A catful of olderish stories. Enjoy!
Found
It was only at night before rolling into the covers that he thought of her, his gray and white tabby. He imagined her in the alley, in the packs of weeds between the houses. He thought of her prowling the night, re-finding the fence of her home and slipping under, to paw at the back door.
Otherwise he worked. He pounded nails out of boards and leant them into towers. The floor of the garage where he worked was strewn with nails—carpentry nails and silver tacks and screws that had held in wiring.
“Any luck?” his boss—his friend—would ask.
“Not at all. Not one person has called.” He was unreasonable in his sorrow. He was stubborn with it in his heart.
“Maybe put up more fliers? Maybe the rain washed the others away?”
“No,” he answered, unreasonable. “Nobody looks at fliers.”
“Alright then.” His boss’s eyes searched out softly the towers of boards. “Good job out here.”
It was only so he could sleep that he thought of her: She carried a mouse in her jaws to somewhere dry. She curled in with other strays and slept the rain away.
In the morning before work he drank his coffee. The sun was out or it rained. He looked into the yard and there in a deep and unloved corner he found red flowers.
Just for One Day
David Bowie couldn’t pay his rent. He stood in his kitchen, gazed out the window that overlooked the snowy yard. “We could be heroes,” he said, to his hungry cat, but the cat didn’t care. She sat by her food dish, waiting for him to provide.
From upstairs he heard the TV. It was only 9 a.m., but Iman had started her binge watching for the day. Some people on the TV were shouting. Goodness, he thought, by lunch she’ll be tiffed.
He put on his coat, which had turned gray, and he stepped through the door and onto his street, which had turned gray. The snow had just turned to rain.
Since his death, everything had changed, though everything was the same. He was still David Bowie, the rock star, father, husband, lover of large things and small things, but his feet were cold and his assets were frozen.
He needed to go downtown, talk to the bankers. It was all just a mistake, a mix-up, to do with his name, that upon death should have reverted to Jones. But the buses had stopped running, or had changed routes, or no longer existed.
At the next block was the corner shop. The woman behind the counter nodded to him and he headed for the magazines. Prince had died and the tributes were starting to arrive. “I hope,” he said aloud, “you’ve filed your paperwork, Mr. Rogers Nelson. It’s quite the drag otherwise.”
He set the magazine and cat food on the counter. “On credit?” he said.
The woman shook her head. “Can’t do it.”
“Just this last time?” he answered.
The woman looked at him. “Don’t you have a coin jar at home? Something under the mattress?”
David shrugged. “Not my style. Or not anymore. There’s something . . . vivid in a jar full of coins, don’t you think?” He grinned. “I’m more black and white these days, you know. Gray?”
The woman put the things in a bag and handed it to him. “No,” she said, “I don’t know. Most of us stay the same. Same people, same name, same colors. Only folks like you can afford otherwise.”
He laughed. “Apparently not.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and he smiled, and she smiled back. “No more,” she said.
Out on the street some little girls were trying to coax a kitten out from under a car. “Here, puss puss,” they called, the kitten hunched resolutely dead middle of the undercarriage.
“Can you help us?” they said. “She needs to come home.”
David set his bag on the curb and got to his knees. “Here, puss puss,” he called. “Come here, darling.”
The kitten crawled to him, nudged his hand with her forehead, and let him lift her into the crook of his arm. “Don’t scare her now,” he told the little girls.
The oldest one took the kitten from him, and she, the cat, and her sister headed home. “Why are you so bad?” said one of them to the kitten.
Back in his kitchen, David fed his own cat and made some tea. He sat at the table, munching on toast, and watched her eat. “Queen Dilly Dilly?” he said. But she paid him no mind, head in her food dish.
Cat
After 4 years of doing not much more than sitting on the front porch, napping, and eating crickets out of the azalea bushes, our cat Poe decided he needed to cross the busy street.
“Monsters!” Lydia cried. “These cars, nothing but fucking death monsters!”
She sold her Honda, which only ran when I pushed it down the road and she popped the clutch, and then we were car-less. She also went around and took photographs of flattened squirrels and birds with their brains oozing out. She made a website and posted the photos there.
Meanwhile, I was turning mean. “I miss going to the beach, Lydia. I miss sex in the car. I miss moving more than 3 goddamn miles an hour.”
“Shallow,” she mumbled, cutting up carrots, running a bath. “Heartless.” She was a woman on a mission; I was just a boyfriend.
The day came when I was in the driveway, forcing my boxes of records and torn suitcases into the trunk of a rental. “An animal,” I said, waving my arms at the empty front window. “I miss him too, Lydia, but you’re not going to turn back the course of civilization for an animal.”
It wasn’t until a year later that I saw Lydia again, dragging a dachshund through the park. The dog gagged as it pulled against its collar, eyes bulging and glassy, while Lydia cursed.
“Goddamn you, Arthur,” she said. “Fucking wiener.” She stopped when she saw me. “Oh . . . Hello, Paul.”
“Hey, Lydia,” I said. “New pet?”
“Yeah.” She looked at the dog in dismay, but managed to force out a smile. “It’s my boyfriend’s.” We watched as it threw up a tiny glob of bluish spittle.
“Cute.”
She shook her head. “So how are you?”
“Oh, fine. I’m doing good. I’m an airport shuttle driver now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I pantomimed driving, looking back to grin at my passengers. “That okay? I mean, you know?”
“Ha!” she said, tossing her hair. “Of course it is.” I followed her eyes as she looked out over the park lawn, bright with hundreds of dandelions. The clouds running overhead threw patterns of warm, deep light onto the ground. Then she turned back to me and smiled. “Hi, Paulie,” she said.
