A monkey and a cat

Cecil was no ordinary monkey. He thought it best to explain this to strangers when he first met them.
"Can't you dance, or sing, or bang a drum?" they would ask.
He would shake his head resolvedly and try not to notic e the look of disappointment in their pudgey faces. Some days he wanted to be ordinary. He wished he had nothing better to do than jump and skip and hop, like the other monkeys in New York. But even if he tried, they would laugh at his stripey dungarees and point at his short tail. No. Cecil was an intellectual monkey, whilst his cousins ate bananas and stole chips from daytrippers to the park, he read Focault in the library.

Mr Jeffrey was Cecil's only friend. Friends are important, but Mr Jeffrey was especially important because he was Cecil's only friend in the whole city.
"I wish I was a monkey so I could read Foucault like you" Mr Jeffrey said. But he was only a cat, and everyone knew that cats couldn't read Foucault.
"Hello magazine is much more interesting" Cecil said encouragingly. But Mr Jeffrey never believed him.

One day they were walking together through Central Park and Cecil was trying to explain Queer Theory for the four-thousandth time, but Mr Jeffrey didn't get it, again.
"Ok," he said, trying to think of another analogy that didn't involved slavery or Jewishness or the nature of red hair, all of which are like Greek to a cat with white fur who can talk.
"Imagine I'm a monkey. But I'm no ordinary monkey."
"Which you're not..."
"Yes, exactly. Now imagine you're a cat."
"Which I am..."
"Exactly. Imagine we get together and you learn to read Foucault in the library and I read Hello instead."
"Yes. I'd like that."
"Well, Mr Jeffery," he said, with a smug twinkle in his eye.
"That is Queer Theory."

Mr Jeffrey beamed. "Take me for sushi to celebrate! You know how much I love fish."
"Ok. Cool, we'll put it on my Amex."

Cecil was no ordinary monkey.

For John, with love