Indoor Cat

In the months following the loss of his father, Richard began to obsess over death. He certainly wouldn't have described his behavior as such; cautious, maybe, with a greater awareness as to the fragility of life, but not obsessive. He bought a motorcycle helmet to wear in his car and started citing statistics about annual automotive fatalities. He kept his kitchen knives locked in a drawer because he heard a story once about a woman who had committed suicide while sleepwalking. His friends became concerned, but he blew them off with a casualness that belied his apparent anxieties.

Richard started dreaming about his father, the same dream every night. He was dancing with the old man in a festive banquet hall while a strange group of onlookers watched. It was a mid tempo dance, a waltz or something, and everyone was dressed as if attending a wedding. But it made no sense; Richard had never been married, and he'd certainly never waltzed with his father. The scene always fizzled out before the song ended, or else shifted into a more violent dream that inevitably ended with Richard falling off a cliff or being run over by a train.

All of this came to a head when Richard decided that he should clone his cat. He'd been collecting Gnocchi's old whiskers off the floor of his apartment for as long as he could remember. He kept the whiskers stashed in a small vial tucked away in his bedside drawer. He figured that these could be used to start the cloning process. 

Gnocchi had seemed lonely lately, and Richard was concerned about his health. He’d done everything in his power to stop the cat from feeling this way, but no amount of toys or stimulation or days off from work seemed to help stem the depression. Richard called the vet and found their advice to be supremely unhelpful.

"Mr. Connell, it's impossible to know for sure if cloning is a viable option for you and Gnocchi unless you bring him in for a checkup."

"I feel as though I've been very descriptive with my analysis here," Richard responded. "I don't see why you can't just send me the paperwork and we can all get on with our lives.”

In the end, Richard relented and brought Gnocchi to see the vet. After a harrowing ten minutes in the reception area, they were brought to a frigid exam room where a technician poked and prodded at Gnocchi until all parties seemed exhausted. 

The vet entered the room a few moments later with what Richard interpreted as an air of superiority.

"Richard," She said, smiling down at her paperwork. "It says here that you're interested in starting the cloning process for Gnocchi."

The cat looked out from his carrier with big eyes, as though he understood the conversation taking place.

Richard nodded. "That's right."

"Well, I have good news and bad news. And for once, that news is actually the same." The vet put her folder down on the countertop. "There’s no reason for your cat to be cloned."

Richard gulped. "I'm not sure what you mean," he said.

"Gnocchi is young. And very healthy. And while it is 2024 and there are actual options for genetic manipulation available to the public, I can't recommend that you pursue that avenue at this time."

Richard explained his situation - dead father, general unease surrounding death, knives locked in the drawer - but the vet was unwilling to hear his case. He paid the $70 for the checkup, quickly shuffled back out through the waiting room, and brought Gnocchi home.

He called the cloning company directly the next day. 

"Richard, it sounds like Gnocchi is an absolutely perfect candidate for our program." The representative was enthusiastic and had a slight Southern accent. "All that we need in advance is a fur or whisker specimen plus a tissue sample that you can get at any local veterinarian" (she somehow stretched this last word out to seven syllables). "You send that right along to our offices along with a $5,000 deposit and we will have everything that we need to create a genetically identical copy of your cat when the time is right."

Richard found it hard to believe that it was going to be so easy after all.

"So it's just those few little bits of him, and that's all that you need to make another?"

"That's it!" The rep sounded positively chipper. "But we are legally obligated to say that while this feline would be genetically identical, it will not be your Gnocchi. We take no responsibility for any radical differences in behavior, temperament, or otherwise. Realistically speaking, this will be an entirely different cat."

Richard had trouble falling asleep that night. An entirely different cat. The rep had emailed him the paperwork to begin the cloning process, and he'd read through it several times. The fine print was explicit in stating that this new cat would look like Gnocchi, but would not be Gnocchi. Deep down, Richard had always known that this would be the case, but it was jarring to hear it spoken aloud in such a decisive context. Gnocchi may be healthy now, but Richard didn't fully trust the vet, and besides, even with healthy pets - much like healthy humans - there was never a zero percent chance that something horrible couldn't happen at a moment's notice. Richard had cared for Gnocchi since the cat was 8 weeks old, and as he finally began to drift towards sleep, a blossoming part of him felt that he could almost certainly bring about the spirit of Gnocchi into whatever new version of the cat was eventually brought to life.

The dream came upon him almost immediately - banquet hall, waltzing, friends and coworkers gazing rapturously at the two men on the dance floor - but something was different this time. The man with whom Richard danced was not his father. The man looked like his father, and was wearing his father's old leather shoes and checkered pocket square, but there was something wrong. A glint in his eye, the way his hair was swept to the left of his face instead of the right. Richard stepped back from the man in surprise and suddenly awoke to find that it was morning, and Gnocchi was meowing from the living room.

The sense of his father's imposter hung over Richard as he pushed Gnocchi aside, climbed out of bed, and went to check on his cat, who continued to cry. When he reached the living room, he paused - Gnocchi wasn't on the couch, he wasn't under the coffee table, nor was he near the kitchen cupboards begging for treats - before turning towards the screen door to his small back patio.

"Shit. Oh no, oh Gnocchi."

The cat was outside, one paw latched into the screen door, meowing desperately to be let in. Richard ran to the screen, detached the paw, and yanked the door open. Gnocchi sat still for a beat and looked up at Richard before finally running inside.

The sleep had fallen off Richard instantaneously when he saw that his indoor cat had spent the night outside, but it still took him another full minute before realizing that Gnocchi had also slept with him all night and couldn't possibly have been out on the patio.

An entirely different cat.

Richard felt a soft fuzz form in his brain as several thoughts struck him at once. Was this still a dream? Had he actually cloned his cat? How much time had passed since he'd spoken to that representative? The new Gnocchi had walked into the kitchen and now sat waiting expectantly by Gnocchi’s treat cupboard. The cat was, for all intents and purposes, completely identical to Gnocchi. Olive eyes, a small bald patch behind the ears, distinct striping on the legs that aligned perfectly when it sat upright and attentive.

Slowly, as if the cat were foaming at the mouth, Richard crept past the kitchen and back into his bedroom. There was Gnocchi, sitting on the bed in a strikingly similar position to that of the strange cat. 

Richard called the cloning company in a panic. He didn't know what else to do and needed some kind of external reassurance that he wasn't going completely crazy. He was surprised to hear the woman he'd spoken to the day prior answer his call.

"I know this is going to sound strange," he said, pacing around his living room. "But did you... did you clone my cat already?"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line before the woman responded: "With whom am I speaking?"

Richard explained the situation and the representative, in turn, explained that it was impossible to clone an animal without gathering a tissue and whisker sample, let alone the $5000 deposit.

"Besides," she said, "with the time it takes to fertilize - plus the standard gestation period - well, there's no way you're getting a new cat in under 24 hours."

Gnocchi strolled into the kitchen while Richard was on the phone. The cat approached the new Gnocchi cautiously, shifting his weight back on his haunches as he sniffed the intruder.

"Gnocchi, no. Leave it." Richard grabbed a kitchen towel and tried to shoo Gnocchi back towards the bedroom, but this resulted in both cats scattering towards the living room, running circles around the coffee table, and bolting towards the back room. By the time Richard caught up, they had both flopped onto his shag carpet, facing one another, and Richard found it impossible to tell which cat was his Gnocchi.

The rest of the day was spent in a hazy delirium. Richard did everything he could to try and differentiate Gnocchi from the new Gnocchi, to no avail. The two cats enjoyed the same toys, used the same litter box, fell asleep in the same patch of sunlight. At one point, Richard succeeded in shooing what he thought to be the new cat outside onto the patio, but then the cat refused to leave and Gnocchi came to the door and meowed until Richard finally relented and let the second cat back inside. Maybe it had been Gnocchi all along, he couldn't be sure. Richard was kicking himself for the fact that he'd never bought a collar for Gnocchi; he never thought the identification would be needed.

As it quickly became apparent that the cat had nowhere better to be, Richard warmed up to the idea of keeping it inside for the night. After all, Gnocchi had perked up considerably upon the arrival of his new companion, showing no signs of territoriality or jealousy in the slightest. Richard poured some extra kibble in Gnocchi's bowl and enjoyed the sound of those two small mouths crunching in harmony as he prepared himself for bed.

Tomorrow, he thought. I'll bring the cats into the vet tomorrow and confirm exactly what's going on.

And then for the first time in over two months, Richard slept soundly. He didn't dream.

He awoke in the morning to pressure on his chest, and came to with a gasp. One of the cats was sitting on his ribcage, staring down at him intently. Richard suddenly felt very exposed. 

Are you Gnocchi? Are you… someone else? Those olive eyes flashed and expanded, an entire universe inside. Richard reached a hand out and tentatively scratched the bald spot behind the cat’s ears. It purred, softly and then with a stirring force.

Richard threw the vial of whiskers out first. He kept one, just in case, as a small token. He removed the lock from the knife drawer and stopped wearing his helmet in the car.

After a week had passed and the two cats had lived together harmoniously and issue-free, Richard drove to the pet store down the block. He bought two collars, both green. More Gnocchi, he’d come to realize, is never a bad thing.