One day Pee-Wee was sleeping, or only just, because his cat sense told him of a small presence creeping nearby, and his blood stirred faintly hot as his teeth and claws twitched. Slowly, the milky white inner eyelid is opened and the first images of Cedric reach his tiny cat brain, Cedric in all his cockroachliness, beaming the smile that only Cedric could beam, swinging a silver watch chain around his finger, wrapping it around the finger clockwise, getting shorter and shorter until with a fillip it whips against the windings, only to instantly be moved to unwind in a counterclockwise way, getting longer and longer until, with a woosh, it flashes and begins to wind up the other way.
Now, Pee-Wee watched this rhythmic chain operation for quite awhile before he reached full consciousness. Perhaps the hypnotic beauty of it kept him under for longer than he ordinarily would have been, because when he did finally come to his senses and start to wallow in his blood lust, it occurred to him that he had never seen a cockroach smile, nor sport a silver watch chain, and especially never one with the kind of fingers that could twirl a chain in such a cool way.
Before he could fully comprehend the implications of all this, he was further startled to hear the bug begin to speak, not in the normal squeaky blips that roaches usually make right before you crunch them for a tasty mid-afternoon snack, but in a very catly sort of way, or at least in a way understandable to this cat. When this started, Pee-Wee automatically went into attack mode, complete with looks that kill. Nevertheless, he listened, and this is what he thought he heard:
"Good afternoon, my name is Cedric."
This was said while Pee-Wee was still semi-conscious, so it was spoken with a calm aire. But presently Pee-Wee was on the war path, so Cedric saw the need for another tact at once, to forstall any unpleasantries:
"Now relax, great orange cat, I think you'd rather hear what I have to say, instead of crunching me immediately." (Cedric saw the need for some psychology) "If you want to know the truth of it, I've come here alone, at great risk of personal injury, just to encounter you in your transcendent catness and vibrancy."
Pee-Wee relaxed his muscles somewhat, mostly because his brain was working overtime trying to figure out what was going on, and what the bug could possibly be saying, so that it (his brain, that is) required energy that might have gone into battle preparedness. He looked at Cedric with those eyes, those scary, beautiful eyes of Pee-Wee, pulled himself together, and said:
"Bug talk. Eat? No eat? Want encounter me!? Can bug encounter?"
To which Cedric replied:
"We're doing it."
This notion of an action and its simultaneous contemplation was something new for Pee-Wee, and he thought about just what it was that he was doing at that moment. The presence of this eloquent insect had shaken him to a new meta-level of awareness, so that he saw, for the first time, himself, the other, and them together, all at once. What he also saw clearly was his strong desire to crunch the life form before him, and he wondered about it; about where its insistence came from, the naturalness of it, its inevitability. But inevitability need not mean right now, and it seemed to him that there were other fish to fry here, thus warranting a small reprieve. Again he spoke:
"You bug. Me cat. Together we play out timeless drama. However, you one entertaining bug. Please continue."
Cedric saw that with this his gamble had paid off. He gathered new courage and spoke again:
"In the councils of my people your name is spoken with fear and reverence. We have scribed the names of those taken by you on the inner walls of our world, and a sad, long list it is. Just yesterday I watched from under the sofa as you mercilessly caught and ate one of my cousins. Unknown to you, he was the greatest alto sax player that our people have ever seen, and since we do not possess recording technology, the sweet roach-music that was his gift to us will remain only as legend, and those too young to have heard him will never experience the beauty he brought. He is not the only special bug that you have devoured."
Pee Wee interrupted, "Wait. No guilt. Only nature."
Cedric looked at him with eyes that said "I wish humans put out cat-motels". However, what he actually said was, "You are correct, O great one, I am not implying that it should have been otherwise. I did not come here to reproach you for being yourself, for each of us can only be what we are. I do however, have a proposition for you."
"But first, a question - Which do you like to eat better, us small chitinous spit-out-the-legs-type snacks, or your dry cat food?" Cedric held out his hand, palm up, as if the answer was a foregone conclusion.
Pee Wee thought for a moment or rather he summoned the memories of the pleasure that he felt when crunching a roach, and then compared it to the memory of eating his cat food. "Pretty close. Bug a close second".
"Ah-ha!" cried Cedric, "then we can do business!" He pounded his palm with the other fist, then waved his hands over his head in great excitement. "Listen, my people have done experiments, and we discovered that three thousand of us are sufficient to lift your cat food bag even when it's full, and carry it any distance, including up and down from the cabinet. A lesser force, specially trained, can unroll the top of the bag, and the food can be poured out. Le viola!" Cedric made a slashing motion, as if he we cutting the head off of Marie Antionette.
Pee Wee only barely followed what was being said. He was laboring to construct mental pictures of what Cedric was saying to him, and somehow the image of three thousand cockroaches moving a bag of cat food was not easily conjured.
Cedric babbled on, a veritable Disraeli of diplomacy. "Our proposition," (and here he mimed knocking the ashes from an imaginary cigar), "is this: in return for your promise to forego my people as between-meal snacks, we will, unbeknownst to the human, give you extra cat food on a regular basis. You do us a favor - we do you a favor." He stopped, smiling, and looked up at Pee Wee with expectant eyes. This was an offer that could not be refused.
Pee Wee looked down upon the small brown bug that stood before him, and felt no pity. In fact, even the admittedly attractive idea of having extra cat food on a regular basis could not drive from his bloodthirsty soul the overwhelming desire to crunch the bug. Pee Wee looked at Cedric with razor sharp eyes and said, "The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love, it reveals itself fully and without disguise."
Cedric crossed himself. In a moment, it was over.
A great moan went up from all the roaches who had been watching from in the corners, under the stove, on top of the cabinets. They turned away from the all too familiar scene of horror, and headed back to the walls with bowed heads. Two roaches walked together towards a crack in the floor boards. One carried a guitar, and the other had a case of homeopathic remedies. The one with the guitar looked up at his friend, "Did Cedric every pay you back that fifty bucks he owed you?" The homeopath stopped in his tracks and looked into the distance, lost in thought. "Shit." he said. "Oh, well."
They disappeared into the crack.