Meerkat

He walked into his apartment and went straight to the fridge to open a beer. It was halfway empty before he’d landed on the sofa and turned the TV on. He always felt down when he got back from meeting with his agent. It felt like he couldn’t get him out of the office quick enough. That weasel, he’d grown to hate him, but he was stuck. No other agent would represent him these days. Not like back in the heyday. Back when he was on prime time. That Telecom advert had been the peak in the meerkat’s career and everything afterwards had just been a slow fading of the fame and acclaim he’d had then.

Sure the money had set him up, but he didn’t want more work just for money. He wanted, in fact he’d always wanted just to act. He wanted to do it for the sake of it. But these days people didn’t take him seriously, that’s if they remembered him at all. He’d found himself a has been without ever reaching any kind of creative peak. He felt he had so much more to give but couldn’t get a chance. All there was left for him to do was sit in front of the TV and feel jealous of the other animals that had made it.

A few years ago he’d thought things were on the up again. There were rumours going around that a TV station had commissioned some kind of reality thing featuring a complete cast of meerkats. Surely this was going to be his big break. At the time he was quietly confident, clearly the most experienced meerkat actor on the scene. This was going to be his chance, a stage for him to shine from.

He was slightly perturbed when, after the excitement of finally have an audition wore off, it became clear just what the producers were wanting. It was dumbed down TV to the extreme. This wasn’t going to be the platform he could launch again from. But he so desperately wanted it either way. Just to be back on the TV had to be a start. Surely. Maybe after a season or two of this dross he would find other opportunities. Other shows would come knocking. It wasn’t ideal but it could be the start of something.

It wasn’t to be. The producers of Meerkat Manor told him they wanted a fresh face, someone new and without the preconceptions that his fame had brought him. He could tell though, that underneath the words they were using, what they were really saying is that they didn’t want him. After the phone call from his agent telling him he’d been passed over, the meerkat went home, opened a beer and sat in front of the TV. He hasn’t really got up since.