House Cat

by Thomas M. Pender

I'm not sure what to call this.  It's written like a story, but reads like a poem.  In any event, it's a "Reflection" about something that occurred shortly after moving into my present residence.

 

My house has a cat.

I do not have a cat.  Most certainly, I do not have a cat!

But my house has one . . . or it has the house.  Whatever this strange and dark relationship, it has nothing to do with me, nor I with it.  And yet, I am now involved.

As I stepped out of my shower the other day, I glanced out the bathroom window, which usually reveals nothing but an overweathered balcony and the bottoms of discarded carpet pieces left by the as-yet-unfinished renovators.  Yesterday, however, there was a new sight.  A new eyesore, to be quite frank.  The house’s cat was holding court.

All by itself, happy as a . . . cat, I suppose . . . lounging atop the comfy (for a cat) carpet mountain on the balcony of the house in which I am legally squatting, the felinous beast laid and blinked, until it noticed something.

A movement.  Inside the house.

Me.

His face snapped to align perfectly with mine, and neither of us moved.  For rather a long time.  It was like a silent conversation of the eyes.

The cat’s said: “What are you doing inside my house?”

Mine said: “What are you doing outside mine?”

The cat’s replied: “This is my house whenever I wish, and it always has been.”

Mine answered: “Tell that to the owners, who gave me a key.”

“Well, I’m certainly not leaving.”

“Well, neither am I.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to get used to each other then, won’t we?”

“I suppose we will.”

And that’s how it went.

I don’t know if I’ll see the cat again.  I certainly won’t look for it.  I won’t wonder about it, worry about it, leave water or milk or kibble for it, and I will burn in everlasting fire before I name it.

I’m sure he or she feels the same about me.  And I’m fine with that.  My house, my rules.  Keep your raggedy old carpeting.  Just wait and see if it bothers me.

Stupid cat.

Ten Practical Uses For A Cat

by Thomas M. Pender

10)          Pre-deer season moving target practice

9)            Emergency replacement Brillo pad

8)            If you live near a cliff, they are excellent subjects to test Galileo’s theories on gravity, as well as that whole “land on their feet” thing

7)            Live bait for big game fishermen

6)            Your fat, lazy laying-on-the-couch-and-never-moving cat types are great for resting your beverages on while you watch TV, while your constantly-wandering-through-the-house cat types are great for strapping on a two-can saddle and using for delivering said beverages

5)            Bug squasher when the flyswatter is out of reach

4)            Chew toy to toss to large and restless dogs

3)            Alcohol-to-body-weight ratio tests (THESE are hilarious!)

2)            Subject for “World’s Most Dangerous Stunts” re-enactments

and       

1)            Side-by-side study model for proving why dogs are much more awesomer!!!!

Puss Gets His (Part 2)

(Continued from last week)

That cat was going to learn the error of its ways.  Today.  I didn’t care if I found a hammer, a belt, or a double-barreled shotgun.  I was going to put my hands on something that would get through that cat’s crushable skull.

Rubber-soled moccasins.

That would do nicely.

Picking up one of Mike’s moccasins by the toe, and wagging the heavy heel with anticipation, I entered the lion’s den.  And closed the door.  There would be no escape.

Knowing full well that the cat was under the bed, and that it was quite confident in its safety, I took great pleasure in throwing first the mattress, then the box spring, to the opposite wall.  One of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen in my life was the raw, naked fear that shot out of that cat’s eyes when rude light slammed down on him in his darkened hideaway.  He froze with shock, and I took my opportunity.

I beat him.

I beat him.

And I beat him.

And it was goooood.

I brought the full force of my arm down upon that cat again and again and again, each time connecting that heavy ruber heel onto the thin fur shield around those tender cat guts.  When the beast got its muscles together enough to dart out of sight behind the discarded mattress, I didn’t waste one moment in throwing it aside and kissing the cat with that lovely weapon again and again.  The cat hissed at me.  It bared its teeth at me.  It squealed at me.

In fear!

My eyes were wide with bloodlust, and I don’t recall if I blinked the entire time I was in the arena with that cat.  It was the most fun I had had in years.  I wanted it dead, quite literally, and I didn’t care what the consequences were.  I wanted to spread that cat’s skull to the walls.  This would be my statement to cats around the world to steer clear.  Or else.

When I started to breathe again, and eventually blink, the cat had hidden himself for the fourth or fifth time, and I decided to leave.  It is the only reason that animal lived to see the next sunrise.

I did not clean up a thing in that room, with good reason.  Over the months, I had repeatedly told Mike that his cat’s attacks were getting beyond the line of irritating, and entering the region of unacceptable.  He immediately took action, and ignored me.  So they would both learn their respective lessons with this one messy room.  I closed the door, dressed my wound, and left.  I stayed away for several hours.

When I returned, Mike was in the living room.  His bedroom door was ajar, and the contents had been straightened up.

“Was there a problem with the cat today?” he asked me with genuine uncertainty.

“You have two roommates, Mike,” I said without apology.  “One of them pays rent.  Don’t forget that.”

We never spoke of the incident after that moment.  I’m not sure what effect, if any, the incident had on Mike.  I can tell you what effect it had on Puss.  He stayed away from me.  He left a room when I entered it.  In short, he learned his place, and who wore the moccasin in the family.  Or so I thought.

About a year later, Mike was sent by his company to spend the summer working in Guam and Hawaii.  He actually asked me to “look after” the spawn of Satan.  I accepted without glee or anger.  I knew I would have the power to keep the cat alive or let him die, and I trusted that he would know that, too.

He did not.

Mike hadn’t been gone 24 hours, and the hairy suicide candidate performed his famous run-by nipping.  He dove for the safety of Mike’s empty room, and I slammed the door.  I knew then and there how things would be run in the apartment.

I didn’t see Puss for more than 20 seconds a day for the entire summer.  Every afternoon when I came home from work, I’d chase him into the bedroom (which was fairly easy, since he ran at the sight of me!), and shut him in.  Every morning when I left for work, I’d open the door.  I put his food, water and litter in the bedroom, where he could go to them by day, and live with them by night.  The food and water were filled as needed, and the litter was replaced regularly.  I considered that more than fulfilling my promise.  I considered it more than the cat deserved.  What it deserved was to have my thumbs placed at the base of its skull, where they would press until they reached brain.  But cooler heads prevailed unfortunately, and I got to spend the summer in peace and solitude.

Just before Mike’s return, which was scheduled a week or so after Labor Day, I got word that I had been hired by a firm in a suburb of Chicago, which meant that I would be moving from Michigan, where I’d spent my life since the age of one.  Mike’s cousin lived a few miles away from us, and I arranged with her to watch the cat between my departure and Mike’s arrival.  When Mike called to see how things were going, I told him the news.

As the years passed, I saw Mike and his now-wife Mary, and eventually, their son Joseph, on occasion.  Each time I visited, Puss made an appearance.  It would come out to see who was visiting, make eye contact with me, and go back to whatever spot he’d come from.

This was fine with me.  It gave me joy to know that the sounds of heavy rubber heels echoed somewhere in that cat’s brain each time he laid eyes on me.  I imagined that I was a constant visitor in Puss’s feline nightmares, chasing him through eternal hallways with one gigantic moccasin.

At some point in recent years, Mike told me that either the cat had died, or was dying.  I don’t recall, as I try not to waste my time and energy on my enemies.  Still, whenever the cat dies, I’d really like to know where he’s buried.

There’s something I must do on his grave.

Puss Gets His (Part 1)

by Thomas M. Pender

There are two kinds of people in the world: dog people and cat people.  Cat people should stop reading right about here.

I’m not kidding.  Stop reading now, and step away from the computer.  Now.

Make no mistake: This is not a warm and fuzzy story about a cat.  This is a story about a warm and fuzzy cat.  That I tried to kill.  That I tried with every fiber of my being to kill.

As a dog person, I have a theory about the origins of felines and canines.  It’s fairly simple.  God created dogs and Satan created cats.  Dogs have brains, understand human language, answer to their names, learn and perform stunts, protect, defend, wrestle, and work for the police sniffing out drugs.

Cats, on the other hand, come in only two brands.  Cats are either mean or they’re furniture.  Throw pillows, to be specific.  Little throw pillows that blink.  If you pet them, they vibrate and make noise.  Sort of an audible version of a snow globe, with about as many practical uses.

Useless furniture cats I can handle.  If you’re really bored, or if your hand falls asleep and needs activity desperately, you can pet a throw pillow with eyes, and it will purr.  Nothing much else, but it will purr.

Mean cats, on the other hand, have no purpose on this planet, save serving as bait for sharks and bears, or as target practice in the back yard for little Bobby’s new Daisy BB gun, or Daddy’s new bow and arrow.  There are mean dogs, I’ll admit.  The difference seems to be that if you have a mean dog and it hurts someone, the law states it must be destroyed.  If you have a mean cat and it hurts someone, the victim is given a Band-Aid, and the cat is fed and pet by the owner.  Mean animals in general should be eliminated, and I choose to start with the cats.  In fact, I attempted to start with the cats.

With one cat.

Puss.

After graduation, my college roommate Mike and I spent a few months populating my mom’s house, then we got our first apartment.  Thanks to my first adventure in professionalism, a $5.25-an-hour security guard extravaganza, I soon found I couldn’t afford rent and food at the same time.  I opted for the food, and moved back to Mom’s for a time.  When I moved on to bigger and better things (i.e. fetching for insurance company professionals), I moved back in with Mike.  This was fine with him, because he had grown rather bored in his one-man kingdom.

So bored, in fact, that he acquired a new roommate in my absence.

Puss.

Puss looked normal enough.  This means it looked like a mindless waste of oxygen with whiskers.  When Mike told me that he’d gotten a cat, I told him jokingly that he should name it “Galore” after Ian Fleming’s character Pussy Galore in the James Bond novel Goldfinger.  Mike loved the idea, but chickened out because he didn’t feel he could explain to people – particularly his parents – where the name came from . . . without breaking into a sweat, anyway.  So as a tribute to the name he couldn’t name the cat, he named it Puss.  When asked, he would point out the gray cat’s four white paws, and claim he named it after the fairy tale character Puss In Boots, but we macho insiders knew the real truth behind the name.

Puss and I established our relationship immediately upon my return to the apartment.  By this time, the cat had gotten used to his world, which included him, his adoring owner, and not a single other person.  When I came in, the cat slithered silently into the room, never taking his eyes off me, and never blinking.  I could tell right away it wasn’t a furniture kind of cat.  All they do is blink.  There was only one other choice.  This Puss had teeth, and was hungry to use them.

It started out in a simple, almost cute way.  When I talk, I tend to use my hands.  While I was telling Mike about some adventure I’d had in the dirty world that is office services, the cat pounced on my forearm like it was a live bird.  Only for a second, and no weapons of mass laceration were used.  It jumped, caught the offending object, and immediately disappeared into Mike’s bedroom.

Not a problem.  I continued the tale, and a few weeks later, moved my stuff back into the apartment.  I love my mom, but a 24-year-old man’s gotta do what a 24-year-old man’s gotta do.  I had to be free.  Free to stay up past my bedtime.  Free to eat my dessert first.  Free to keep a woman up past her bedtime!  But I undress – er, digress.

There was definitely an adjustment period for both Puss and me.  When he would come out of Mike’s room in the morning, there was always this little feline double-take when he first saw me.  For my part, it took me quite a while to not stare at every move the cat made, with my shields set to kill at the first sign of fangs.  Eventually, the tension subsided.  A bit.  The only remaining problem that I couldn’t ignore was the pouncing.

At first, the beast leapt on my arm only when it was in motion.  Then, the offensive limb needed only to be present in the same room with the creature to be deemed pounceworthy.  I could be laying on the couch, perfectly still, and the thing would rocket from the shadows, mark the arm with his Zorro-esque clawtrails, and disappear.  Whenever I chased the warlock into Mike’s room, it would dive under the lowrider double bed, and stay there for hours, knowing full well I could not reach him there.  This pattern continued for months.  Attack, retreat, burrow.  My only defense was to close the door the trap the bastard in his lair.  Of course, this only worked when Mike was out, but Mike was dating at the time, so I found myself alone with the demon seed often enough to get my door-slamming technique down.

Then, one day – one day which will live in infamy – that hellion crossed his last line.  While Mike was away for the day, I was attacked for the simple act of crossing the living room.  This time, there was bloodshed.  My blood.  Lots of my blood.  That thing sank his four fangs so deep into the skin and muscle of my calf that he couldn’t pull them out on his own.  I had to yank its head off my leg.  Immediately, it disappeared, thinking it would be safe.  Ignoring the warm sticky sensation oozing down my leg, I walked to the bedroom door, and I calmly closed it.  Then, I searched the entire apartment.

For a weapon.

(Continued next week)