The overwhelming hum of traffic above my head. Oceans and oceans of venomous currents. Metallic, miniscule insects transporting parasitic homosapiens. Coffee in one hand, cell phone in the other, driving with the kneecaps. Wraparound designer shades, screaming off-key to generic radio stations and picking their noses.

The humdrum of their ferocious velocity. Their fast-paced hysteria, a quickening above my brain. Speeding, speeding, faster and faster as time often does when you realize that you're running out of it.

Bug-eyed flies trying to beat the clock and rush-hour traffic, only to make it home to their microwave ovens where they can rest their heads for all I care, and, for that matter, for all they care, probably. Just in time for the six o'clock news! Click, switch, spin of a key and the ant is in the ant farm. Safe and sound to jack off in front of the television. Rah! Rah! Rah! Hum drum above my head. Ho Hum. Ho Hum. Ho Hum.

A shocking jolt to my bowels, screaming: "CHEAP BEER! CHEAP BEER! CHEAP BEER!" roused me to my feet. I ran from tent to tent in our little homeless city asking desperately: "Who has the s*** tickets?!?"

Luckily, with toilet paper in hand, I make it to the construction site underneath the East River Bridge. A safe comfy nook away from prying eyes.

"A close call indeed," I mumble aloud, stumbling around tryng to drunkenly remove my pants. Ahh, sweet satisfaction. I close my eyes in peaceful release. When I open them again I notice someone is watching me.

In between the rubble and stacks of copper piping, one eye is gazing up at me. A one-eyed kitten is watching me as I wipe my ass. Its other eye is sealed shut with crust. There are gray and black markings down its back and a white stripe is inked from its forehead to its nose.

"What are you doing here, little guy? All alone in N.Y. City? Where's your momma, huh?" I zip my pants up slowly so as not to scare the creature. "You're probably only a few weeks old...."

I sat down next to the little peeping tom. It crawled out from under the piping and let me pick it up. I carried it back to camp where all the junkie punks and drunks stared at me awkwardly.

"What the hell is that?" Grub slurs.

"I found it when I was taking a s***, OK," I replied slightly defensively.

Two other crusty kidz asked to see the kitten. In great serendipity they had found several cans of cat food earlier in the week. The girlfriend in the couple with her dreadlock mohawk and her stretched-out pierced ears tenderly placed the food in front of the kitten's face. Her boyfriend, missing a tooth from a fight the week previous, made a bed for it with a crate and a black sweatshirt.

The emptiness left in my hands was then replaced with vodka and orange tang soda.

Grub asked me what I would do if he threw the kitten in the river. I replied I would try to beat the s*** out of him. At this, he jums up with the sadistic look of a twelve year old boy. I sprinted in front of him. He presses his body up against the backside of mine. We struggle for a minute, then he giggles.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't kill the cat. I was looking for an excuse to rub up against a girl."

"EWWWWWW! Get off of me! You're f****** nasty!"

An hour or so later, Scotty, the bald guy with the glasses who always kicks the kidz down drugs, buys us food, and carries a stubby silver gun and holds up rich people with it, jumped up from the bench where he is usually making swiss cheese of his veins and yelled through the fence for us. Our camp smelled like manure.

"Grub's in trouble!"

I hurried up off my ass and onto my feet. Made it past the tents, over the pothole, and around the fence with several other of Grub's friends. There we saw Scotty picking up Grub's heavy, fat, blue body off the pavement and sitting him on the bench. Grub woke up for a minute with a welt on his bloody forehead where he had fallen. He told us all to f*** off because we were all yelling at HIM, trying to keep him awake. I began to punch him all over and scream repetitively: "WAKE UP YOU F***! WAKE UP!"

I grabbed onto the arm of a boy to see if he could get Grub up because I just couldn't! He told me to shut up and go get some water. So I ran with my heart sinking in my gut, rolling around like a cannonball. I fished a cup out of the garbage and filled it in the sink of public bathroom.

When I reurned, Grub was yelling and crying. He didn't know what the hell was going on. He didn't know that he had nearly just died. He was threatening to hit all of us and we were relieved.

"We would rather have you fight us than die on us, you asshole!"

He just started punching himself in the head.

"You guys are the only family I got!" He screamed.

"Don't you die on us, Grub, don't you dare do that!"

Later on when the sun had just set behind the skyline of the sugar factory, Grub and I went to panhandle for beer. I slipped the kitten in my pocket and we walked over the overpass. We found a place on Avenue B. We watched all the busy, busy bees hum drum.

Some sneering, some cheered. I liked the ones who stopped and talked to us the best. The ones with really thick New York accents, grocery bags, pants pulled up too high, slicked-over receding hairlines, baby strollers. I liked the ones who gave us money best. I liked all the dorky girls who cooed at the kitten. I liked the fourteen-year old with the pink hair best, so I gave her the kitten because the strets are no place for a kitten.