Moonchild

For all of my long life, I’d never had to think about what I was. That was until my companion explained that I was Moonchild the cat and he was Charlie the human. That conversation had arisen following a strange change that overcame me six months after he came home from this thing he called “college”. When I called then for Charlie to clean out my feces place, it wasn’t a trembling mreeow that left my mouth. Rather, it sounded more like Charlie.

“Be a dear and clean my droppings,” I said again as the human crawled across the floor before holding me in trembling paws.

“Y-you can talk?”

Evidently, cats weren’t meant to make such sounds. The look in his eyes led me to fear that I would be taken to the scary humans with the large teal maws who took advantage of ailing cats, who would use their claws to take my mouth and throat apart. Oh, who knew just what they would’ve done to a talking cat?

In the end, Charlie didn’t take me to the “vet", as they were called. It was a legitimate fear to be had, though!

No, he instead sat me down with him before the large glowing box, which had always caught my eye. That was a lion, he said about the figure dashing across the surface of the box, it was closer to me than I was to him. Then that was a gazelle, chased by the lion, kin to neither of us.

I watched as Charlie cheered for the predator as it clawed at the prey’s hind, before delivering a crushing bite onto its neck. Though I thought nothing of it at the time, it soon struck me as odd, as only a few days later, he witnessed much the same thing, but he did that thing humans did where water leaked from their eyes. He promptly had to leave the room when he saw the infant the prey gazelle had left on its lonesome.

When he returned, the glowing box was showing a furless man deftly avoiding blows from an uncouth cat, and I scoffed at the rascal. Such savagery was unbecoming, as the man was clearly not a vet. I then asked where Charlie’s parents were, as their absence had been bothering me for a while. They were much better at cleaning my feces place and more generous with food offerings. Though they also kept dragging me to the vet, especially as I grew older.

“They moved in with my sister, the girl who liked placing fruit peels on your head and made you nibble her finger. She got married earlier this year, and their place had the best cardiologists for dad. They couldn’t bring you along ‘cause her little girl’s allergic to cats.”

The foreign sounds of “married”, “cardiologist,” and “allergic” weighed on my eyelids, and I drifted off. As I awoke at the dead of night, Charlie came in from the dark covered in dirt. He clutched a swollen right front paw.

When I asked what had happened, he admitted to falling off the roof and spraining his paw. It became all the clearer to me that our natures were different, as a cat wouldn’t make such a graceless mistake.

I should’ve caught on to that fact much earlier, though, when I realized we disposed of our waste differently. The humans of this house used an imposing white implement, nothing like my modest container. Perhaps its construction in some way aided defecation, which I knew to be quite terrible at times for humans. As evidenced by the groans and cries I sometimes heard from them during the act. Still, further investigation might be needed, as there was much more to learn.

With the fragility of the human creature in mind, I swore to be more vigilant, to watch over Charlie while he nursed his injury.

By the next day, his right paw was consumed by a strange black layer called a splint. He was forced into a life of little movement, no longer occupying himself with bizarre motions of lifting objects and putting them back down, and thankfully, he stopped humping the floor too. His ability to prepare offerings suffered, though. One time, he even overflooded my food container until it spilled onto the floor. Not that I complained.

I nonetheless felt terrible for his condition and offered to find my own food. This cat was once a fierce killer, like the lion caged in the glowing box. After all, I too was caged whenever they brought me to the vet. I saw it as a sign of fear and reverence, so I showed them mercy whenever they let me out.

Alas, that past had passed.

I believed I was still capable enough, though.

“Don’t. You’ll harm the native birds,” Charlie said without a second thought as I consumed yet another fallen morsel.

There he went again, speaking words I didn’t understand. Harm? Birds? Animals eat animals; the birds surely knew this as well. It was no different from what was seen on the glowing box, yet it was a problem for me. I knew humans invented bizarre rules for themselves, but I didn’t think they would’ve extended to their cats as well.

Speaking of, Charlie told me his father was a recipient of this thing called “pension”. I believed I was much in the same way entitled to a pension of food over a period of time, for my past dedication to hunting mice and other nuisances. This was simply a generous offer to alleviate that burden on my compromised companion.

Nonetheless, I let the matter go.

“Why were you up on the roof anyway, boy?”

“You get a pretty sick view up there, you know, and it helps clear my head.”

I wondered how that worked. Perhaps it was the same as clearing my droppings.

While I pondered that thought, however, I was met with yet another peculiarity. Around the end of the week, Charlie uttered a word that set off something within me. I scrambled over to him at the sound of it, and I wondered if I had turned fully animal again.

What he said was “pancakes”. That was the name of the food item he prepared, in consideration of his right paw’s still limited mobility. He let out a strange noise that almost sounded like a struggle for air as he watched me scramble, and he said I must’ve been getting better if my appetite was that strong. However, the morsel itself was rather mundane in appearance, and I didn’t wish to eat it.

It consisted of odd brown discs stacked atop each other, mired with holes on their lighter bottom side. A viscous substance seemed to ooze from a pale, odd dollop set atop the dish. Before I could ask what sort of animal it was, it shrunk to a puddle. Water didn’t shed from Charlie’s eyes this time, confusingly enough.

“This thing seems to call to something deep within my memories, far before my sudden speech… though I can’t tell what,” I struck the pancakes several times, the goo coating my paw.

“Pancakes was your old name,” Charlie stroked the back of my ear, “The shelter named you after the golden brown fur on your head, with that creamy patch in the middle. You’d come running whenever we mentioned pancakes at breakfast, though, so my dad changed your name to Moonchild. In The Court of the Crimson King was the first record he ever—"

“Did he change your name as well?”

The human shook his head. Yet they found the authority to change mine. Not that I minded, really. I didn’t even recall being anybody other than Moonchild.

Still, I wondered what Pancakes was like. Was she as magnanimous as I? Or was she a brash young cat? There was no way for me to know, as the past had passed. And yet, I couldn’t shake these thoughts. I was compelled to know, now that my mind was beyond that of any other cat. Perhaps I just wanted to be convinced of my hunting prowess. I had been quite docile the past few vet sessions, hardly finding a scratch within me as they prodded and jabbed. If only I understood what they were saying about me.

As the next week passed, the longing crept deeper under my fur, and I wondered if I had fleas again. Charlie’s injury had almost healed, and I realized one thing I had been living without.

It was when the human showed me, through his smaller glowing box, the likeness of another, tinier human. She had been given the name Evelyn, the offspring of Charlie’s sister, the one “allergic” to cats, whatever that meant. Her skin reminded me of that pale substance atop the pancakes, and I worried she’d melt too. She thankfully didn’t, though.

She reached out a pudgy front paw, but we couldn’t touch. Her every action was so clumsy that I thought she’d hurt herself. I couldn't bear to watch.

It struck me then that I never had a child of my own. All creatures yearned to bear offspring. And yet, I hadn’t felt such drive. I’d seen cats such as myself in the moments I was let out of the home under Charlie’s strict watch, but I had no desire to mate with them. I must’ve been missing something fundamental within myself.

“Why was that?” I asked Charlie later the same day as he sifted through a closet full of VHS tapes. I had learned many words, though so many things still left me confused.

“You were spayed when you were little. The vet made it so you couldn’t breed.”

The nonchalance in his voice irritated me so, especially as he continued his rummaging, and it would continue to irritate me.

I regretted showing mercy to those vile vets. However, when I saw them a couple of days later, I didn’t find it in me to even hiss. My lethargy had come to a head, and my appetite suffered even further. That day, Charlie served me the bright, fatty fish, and it was the first time I’d failed to finish such a decadent meal. All the while, strange misgivings continued to weigh on me.

Charlie said I was 68 in human years, a figure of no value to me until he mentioned his father being of similar age. Water leaked out of his eyes again when he spoke of the man. It did so too during the vet visit. He held me tighter than usual then and asked what he was to do. I didn’t know what he meant.

One afternoon, though I couldn’t tell you anymore how many days had passed, when the house was the same color as the fish I hadn’t finished, I found Charlie sitting again in front of the large glowing box. Within it was displayed the visage of his father, albeit not as I remembered it. The man’s fur was darker, thicker. I wondered why he had been trapped inside the box until the view shifted and revealed a male human child playing with a cat. A voice then called out my name—No, it called out for Pancakes.

“Mreeow”, she responded. She had vigor.

The Charlie I knew noticed my stalking and invited me to share a seat with him. His trembling front left paw fed pancake slices into his gaping mouth as I watched the cat in the box gaze out the window at the glowing orb in the black sky. The human beside me talked about how Moonchild fit me, as I used to spend many a night staring longingly at that orb.

“How is it showing my past…?”

“It’s called a TV. You’re not actually inside it. It’s more like replaying a memory.”

“Why would you do that? The past has passed. It’s not as if you could change it,” I licked my paw.

“Well, I guess it’s exactly ‘cause we can’t do anything about it. One day, this’ll be all we’ve got left,” he pointed at the “TV”.

Charlie then told me about cameras, but the concept went over my head. He might as well have been meowing. A demonstration was instead deemed more effective, so he produced a smaller TV, the same one Evelyn was caged in. He pointed it at me and told me to do whatever I pleased. I hadn’t eaten much, so I helped myself to the human’s pancakes.

They weren’t particularly pleasant, lukewarm to the tongue and tasting of nothing. I now had a hard time finding my old name flattering, knowing this was how it tasted. Charlie only looked on with lips curving upwards. I wish I knew what that meant because it made me self-conscious after a while, and so I went over to him. He then showed me what his device had captured: a memory of me eating his food and his skittering voice.

“Is… is that truly me?”

I had gotten very skinny, and my movements looked as laborious as they felt, even just to sustain myself. The sight twisted something deep in my chest, though it was something I couldn’t express, as I wasn’t like Charlie. My face couldn’t contort like his could. All I could do was curl up once more and decline the rest of his pancakes.

He carried me back to my bed. It was where I'd spent most of these days.

“Moonchild,” Charlie ran a paw all the way down to my tail, “The vet said we could either bring you over and… put you to sleep, or let it run its course at home. I know you were upset about the spaying thing and the name thing, so you deserve to know about this. What do you think?”

Even through vague terms, I could tell what he meant. I reflected the question at him. He didn’t know either.

We left it there. I went to sleep earlier than usual, though much time was spent trying to fall asleep.

But I couldn’t wait for the day to come. I left the house and made the best of what my aged gait could still do for me. Now I was a mess of shallow breaths atop a tree, and a gentle night breeze ran through my tousled fur.

I wondered what I was actually doing. I knew that I shouldn’t be outside without Charlie’s careful watch, and I’ve heard of cat burglars, but something within me still drove me up this tree with no way down.

And although I almost slipped several times in the process, that thing further drove me to one last leap to the roof of our house. I looked up then at the moon as I must’ve done many times. Charlie said he’d go up here to clear his head, but I didn’t know how he did that. The words that I had just gotten familiar with had all been reduced once again to incoherence. I didn’t think cats should be thinking in the first place.

And I must’ve been lost in thought for a long time because eventually, Charlie came up as well. His belabored breathing gave away his presence before he even stuck his head up. That strange gasping noise left his lips again as he scaled the last bit of roof, and he inched towards me, almost losing his footing.

“I’ve been looking all over for you… What’re you doing, hiding up here?”

Charlie didn’t wait for an answer. He began holding me in his paws once more. Water trickled from his eyes, and I had an inkling of what it meant now. It was odd how humans had so many words, yet chose none of them to say what they most deeply meant.

“I just didn’t want you to see me like this… For the last time to be a sad occasion.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help crying.”

That’s what it was called.

“It was a shame, more than anything, that there was still so much left to learn. About who I was before I became like this, about the strange things you humans do to cats,” I paused, “Although maybe we make you perform bizarre acts as well. I can’t think of any other animal that lets another animal clean its waste.”

He made that noise again. I asked him about it.

“It’s called a laugh. Humans do it when we’re happy.”

“I like that better,” I closed my eyes, “Your conventions confuse me to no end.”

“Do you… wish you were still an ordinary cat?”

I shook my head, a gesture I’d seen Charlie do.

“I’m not so sure… I at least have many more concerns. You humans live much longer than cats, so I dread the possibility of you and everybody else forgetting me, much as I forgot my old self.”

I won’t, he maybe said; he wouldn’t forget. All sounds were faint now.

It felt like the sun was enveloping me, and I couldn’t tell between his caressing fingers and the breeze. I thought of many more questions, such as what married, cardiologist, and allergic meant, or why he could breed with human females freely while I had to be spayed, or what in the world utility bills were, but they drifted before I could raise them.

For the longest time, not a single word was exchanged between us, but at least I now understood one more thing about humans and the words they spoke and chose not to speak.

The warmth of Charlie’s body beckoned me into a deep sleep, and he called for Moonchild one more time.

“Take care of the cats in your glowing boxes,” I told him as the drowsiness became irresistible.