by Mazy Morris
I looked up at the woman standing in the doorway. She was exactly as I had imagined her: bottle-blond hair, big earrings and impractical shoes.
“Jimmy texted me,” the woman said.
“Jimmy’s not here.”
“But he gave me this address. I’m Vanessa, by the way.”
“Never heard of you,” Ann replied and slammed the door in her face.
My Lady didn’t cry. Instead, she found a bag of chocolate bars in the back of the refrigerator. I felt sick just watching her, but then I’m not much of a one for sweets. I retreated to the living room, partly because it’s always revolting to watch another creature gorge themselves, but mostly because now that Part A of my nefarious scheme was out of the way, I had a little groundwork to lay for Part B.
I nudged the phone out from under the coffee table where I’d left it after texting Vanessa. I activated the touch screen and signed in. I meowed politely, but the fascination of the chocolate must have been too strong. My Lady didn’t even acknowledge me. I meowed a bit louder. Ann went right on tearing off chunks of candy bar as if she were taking bites out of Cat Hater’s arm and liking it. Never eat in anger, I’ve always said, but My Lady obviously subscribes to a different philosophy. To each his own.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I gave up on meowing and emitted a full-on fur-raising war cry. It was a yowl capable of putting the most battle-hardened of alley cats on notice, and it certainly got Ann’s attention. She dropped the candy bar and hurried over. At first the focus was all on me, but I calmed right down and started giving myself a tongue bath, so it wasn’t long before she discovered the phone.
She picked it up and took it back to the kitchen table. For a few minutes there was nothing, then there was a ding which indicated a new text had been delivered. It was not long after that when My Lady emitted a noise not unlike the yowl I had unloosed earlier. It, too, was a battle cry. Cat Hater was dead meat.
The following evening, at the usual time, Cat Hater arrived at the apartment. It was obvious that he didn’t yet know his days were numbered. I felt sorry for him. Almost.
He hadn’t even removed his jacket or kicked off his shoes when My Lady of Wrath descended upon him, phone in hand.
“I found your phone,” she said. It was like the calm before a storm: she might have been informing him that she was making lasagna for dinner, or asking if he’d remembered to pick up a gallon of milk on the way over.
“Great!” Cat Hater grabbed his phone and clutched it to his chest. For one revolting moment, I thought he might kiss it. Cat Hater and his phone share a profound emotional bond. But he didn’t kiss it. He just put it in the front pocket of his shirt, nestled next to his heart.
“You missed a text last night,” My Lady informed him.
“Did I?” Cat Hater planted a kiss on My Lady. I suspect he was thinking of his phone the whole time, though. I wonder if he thinks about his phone while in the throes of passion. Probably.
“Aren’t you going to look at your texts?” Ann asked.
“I’ll do it later.” Cat Hater kicked off his shoes and headed for his customary spot on the couch.
“Do it now!” It was an order, not a request.
“OK. OK. If you want me to look at my ####### texts, I’ll look at my ####### texts!”
I could have told him that getting defensive would do him no good, but at this point I didn’t think anything would do him any good, so I retreated to the top of the bookcase by the window just in case My Lady was once again contemplating using that porcelain puppy in repose as a projectile.
Cat Hater looked at his texts.
“What the ####### #### ######## #### #######? I never ####### sent any ####### text like this! #### ### ####!”
It appeared Cat Hater had a limited appreciation for my powers of written expression. I have to admit. Criticism hurts.
Chapter Four
Things quickly deteriorated from there. Cat Hater accused My Lady of hacking into his phone and sending messages to Vanessa. Ann came back with an unflattering but accurate assessment of Vanessa’s personal appearance, general deportment and moral character.
“And how’d ya ####### know that? You’ve never ####### met her!”
“Because she showed up here last night!”
I would have thought Cat Hater might have already inferred that from a close reading of the texts, but it seems he’s not that quick on the uptake. This didn’t surprise me too much.
“Why the #### would she ####### come here?”
“Because you told her to.”
“I sure ### #### didn’t!”
“You sent her a text with my address! You told her to come here!”
“I already ### #### told ya! I didn’t send that ####### text! How ### #### could I? My ####### phone was here the whole ####### night!”
“Well, I didn’t do it! I swear. I read the texts, but I didn’t send anything!”
“Then who ### #### did?”
I remained on top of the bookcase throughout this heated exchange. Suspicion never rested on me. In fact, My Lady and Cat Hater seemed to have forgotten I was even among those present.
“And why ### #### does my phone smell like ####### tuna?” With that off his chest, Cat Hater departed the premises—I hoped—never to return.
After he left, Ann sat back down at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands. I don’t think her distress was due to sorrow or regret. I think she was just confused, and I couldn’t blame her.
My Lady got up from the table and came over to my perch on top of the bookcase. She stood there for several minutes while she stared out the window and absently stroked my back.
“Am I losing my mind, Cupid? Or have I just been sleep-texting?”
It seemed impolite to point out that asking questions of one’s cat might be the first sign of an impending mental breakdown, so I kept my mouth shut.
Later that evening, Craig called.
It was as if those telepathic messages I’d been sending had finally gotten through. I’m joking, of course. If there was anything to telepathy, don’t you think cats would be wielding a much greater influence on the Powers That Be? Believe me, if cats were running things, the world wouldn’t be in such a sorry state.
I gathered by eavesdropping that Craig had invited My Lady to accompany him to dinner that evening. This was an exciting development, but my silent cheers were cut short when Ann turned him down. She was tired, she said. It had been a rough day. Craig reissued the invitation for a later date, and Ann said she’d think about it.
This was an unsettling turn of events. When two cats of the opposite sex meet for the first time, there is a period of sniffing around and sizing up. However, if there is not a near instantaneous acknowledgment of mutual attraction—usually in the form of hissing and the swiping of claws and a little exploratory biting—then one or both parties lose interest. I feared that Craig—not unlike his feline counterpart—might never repeat the invitation.
The situation called for intervention, so I scratched at the door to be let out. I had a job to do. I also missed Bella and the smell of the great outdoors.
Ann let me out without hesitation. She seemed to have forgotten her resolution to confine me to quarters. The poor thing was obviously distracted. This worked to my advantage.
I hurried downstairs and did my best Bella impersonation in front of Craig’s door. It worked like a charm.
Once inside, I retreated to my favorite spot under Craig’s dining table and contemplated my next move. I’d briefly toyed with the idea of feigning a relapse of my old injuries; a dramatic collapse followed by a period of piteous moaning would be guaranteed to lure Craig into returning me to My Lady and thus reestablishing contact. But I soon dismissed this course of action as being more of a personal sacrifice than I was willing to make. Feigning a relapse would certainly lead to another period of indoor confinement, and I was not willing to trade my sanity even in return for My Lady’s ha
ppiness.
I decided, until I thought of something better, to use my time to figure out where Craig’s strengths lay. As far as I’m concerned, competency in operating a can opener and a solid technique for scratching behind one’s ears go a long way. Unfortunately, the human female possesses considerably more complex needs and desires.
As I’m sure you’ve already realized, My Lady is not all that picky when it comes to men, but it couldn’t hurt to figure out if Craig had any unusual qualities which might be exploited to his advantage. I decided to do another survey of Craig’s bedroom, so I stealthily left my post under the table and nosed the bedroom door open.
At first I didn’t find anything of interest. Craig is not neat, and I say this as a creature with a healthy appreciation for disorder. A bare floor is a cold floor, I’ve always believed, and it’s nice to have a variety of empty boxes and bags to crawl inside when one craves a quiet retreat.
I picked my way over piles of shoes and discarded articles of clothing. I came within an ace of toppling a stack of magazines next to the bed, and, when I leapt up onto the nightstand, I upset an empty glass and knocked a random assortment of articles to the floor. These landed soundlessly on the carpet. I doubted Craig would notice for weeks that anything was out of place.
From my vantage point on the nightstand, I took a look around. Then I saw it. The key to Ann’s heart, the object which would make Craig appear to be a man-among-men. I jumped down and hurried over to take a closer look.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human beings it’s that they are remarkably open to suggestion; you have only to bring something to their attention, and they invariably believe they thought of it themselves.
To that end, I knocked the guitar over. It toppled with a satisfying crash and jangle of strings. I made a hasty retreat under the bed and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Bella!” Craig yelled. He obviously thought she was the culprit. This was unfortunate, but I’d make it up to her.
From my vantage point under the bed, I watched as Craig righted the guitar and stood there looking at it. Then, just as I’d expected, he picked it up, carried it to the living room, and started to tune it.
This was the moment of truth. If Craig were totally talentless, then my efforts would have been in vain. I don’t have much of an ear for music; my tastes run more along the lines of those recordings of birdsongs humans listen to when they suffer from insomnia. Nevertheless, even I could tell that Craig was good. Very good. I waited until he was warmed up and had started to sing along—he had a pleasant tenor voice—and emerged from under the bed. I went to the door and scratched to get out.
Craig put the guitar down and opened the door for me, but I declined to depart. I sat on the threshold and refused to budge. Craig tried picking me up, but I gave a hair-raising yowl the moment he touched me. It was an Oscar-worthy performance. Anyone within a mile would have been forgiven for believing I was being jumped by a medium-sized Rottweiler.
Craig shrugged and returned to his guitar-playing.
Now, it’s about this time in the evening when My Lady makes a habit of going down to the mailboxes and seeing what the US Postal Service has brought this time: bills, mostly, and magazines full of photographs of oddly-dressed female humans who appear to have been chronically deprived of nourishment. I was worried that her distressed mental state might cause My Lady to break her routine, but I needn’t have been. Humans are creatures of habit, and I soon heard her footsteps on the stairs. It couldn’t have been better timing.
Craig was still playing and singing some song about love being like something until you’ve something or other. It doesn’t matter. The important part is that he was putting plenty of pathos into it. If there’s one thing the human female responds to with complete predictability, it’s expressions of heartbreak and loneliness. Strange, I know. My theory is that it has something to do with the high rate of absentee fathers, or maybe it’s the result of a vitamin deficiency in the formative years.
Ann paused as she spotted me. I wiggled my whiskers a little in greeting, but I kept my tongue. She stood there and listened to Craig’s playing for a moment, then tiptoed over and tried to remove me by stealth.
She should have known better. Instead of allowing myself to be quietly scooped up and returned to My Lady’s domestic headquarters, I repeated my imitation of being attacked by a Rottweiler.
The effect was instantaneous. Craig dropped his guitar and came to the door. My Lady stood there, looking embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No need to apologize. He did that earlier, when I tried to pick him up.”
“Do you think he’s hurting somewhere?”
I weighed my options. I could lay it on thick and risk a trip back to the vet, or I could play it cool. I decided to play it cool. I purred as loudly as I could and rubbed up against Ann’s ankles.
“He seems fine now,” Craig said.
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. He does.”
“Amazing, isn’t it? How animals recover.”
“Yes, it is.”
This conversation wasn’t exactly riveting, but it took an abrupt turn for the worse.
“Nice evening,” Ann said.
“Yes, very nice.”
“Unusually warm, for March.”
“Yes. Very warm for being so early in the spring.”
“How warm do you think it is?”
“About mid-sixties, I’d say?”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes. It got up to sixty-seven yesterday.”
“Did it really?”
“Yes. Tomorrow, I hear it’s forecast to get up to seventy-one.”
I was about to give in to the impulse to bang my head against the door jamb in frustration when Ann finally managed to break the conversation free from this whirling vortex of inanity.
“Would you still like to go to dinner?” she asked Craig.
“This evening?”
“Sure.”
“Well, after I got off the phone with you I went ahead and made myself a sandwich.”
It took all the self-control I could muster to restrain myself from reducing Craig’s pant-leg to ribbons. There are times, I’ve always maintained, when the last thing one should do is tell the truth. As far as I was concerned, this was one of those times.
“Oh,” said Ann. She sounded distinctly disappointed.
Her disappointment must have been enough to soothe Craig’s wounded pride, because he abruptly changed tack and suggested that they should go out for ice cream. He couldn’t have proffered a more tempting invitation. My Lady would probably accept ice cream from the Head of Hades himself, if mint chocolate chip was in the offing.
Ann went upstairs to get her jacket, and I docilely followed her into the apartment. As soon as she left, I retreated to the bedroom closet and curled up on a pile of sweaters. I had earned a nap. Besides, there was nothing more I could do. For now it rested in the hands of the Supreme Deity. Even Cupid can only do so much.
Chapter Five
It appeared that the excursion to get ice cream had been a success. Sort of. Over the next few days, I saw quite a lot of Craig and so did Ann.
This was all fine and good, as far as it went, but the thing which had me worried was the lack of—how shall I put this?—amorous expression.
It was obvious to me—from close observation of their rates of respiration, dilation of pupils and other subtle changes in physiology—that both My Lady and Craig were not averse to the notion of a conjugal coupling; however, it appeared that neither was aware of this mutual attraction. It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch humans are with their more primitive urges.
Craig came up to borrow My Lady’s vacuum cleaner, which resulted in an impromptu invitation to stay for supper. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—and that may well be true—but it does no good if the woman in question hasn’t an inkling
that she’s succeeded.
I was worried. There was a very real danger that Craig and Ann would get stalled out in the Friend Zone, I think the colloquial expression is. This could go on for years, each one fancying the other, and yet neither one working up the courage required to do anything about it. Watching their timid approach to romance made me grateful to be a cat. Felines never get sucked into such endless tiptoeing around the question of “will we, or won’t we?” When it comes to cats, it’s generally more a question of “behind that bush over there, or right here on the sidewalk?”
I also feared that, absent encouragement from Ann, Craig might meet a more openly enthusiastic female and take the path of least resistance.
My fears were soon realized. Not even a week later, as I made my way down to the bushes by the mailboxes for a tryst with Bella, I met Craig going out.
The human male, as a rule, takes very little care of his appearance. I’ve met cats who’ve been forced by circumstance to set up housekeeping inside overturned trashcans who pay more attention to hygiene and grooming. However, there is an exception to this human male tendency to personal neglect, and that exception is when a man goes out on a first date. That’s why, when Craig came out his door with his hair slicked back, wearing an ironed shirt and reeking of mouthwash, I knew he was on his way to meet a woman.
This was a sinister development. I could not stand idly by, so with a tinge of regret about postponing my appointment with the expectant Bella, I followed Craig out to the parking lot. I stayed close on his heels to avoid detection. He unlocked his car door and started to get in, then, providentially, his phone dinged, and he paused to read his text.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from observing Ann’s boyfriends over the years, it’s that once a man has transferred his attention to an electronic device, one could present him with a stark naked woman slathered in peanut butter, or drop a hammer on his head, and he wouldn’t notice. Craig was no exception. By the time he had returned his attention to his physical surroundings, I was safely inside the car, crouched on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
