the more things scare you because you can feel the weakness in your muscles. Like the cats, I depend on others to get the cat food and the ice cream to the stores. I depend on my own little piece of stock market capitalism to send me some money every month, so I'm a hypocrite. I draw income from the nontaxpaying corporations I say I hate.

And maybe you're right, but I'll tell you one thing for free. If there was plenty of cat food and ice cream and no hunger and no homelessness, I'd take a 5% return on my money just to live in a better country.

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