Cat Party at the Edge of Oblivion

Under normal circumstances she would not have followed that cat. Had this been a typical day she would have walked right past and returned to her sparsely decorated studio apartment. She would have stripped off her dark-wash skinny jeans and grey tunic sweater that functioned as her millennial invisibility cloak and traded them for leggings and an old sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of a prestigious university that she had not attended. She would have made a bowl of buttered noodles and watched reruns of Friends until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. 

Had she been a typical woman, she would have rushed down the street like the tall man in the ill-fitting suit who had just unceremoniously deposited his leather messenger bag on the opposite pavement and broken into a sprint or the small woman whose loudly patterned Vera Bradley purse knocked into her as she pushed by, tripping on urban tumbleweeds: crumpled receipts, a Doritos bag, a coke bottle filled with a liquid far too yellow to be coke. She would not have picked up the trail of a scrawny tabby cat as it slunk lazily down the street. But Emily felt that if it wasn’t immediately evident to her where she should be or who she should be with at a time like this, she needn’t be in a rush to be anywhere or see anyone. She was surprised to find no sadness inside her at this thought but a growing sense of rightness. They would all be alone by day’s end. 

The cat picked its way over the detritus without pause, its many-colored coat gleaming, illuminating flashes of buttery yellow, burnt orange and chestnut brown, as it passed through beams of sunlight. It leapt forward as a discarded phone blared out an alarm tone and Emily’s heart raced as she feared it would skitter away between buildings but it merely slowed again as the tone was taken up from windows and cracked screens laying on the sidewalk, becoming mundane in its ubiquity. She had not been able to shake the feeling that the alarm sounded just like the opening notes of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance and it had incongruously been running through her head all day. 

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Just Dance, gonna be ok, da da doo-doo-mmm

She found the directive to seek shelter to be absurd. Once the phrase “planet killer” was out there, really what was the point? Was her apartment's dank basement somehow not a part of the planet that was soon to be obliterated. If there were bunkers somewhere where fatcats were sipping champagne and eating caviar as they waited to lord over the coming wasteland, she would certainly not be invited to join them. So instead she continued to follow the cat, beginning now to subtly hunch her back forward and stretch out her arms as she walked, in imitation of its posture. 

It paused at an alley next to a convenience store with its door hanging open like a flapping bandaid waiting for someone to muster the courage to just pull the last bit off. Its ears twitched as it stood at attention and its eyes darted back and forth. They stopped on Emily and seemed to evaluate her before its muscles relaxed and eyes softened. This human was clearly not a threat. It turned to walk down the alley and Emily let go of the breath that she did not realize she had been holding and continued, hot on its tail. 

It stayed close to the brick walled buildings as it crawled behind trash cans and unwanted furniture until turning into a small alcove underneath a fire escape. Heather had to clamber over a dirty mattress to follow and found herself being stared down by four cats now, lined up like a firing squad to face her. After a moment, however, just like her cat (as she now thought of the orange tabby), they relaxed and returned to their individual pursuits. Apparently, they were willing to take in a stray. 

Her orange tabby began making itself at home, stretching out then rolling into a ball on the pavement in a slice of sunshine. A larger tabby in darker shades of brown lumbered over to claim his share of the light, nudging her cat with a large head that had a prominent M shape over the eyes, making it look like some kind of back-alley superhero. An improbably glossy and sleek black cat hopped onto a wooden back chair listing dangerously to the left and surveyed the scene imperiously. The last appeared to be the elder statesman of the group with a shaggy grey fur imitating a beard and wide slanted yellow eyes. He licked his paw and swiped it over the top of his head, brushing a scraggly ear with a small chunk missing. 

Emily lowered herself to sit criss-cross against the wall. She thought briefly of the people she had known: her parents who had been kind but distant and were long gone now, her childhood best friend who had turned a childhood of doll photo shoots with disposable cameras into an illustrious career in photography and stopped returning her phone calls, her highschool English teacher who wrote excited feedback on her short story not knowing that she submitted it for every creative writing assignment and would never write another, her coworker with the perfect button nose with a smattering of freckles across it who said good morning and good night to her every day. She hoped that they were all finding peace in their own ways. 

As the brick wall began to dig uncomfortably into her back, Heather stood suddenly and thought, as long as they were there, they might as well make a party of it. She rolled herself awkwardly over the mattress again, feeling confident that her feline companions would be waiting for her when she returned. She trekked back down the alley and into the corner convenience store. It appeared to have been half heartedly looted with one shelf pushed over and most of the candy bars missing from the front counter. A sudden blaring reached her ears from the counter as a cracked screen lit up. 

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Just dance, spin that record, babe, da da doo-doo-mmm

She wandered through the aisles, dumping items largely at random into a reusable grocery tote from the register. She had collected a pint of cookie dough ice cream, cheddar and sour cream chips, something called freeze dried candy and a large bag of caramel creams when she arrived at a small display of party decorations. She scooped up the small plates decorated with rainbow confetti and what looked to her like off-brand Sesame Street characters as well as a banner with letters dangling to spell “Hot Girl Birthday” and neon colored party hats. She finished in the prepared foods section by emptying the shelf of all of its remaining cans of tuna.

She paused as she walked past the register. She wasn’t a religious person but if there was some sort of cosmic register of good and bad deeds, it seemed like a foolish time to tip the scales against herself. She searched the small backpack she had forgotten she was wearing and found seven dollars and eighty-seven cents. It certainly wasn’t enough to actually pay for everything she had collected but she hoped the gesture would suffice as she left it on the counter. 

Upon her return to the alley hideout, Emily found the cats in much the same positions she had left them in, as though they were waiting for her return and they barely flinched as she stumbled in again. She set about carefully laying out five plates in a small circle. She tied one end of the banner to the broken chair and the black cat stretched its back and narrowed its eyes, giving it the look of an evil genius plotting world domination as it watched her. She couldn’t find anywhere to tie the other end and left it lamely dangling onto the ground. She turned back to the bag to find her orange tabby poking her (she had decided it was a her) pink nose into the bag and the others closing in behind her. 

The alarm tone was suddenly near at hand again and the cats jumped to attention. Emily realized that she still had her own phone in her bag and pulled it out to see the increasingly dire warning. 

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Just dance, gonna be okay, d-d-d-dance

She turned and hurled the phone as far as she could down the alley which, while being embarrassingly close (she never had been much of an athlete), was far enough to reduce the noise to a distant whine and a feeling of calm was restored to the group. 

At this, the attention of the party returned to the mysterious bag and she began pulling out the food. A perceivable shiver went around the group at the sound of the first can of tuna popping and she was regaled with a chorus of meows. The large, brown tabby pushed his way to the front as she dumped the fragrant fish onto the first plate but quickly retreated as the black cat approached. As soon as she had filled each plate and directed each cat to their own she sat down on the concrete to prepare her own last meal. 

She pulled the elastic of a bright pink party hat over her chin as she munched and considered doing the same for her new friends but decided to spare them the indignity and herself the potential scratch wounds. She started making a puddle of ice cream on the ground, pausing as she remembered reading that dairy is actually bad for cats then continuing as she remembered that there wouldn’t be time for it to matter. She smiled as she thought that this might just be the most interesting thing she had ever done and no one would ever know about it. What a reel this would have made #catparty #endoftheworld.

She suddenly recalled a phone call with her childhood best friend. They had been in high school and her parents weren’t willing to spring for a cell phone so she sat on a kitchen stool, twirling the curly phone cord around her hand as they talked. Her friend had asked her to say something truly random, as though begging her to dig inside herself to dredge up an ounce of creative thought. She had felt panicked and frozen and responded “ceramic skunk.” This had appeared to be satisfactory until the next time they had sat in that wood panelled kitchen after school and her friend had noticed the small skunk figurine wearing a blue sweater that was perched on a shelf over the sink. Emily had never forgotten the look of disappointment that crossed her friend’s face at discovering that there really wasn’t anything beneath the surface. She wondered if this affair would pass her friend’s unspoken challenge. 

Her tabby seemed to have eaten her fill and climbed into her lap as Emily shifted to lean against the brick wall. She felt the warm weight on her thighs and ran her hand down the soft orange fur. The cat began to purr as darkness descended around them. 

Dance, dance, just, j-j-just dance