TOM CAT

1

I have made a lovely napping spot between the headboard and a large pillow on my master’s bed.  I am forming a small crater of myself to remind him of me.  His scent lingers and I sniff delicately at the air, letting that exquisite combination of dry musk, clinging sweat and moistened linen drift through my nostrils.  This is the smell that rouses me in the morning and, later, after the sun has set and we are bathed in the warm light of his beside lamp, sets me into fits of ecstatic dreams, cradled in his arms as he reads into the womb of the night.  I would nap here forever if I could.  My eyes narrow. 

I am impossibly in love with my master.

In my small, wooden cubicle, dimly lit and flung at the far end of the PetCo downtown, I used to lie in squalor on a ratty bundle of blankets, trying to look emaciated and depressed, gazing with big blue eyes at any human who would pass by and rescue me.  The handsy caretaker came in every morning, with rubber gloves, surgical masks and an apron with inane illustrations of grinning kitties that read “Who Ever Said Dogs Were Our Best Friends” written in curly script beneath.  Poor, wretched woman had a terrible allergy to us—an irony nearly as tragic as my imprisonment in that shelter full of macho toms, obsessed with the female passersby who would inevitably approach our glass windows and fawn over how “furry” and “cute” we were.  The ringleader, Ponko, a hazel-eyed tabby with small gray hairs springing out around his bottom, would crack wise every time one strolled past—“Hey, this pussy wouldn’t mind that pussy”—and I would pretend that I could roll my eyes.

Occasionally, one of those yoga-pantsed nymphs would walk into our shelter, determined to be joined with the cat of her dreams.  If she only knew what went on behind our bored countenances.  Ponko, who had preceded me at our pet-ititentiary, where the smell of fresh litter clung to the air, was the boldest of us.  He worked his technique with aplomb, leaping down from his locker on the third level, crumpling his left hind leg slightly as he fell before turning his wide, curious gaze to the woman, whose shoulders slumped in submission immediately.  He would paw over, meowing quietly, gently, stepping with trepidation to show that he was fearful, but entranced.  Every ginger advance, a compliment.  By the time he was in range, her hand would shoot out, a bit quickly, and Ponko would skitter backwards in fear.  Her hand would hang in the air, she’d squeak sweetness at him and he would touch his muzzle for only an instant and ever so slightly at each of her fingertips, lingering on the last before becoming engaged with a toy on the ground.  This would send fits of giddiness through the woman she grabbed whatever dangly item she could find and begin flinging it above Ponko’s head. He would look back at us, and if he could have winked he would have.  Then he’d begin jumping and batting.

I would often hang my paw over the edge of my cell and look on in pity as the master manipulated.  He would call out to us from the lap of his latest victim: “Guys, guys—I can smell her!  I can smell her!”  Yet for all of his mastery, Ponko was never packed up and taken away.  Something would inevitably go wrong.  He’d suddenly become incontinent, or bite hard at her hands.  There would be brief, breathy conversation between our warden and the client and she’d be married to another one of our mates.  Ponko would return to his cage, and I could never tell if he’d been purposeful in his mistake, or if the sudden, fearful realization that he might be plucked up and taken away overwhelmed at the key moment. 

Regardless, he’d play his game every time—courting dance and tragic flaw—all the while regaling us with tales of how many breasts he’d copped a feel at, how close he’d gotten to simply pushing his face into one of their crotches.  On rare instances he’d actually lick their mouths—and they loved it!  I never understood.

Those first few weeks went by, and while I did not sleep fitfully, I grew tired.  I would lean listlessly against the plexiglass pane, eyes idly following the tank of darting tropical fish across the aisle.  A few pouty faces came by to extend their condolences, but I just shifted my gaze away.  Somehow, this only seemed to encourage, and I often found myself switching this way and that, trying to avert my gaze.  Many of the kittens were uprooted on the spot, crying and looking back in fear as they were jostled away in the frilly arms of girls wearing Sunday school uniforms.  Don’t ask me if I was scared myself, or content. 

If anything, ask me what it was like when he finally arrived, years too late but right on time.  A miracle that shown on high down from the aisle where I knew the hummingbird feed was, where he  looked at some squawking parakeets.  Ask me how it felt when his girlfriend curled into his arm, nudging towards my shelter and me.  Ask how a spring had been coiled in my feet, where it had come from, how he scrunched his face and wiggled his nose at me through that oppressive pane—how so suddenly I realized what oppression I had been under!—before they walked in and I caterwauled over onto the ground, clumsily catching myself and blushing beneath my fur and whiskers.  Ask me this, because you will never know the answer, how it feels to be a cat and to love a man.   

.... 

HABITAT

There's a switch in my room.  There are three points on it.

When I turn it once, my room becomes a raucous cafe.  Revelers swinging off of out-of-tune pianos, splashing drinks and dropping cigarettes on sequined dresses and dusty tuxedos.  The bartender argues and laughs with an earthy passion at everyone who comes by, shouting, demanding drinks, coffee, food, whatever fleeting dream it may be.  People holler like madmen at their old friends when they come through the glass door, out of the pouring rain outside, where the smoke lifts out of the manhole, dragged along underneath the speeding taxis and classic cars, heading out into the dark streets, slick with rain and orange with lamplight.  My chair is in the corner of this living Toulouse-Lautrec, with my notebook, my pen, my eye, my friends.

When I turn the switch again, the life is pulled straight out of the room, rushing out of the glass door and down the street, except now it is a wooden door and the street is a long field, so the life gets lost and disperses through the rolling grass.  The harvest moon looks at me through the window, mixing its glancing light with the warm glow of the gas lamp at my desk.  Chick-a-dill, chick-a-dill go the cicadas, the crickets, the wandering spirits outside who never knock but only pass.  My pen, scratchily scurrying, sounds like the footfalls of insects.  Maybe there's a slumbering dog (a husky, a bloodhound) slouched on the corded rug next to the fireplace, dying embers.  It kicks at the hardwood floor.  Every moment is the one that threatens to send me sagging into my chair, into the desk, stumbling under the flannel sheets, last fleeting thought maybe it will snow tomorrow before i

The third switch turns it off.  It's a room with white walls, with a maple floor.  Two windows are open, the curtains fluttering with an unstated promise.

I don't know what to put in there.