Winston

I am Winston.  

I’m a cat and to your eyes I’m an orange, tiger striped, tabby.  Or so I’ve heard.  Orange isn’t something I completely understand.

I’ve also heard that I’m a little fat in the middle and insane, both of which I take issue with.  I am a little thick in the midsection but I can still fit through holes barely larger than my head, ergo I don’t see this as a shortcoming.  As far as my sanity goes, more than one person has called my Mommy a Crazy Cat Lady and I assumed they meant I was the one who was mentally ill because Mommy has never seemed unreasonable to me.  Reasonable or not though, she’s left me alone.  

It’s not her fault, really.  She hasn’t been smelling right for some time.  An aroma of sickness on her breath.  And the little tablets she’s been taking three times a day, with their foul, chemical smell, have done little to hide it.  Still, I find myself annoyed with her for dying, when I’m not sad about it, which is actually most of the time.

The sadness has been a bit of a blessing really, because it’s taken my mind off of the hunger.  Mainly I’ve just been sleeping.  Somewhat fitfully, I should add.  I can still drop off easily enough on the back of the couch, bathed in the warm sunshine streaming through the windows.  But the house is too quiet to stay asleep.  I keep waking suddenly, expecting Mommy to be moving around, clanging dishes together in the kitchen, or sitting in front of the obnoxiously, loud TV.  

Strange thing, the TV.  It doesn’t seem to be a mirror because I can’t see myself in it, and it doesn’t seem to be a window either since it shows all sorts of different rooms that aren’t in this house.  I know.  I’ve looked for them.  Also, when it shows the outside, sometimes it’s daytime, then nighttime, then daytime again, all in a matter of moments.  Strange thing, the TV.

Trying to sleep at night has been worse than during the day.  I, like most of my kind, aren’t much for nocturnal sleeping anyway.  I’m depressed enough to do it but the main problem is that there’s nowhere warm to curl up except by the furnace which startles me awake every time it kicks on.  I’ve never cared for how it smells either.  In the past, if I wanted to sleep at night, I would have done so with Mommy.  But since she died I’ve only tried it once.  She seemed colder than the room around her and I awoke feeling as if her death had seeped into my bones.  It made my joints ache and my sadness redouble.

I’m not sure how many nights it’s been since the morning I found her in her bed, so quiet.  I’d spent a good portion of the night before in the basement stalking a particularly wily mouse.  

He was small, brown and fast.  Eyes in the back of his head, that one.  He’s the last of a family of four who have all, one by one, become my playthings.  One had even become a meal before Mommy could stop me, as she had done with the others.  On second thought, maybe she wasn’t always so reasonable after all.  Anyway, the mouse had eluded me once again.  The sun wasn’t up yet but I kept nodding off, waking when my head lolled forward and my nose tapped the concrete floor.  So I had decided to pack it in early.

When I reached Mommy’s bedroom, at first, I thought she must’ve left the house.  I couldn’t hear her breathing and there was an unnatural stillness that threatened to bring the fur up on my back.  I realize now that I could already detect that smell.  You know the one.  Or maybe you don’t since you’re human.  Your noses don’t seem to work right.  Anyway, I hopped onto the bed a bit pensively.  And she was still there.  That was when I realized I couldn’t hear her heartbeat anymore either.  

Can you guys hear that?  Your ears don’t seem much better than your noses.  Do you even know what a heartbeat sounds like?  I’ve often wondered.  In case you don’t know, when something dies, that thumping noise in their chest stops.  It’s a silence that conveys a singular finality.

Sadness.  I sat there on the edge of the bed watching her for a while, waiting to see if maybe her condition would improve.  I strongly suspected that it wouldn’t, but there are all sorts of things in my life that I don’t understand.  The TV for example, so I waited.  I fell asleep for a time but it was deep into the day when I woke to the sound of the phone ringing.  At first I was confused as to why Mommy wasn’t desperately moving to stop its piercing jingle.  Typically, she never moved faster than when she was trying to get to it.  Then of course I remembered, Mommy was done moving.

Hunger wasn’t an issue then, but it’s starting to become one.  As I said before, I don’t know how many nights it’s been.  Numbers aren’t terribly important to me.  At least not beyond three or four.  I mean, I know there were four mice in the basement and now, thanks to my process of elimination, there is but one.  One tasty mouse.  

No one else lives here except for me, Mommy and the fish.  There have been others in the past.  When I came here, which I scarcely remember, there was another cat.  Goldie was her name.  She was a fat, orange Tabby also, which I suppose means that Mommy has a type.  Anyway, Goldie and I got along well and things were nice for a while, but one day Mommy took Goldie away and came back alone and sad.  Since I had been smelling a sickness on Goldie for some time, I suspect she died while they were out.  

In fact, upon Mommy’s return, I could smell the place she called “The Vet” on her shoes and clothes and I assume something there killed Goldie.  I never liked that place before then and this episode did little to alter my position.  

I missed Goldie.  I missed her almost as much as I miss Mommy now but at least then, we missed her together.  We snuggled on the couch and bed often those first few days after I became the only cat in the house and I received extra food and treats.

I know there were several other cats and one dog in the house before me because of the scents they left behind.  If you’re wondering what I can tell you about them, it isn’t much.  Cat noses aren’t magic.  If I were a dog, I could probably tell you a bit more about the previous one.  Those guys leave all manner of information when they spray.  Like stinking messages in bottles.  I can tell you that he was male and I believe he was rather small based on the height of the missives he left behind on the walls.  He had two or three favorite spots where I can easily detect his musky aroma layed with the acrid, artificial smell of Mommy’s cleaners.  Pointless, those cleaners.

Besides the olfactory ghosts of cats past, I can also still catch a hint of Mommy’s litter of two that lived in the rooms upstairs.  It was a boy and girl who have long since grown up and moved on to their own territories before I came.  The boy still visits on occasion, always in the dead of day, which makes sense since that’s when Mommy is usually awake.  The girl, her name was Sara, hasn’t come in a long time and I assume she may be dead also.  I don’t know what led me to that conclusion, just an instinct.  Too bad really.  I liked her.  I don’t however, like the boy.  Or well, man now.  His name is Dan and I just don’t care for him.

It’s not my fault, really.  I don’t like him because he doesn’t like me.  I can smell it on him whenever I enter the room.  And he’s never petted me, even once.  I’ve tried to be the bigger man about it.  On more than one occasion, I’ve crept onto his shoulder or lap while he and Mommy sit on the couch blabbering at one another.  No matter how gently I give him these opportunities, he always reacts the same way.  He tenses up, gives off a stench of discontent, then unceremoniously picks me up and deposits me on the floor, saying something like, “Pets shouldn’t be on the furniture.”  And to add further insult, he fastidiously brushes all of my fur from his clothes, as if my hair were dirt.  Honestly?

The only other person that comes by with any regularity is a woman called Janet who I believe to be from the same litter as Mommy.  To you, they may or may not look similar to each other.  All humans look the same to me, but those two do smell similar in the way that siblings always do.  Dan and his sister shared this as well, and every once in a while I catch the faintest note of a man that used to live here who was undoubtedly their father.  Also before my time, but roughly when the dog was here too, no pun intended.  Maybe the pooch was his type.  Anyway, I do like Janet and she likes me.  She always pets me, allows me to sleep on her lap and never seems to mind the hair I leave with her.  

Mommy and Janet blabber all day during these visits.  Seriously, the amount of information you people blast into each other's half-deaf ears is staggering.  I mean, what Are you talking about?  

Is there something tasty nearby that you can eat?  Is there something dangerous nearby that might try to eat you?  Would you like to find a warm place to take a nap?  What else is there to talk about, really?

Alas, I have no one to talk to now save for the fish and I’m not entirely sure if they even have ears.  They certainly never have anything to say.

I’ve no idea how many of them are in the tank either, they move around so much.  There’s more than three or four though.  All shapes and sizes and I imagine they’re probably tasty as well.  Not sure as I’ve never had the opportunity to eat one.  The lid on the tank is perplexing and every time I’ve tried to work on it a bit, Mommy has caught me and been disturbingly cross with me.  Now that she won’t be interfering, I’ll make a more concerted effort.  The only other thing to eat is the speedy, little mouse.

I’m definitely getting hungry and everything else is out of reach.  All of Mommy’s food is in the refrigerator or the pantry which has a door with a round knob.  I’m no good with round knobs.  A few of the other doors in the house have levers.  Those I can pounce on and usually open after a couple of tries.  The refrigerator is another story altogether.  I doubt I could open it even if I had thumbs.  That door is heavy and shut tight.  

As for my food; it’s kept in a tote in the garage.  Mommy used to just keep it on a shelf but I managed to sneak out there regularly while she had the door open.  I may be no good with round door knobs but I can fight my way into a paper bag with little trouble.  I guess she got tired of finding my butt hanging out of the bag, munching away at the kibble, so she started putting it in the plastic tote.  Even if I could defeat the knob to the garage, that tote might as well be a safe.  Maddeningly, I can smell the food in it just fine, but I’ve got no idea how it opens.

I am definitely getting hungry.

Now I know what you might be thinking.  The unthinkable, right?  Well I have thought about that already and you’ll be relieved to know, I’m not quite there yet.  

Honestly, it’s not as unthinkable to me as you might wish to believe.  Cat politics are different, after all.  We’re more pragmatic about these things.  

How long would you wait, starving and without food, before eating your dead loved one?  Till near the point of death?  Past it, perhaps?  You would probably die alongside them, confident in the knowledge that there was nothing else you could’ve done to survive.

Mommy was almost literally my entire world.  I love her. . .  I mean, loved her, in a way you cannot understand.  But the meat laying on her bed, simply isn’t her anymore.  It stopped being her the moment the thumping in her chest stopped.  But, as I said, I’m not quite there yet.

Hungry though.  I’m going to go see what I can do with the fish tank lid.

Good news, bad news . . .  

I got the lid open but I knocked it off completely.  I fell into the tank and damn near drowned.  In my panic to escape, I forgot to grab a fish.  There’s broken glass and swampy smelling water all over the dinning room floor.  Even if I jumped up there again, I’d risk falling straight back into the blasted thing.

It’s almost day time again.  Getting sleepy.  I’m going to dry out on the couch for a bit and then head down to the basement.  Maybe I’ll have better luck with my wily, brown friend.

All bad news . . .  

After I cleaned as much of the fish water off myself as possible, I fell asleep until Mommy’s phone woke me.  Even from the other room that thing is earsplitting.  The sun was still high, as it was in the wee hours of the afternoon, so I headed down stairs, stomach growling.  

Never even saw that wily rodent.  Just tiny paw prints in the dust.  

Say, why do mice get to have thumbs and cats don’t?  Even dogs got the short end of the stick on that score too.  Although, could you imagine if dogs had thumbs?  They’d probably be in the refrigerator constantly, eating all the butter and lunch meat.

I was really hoping to buy myself some more time before considering the unthinkable again.  I suppose I’ll try to work up the nerve for another swim before resorting to that.  Alas, sleepy again.

Much has happened since I retired for a nap.  

I had curled up on a musty box next to the stinky furnace.  I’d been cold ever since the fish tank debacle.  I don’t think I was asleep for long before I heard the sound of people crashing through the front door.  Disturbingly loud people.  Wholly unfamiliar sounding.  

I was terrified.  A skirmish between fear and curiosity raged within me, but soon fear was soundly defeated.  I am a cat after all.

As I stated before, humans look pretty much alike to me, but the two men I found upstairs were all but identical.  They wore matching blue clothing with black, metal and leather things all over, and they were awash in novel scents.  In spite of their resemblance to each other, they didn’t smell related.

They found Mommy quickly enough and they immediately became sad.  I wondered if they had known her.  They noticed me and spoke softly to me but I kept my distance for a while.  Curiosity doesn’t alway require unnecessarily hazardous proximity.

They looked in every room of the house, commented on the broken fish tank lid and mistakenly believed I had eaten some fish.  If only.

It wasn’t long before Dan arrived.

I was near sleep on the back of the couch when he came in and blabbered with the blue men.  By then they had given me some people food from the refrigerator and I had allowed them to pet me before I deposited some fur on their pants.  After a time, Dan came and sat on the couch and did something unusual.  He looked right at me, into my eyes.

He was utterly heartbroken, as was I.

As we stared at each other in our mutual sorrow, the gulf between us seemed to bridge some.  Always being the one to offer the first kind gesture, I moved toward him, and for once, he petted me.  He smelled so much more like Mommy than I remembered.  

He brushed tears from his face with his free hand and spoke.

“I guess I should thank you for not chewing on Mom, you little monster.  The police say that happens sometimes.”

I trilled a, “You’re welcome.” that I knew he wouldn’t understand.

“They tell me they can take you to the pound if I want, but I guess we can’t let that happen.”

I didn’t know what “the pound” was but I wondered if it wasn’t something akin to “The Vet.”

“Aunt Janet can’t take you because she has a big, mean dog that’ll try to eat you.” he said, with a weak smile.

I felt this was clearly not a sound option either.  Obviously it wasn’t news to me that Janet already had a pet.  Besides her inner smell being similar to Mommy’s, her outer aura was dominated by dog.  The only way Janet could’ve smelled anymore like a dog, is if she’d been one.

“Sara would’ve taken you in a heartbeat, but she’s been gone for years now, so I guess it’s just you and me, Winston.  So whadya say?  You want to come home with me?”

I stepped tentatively onto Dan’s lap, rolled over and began purring.  I hoped he understood this to mean, “Yes.”