ArcaMax

Every newspaper columnist in America is expected to write 800 words every week about President Donald J. Trump.

I refuse.

I refuse because there's no point in calling someone an "enemy of the state" unless you want to kill them, and I don't want to be remembered just for the political stuff.

"Come on," I'll tell the hooded and robed judges. "I used to write a lot of treasonous stuff, but I'm a goofball. I wrote stuff about my cat, too."

Maybe next week I'll get serious again after I stop wondering if my wife will marry again after they swing me from a piano wire noose in some cellar with fingernail scratches on the walls.

My wife, who is probably wondering the same thing, bought me an Echo Dot for Christmas. It's round, and it's blue, and you set it up, and it lets you talk to the Godless Alexa.

It sits on a table next to my big leather reading chair, and I use it to play music.

"Alexa," I said Tuesday morning, "Play the blues."

I sat in the big leather chair and read a book about the Civil War (the last one), and Alexa wrapped me in a robe of blues. Brownie McGhee. Sonny Terry. Howlin' Wolf. Bessie Smith. Blind Willie McTell.

I didn't feel blue though. The blues don't make you feel bad; they make you feel good because the guy singing has more troubles than you do.

"I asked for water, she gave me gasoline," Howlin' Wolf sang.

"Jeez, Wolf, I don't have THAT kind of trouble," I whispered.

My wife, Deborah, has a cat named Maggie, a curvy entitled calico.

I have a smaller gray tabby named Jack. Jack's not too smart. He gets his head caught in tight spaces. If I go into the next room, it takes him a while to find me. If I go out for 20 minutes, when I come back, he greets me like I've been away for a couple of years, meowing, purring and rubbing my ankles.

He's a dope is what he is, but he's very endearing, and he needs me. If he ever got out of the house, he'd have an expected life span of maybe 30 minutes.

So, I was in my leather chair, reading and being a white boy lost in the blues, and Muddy Waters was singing "Mannish Boy," and Jack the Cat walked in on small cat feet, cocked an ear to my Echo Dot, tilted his chisel-shaped head, flattened his ears against his skull, spun around and ran like hell for the safety of our bedroom.

"Jack," I yelled. "Come back! It's just Muddy! Muddy's cool! He's just a mannish boy."

Desperate to make Jack happy, I played some Ariana Grande. Jack came back, but I left.

Sooner or later, you got to decide what kind of music you want to play. Me and Muddy, we're mannish boys, but Jack runs from what he doesn't understand or like. It scares him.

There's a serious column in there somewhere.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read words by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.