Languages in LA

It’s funny the way the word adult is used as a euphemism. If you see it on a movie, adult themes, you know this means sex. An adult video store is porn, an adult toy store is sex toys… but this is only half of the story.

I have decided to put my cats on a diet. It’s not that I thrill to the sight of slender felines, it’s just that once they reach a certain stage of complacent rotundity, they have a hard time completing their grooming. If that was put too delicately for comprehension, let me explain: if they can’t wash under their tails, the results can be truly appalling.

I suppose that was clear enough.

I currently have a cat who is a winsome, pink nosed, green-eyed delight at one end and a shuddering brown mess at the other, and if I liked using baby wipes, I’d have had babies. So I have begun to pay attention to what kinds of cat food I buy and how much I put down.

The euphemism for fat pets is, guess what? Adult. I now buy adult cat food, which I ration out as if we were under occupation. The cats are not happy, and are at this moment reclining on various perches in flat-eared, tail-twitching aggravation.

I am left contemplating the wonder of a world in which the two things adult stands for are sex and fat. I should have noticed it before, when clothing for females was sorted into Miss and Women’s sizes. If the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes, it seems the only things adult in life are sex and weight gain.

Does this mean that if I abstain from both, I’ll never grow old?