Fortuna

Update: Not a horror story! I didn’t realize the prompt was not in “General”. Could be worth skimming through tho ;)

There are many evenings when I manage to romanticize my walk home from work. It doesn’t matter that more than half of my day is lost as long as my hippie floral boots look cute while I’m dragging them through piles of crunchy leaves in shades of copper and dark mahogany, I say to myself. Nor does it matter that one of my headphones is no longer working, creating an irritating imbalance between the left and right side of my head, not as long as I get to listen to the newest “cosy fall vibes” playlist with one ear, and to the soothing sound of rain with the other one. 

But today none of the tricks are working. My pumpkin spice latte is cold, my eyes are teary from the wind, and some pigeon went to the loo on my brand new chestnut “must-have clothes in the shades of fall” sweater. So when I saw her, a puny black cat, all wet from the rain and shivering under an overfilled waste bin, I felt I wasn’t the only one fed up with the discomforts of urban life. 

I start walking towards her, aware that I have no food to give her, and that she might in return gift me with fleas. Just as I was about to bend down and pet her, she ran to the other side of the street, crossing between cars like she really did have nine lives. My heart stopped for a moment, fearing she might get crushed, but then I saw her hiding behind the tire of a Mercedes. Nice pick. 

A shrill laugh came from my right. A woman in her late fifties or early sixties is sitting on the kerb, grinning friskily, with three of her front teeth missing and many more rotten. 

“The black cat passed right in front of you, miss. That means bad luck, that is.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Sure is, miss. I saw it with my eyes.” She points her index finger at her forehead. “ I shoo her whenever she gets close.”

“What did you see?”

“The bad luck, that is.” 

I reach for my purse and grab a two-pound coin, then I throw it in the branded coffee cup she was keeping in front of her feet. It was all wet and empty. 

“That won’t make the bad luck go away, miss.” 

“That’s not why I did it.”

The woman reaches for the cup, grabs the coin and puts it in her pocket. 

“And there’s no such thing as luck. Not coming from a stray cat, anyway. See? I got shat on by a pigeon today, isn’t that supposed to bring me good luck? Isn’t that some other superstition?”

The woman is now laughing again, clapping her knees with the palms of her wrinkled hands. 

“But nothing happened, nothing changed. Nothing ever does. I’ll just walk down this street, again and again, tomorrow and the day after that and so on, and I’ll just go back to work and - ”

I was making a scene in front of a homeless person about having to go to work. I looked around me, and two women with a stroller, a man in a suit, and three preteens were staring our way. Suddenly, I felt the urge to cry and in an attempt to get a napkin from my bag and hopefully distract myself, I spilt what was left of the lukewarm latte on my sweater and jeans. 

“See, I told you, miss. Bad luck!” The woman is now laughing loudly, almost hysterically, agitating her hands up and down in enthusiasm. 

When I got home, I put the brown sweater straight into the trash. That wasn’t very mature of me. 

My therapist found the story amusing as well, which didn’t exactly make me feel better. She laughed gently, shortly before looking down at her lap when I told her about my public outburst. Her face seemed to say “It’s normal to be self-centred from time to time.” Anyway, I couldn’t have been that unbearable of a patient - I tried to make my own depression funny, and Dr Martin seemed to find half of my self-deprecating jokes genuinely amusing. 

I took a slightly different route from the office from the next day onwards. Again, not very mature of me. I would have taken the bus, but I promised myself I would do some physical exercise for the sake of my already shrivelling mental health.

The next week, my left headphone gave in as well, halfway through my journey home, which left me with a little more than a mile to walk in the company of my thoughts and the erratic sounds of the streets. I kept thinking about what Dr Martin had said in one of our sessions, that whenever a real fear resurfaces in my mind, I push it back even further than it was initially buried, or disguise it as something else, more shallow. I found her observation quite unfair at the time. I am doing the work, choosing to go and pay for therapy and all, even walking four bloody miles each day and calling my mom and dad every other day. That doesn’t look like concealing stuff to me. But then I scrolled through a list of a dozen people I cut out of my life without a confrontation. Closure is overrated, I thought. I also reflected on how I hate my job but barely do anything about it, except buy pretty coffee mugs and hope the work is going to get better if I look at the motivational posters in the office for long enough. Nobody likes working, I thought. And, with the utmost discomfort, I remembered how I nearly yelled at a homeless person because of her black-cat-bad-luck comment; my fury, doubled later by shame, originated not in a fear of superstitions, but in a fear of ending up like her. Mostly figuratively. 

So when I saw her, shiny black fur and eyes the shape of beads and the colour of seaweed, looking my way from the top of a pile of carton boxes, I pictured her wrapped in blankets on my sofa like she’d been there every day of her life. Taking her home with me wasn’t even a decision. It felt more like something that I had just remembered to do, such as buying milk or checking that I had my keys before leaving the flat. 

However, she wasn’t easy to approach. It took me three attempts on three different evenings to get closer than three feet to her. I brought cat food with me each time, and each time I would worry that I might not find her, that she had been taken to the horrible animal shelter in our town or worse. But each time I caught sight of her, swinging her fluffy tail left and right, my chest would fill with joy. 

On the seventh day, I made the bold move of picking her up in my arms. She didn’t resist. 

“You tamed the bad luck”, said the woman who slept on the corner of that street. She was smoking a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and one of her eyes was swollen. I felt so sorry for her that I wept. At that moment, my gut was telling me that this world, so full of misery and injustice, was simply not worth it; that going to therapy and talking about my longing desire for connection, or about my catastrophic romantic relationships, was simply selfish. I could have it in life so much worse, or so much better, yet it wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I felt overwhelmed. 

“I’m taking her home with me. I’m adopting her.”

“That’s nice.” She smiled half her mouth open and I could see a tear coming out of her healthy eye. Maybe she was fond of the cat after all. 

I named her Fortuna, Latin for luck. She was bold, even defiant, and bathing her and taking her to the vet were both nightmares. The vet said it might take her a while to get used to staying inside, so I should be careful opening doors and windows, and I could even consider teaching her to go on walks on a leash. 

Dr Martin thought adopting Fortuna was a wonderful idea. Having her around the flat has made me highly emotional, and I must have cried in our first two months together more than I had in two years, which of course served as rich material for analysis. Fortuna has unlocked a frozen part of my spectrum of emotions. I cared for her strongly, feeling intense positive emotions whenever she did something that amazed me in any way. Turns out not at all strong sensations have to come from despising my stupid job, reflecting on my loneliness, or reminiscing about the man who broke my heart and instead of apologizing, said I had a personality disorder and screwed my closest friend. 

Some days I would lie on the kitchen floor and just look at her. She could have cuddled up in the armchair in the living room, in the cat cave I bought for her from Ikea, or in the top drawer of the wardrobe where I keep my towels, yet she chose to just lie on her side on the cold floor tiles. I often wondered if her choice was random. I’m no artist, but the way frizzy locks of fur were gathering around her belly, messy and perfect at the same time, was a work of art. She’s a cat, a feline - an animal - I’d often think, and I have no clue what’s going on in that tiny head of hers, yet we somehow live happily together. 

And despite not understanding her, and frequently oscillating between considering her a food-driven being that manipulates me in the sweetest ways, and a highly sophisticated presence with an agenda of her own, I was starting to experience spurs of happiness. She is the best bad luck I ever had. 

I followed the vet’s advice and taught Fortuna to walk on a leash. My downstairs neighbours, two grumpy and nosy women in their sixties that I never knew whether they were lovers or siblings were looking at me and my cat like I had lost my mind. No - it was more than that: they looked at me with a hint of pity that I was probably going nuts, but also like they saw it coming sooner or later. On our walks, Fortuna and I would sometimes encounter the old bagger. I would bring her pastry, coffee or cigarettes. She would talk to Fortuna more than she would talk to me, yet it was often in the form of answering something I said. “Don’t you forget the dump you came from, you bonny beast!”, she’d exclaim, or “Glad you’re not eating trash no more”. Or “Now the rats are getting ballsy”. Sometimes she would become frenzied, swearing a lot or saying cruel, graphic things with no particular target. Once she told me she saw her brother’s throat get cut right in front of her eyes. Another time, that her baby had died bitten by a stray dog. I didn’t know what to believe. On those occasions, I would just walk away on the verge of crying, doing my best not to drag Fortuna through puddles. 

According to Dr Martin, I listen to the woman's horrific stories and tattle to make myself suffer or feel guilty. Why? That was up to me to dig for. My initial guess was that I felt guilty for being privileged, yet not making “the best out of my life” - whatever that means - always saying “no” to social opportunities and instead budging the same bewildering thoughts from one corner of my mind to another. She wasn’t satisfied. I continue saying that because I failed to appreciate the luxuries of modern life, focusing instead on bitching about the 9 to 5 scheme and how we all suck it up and then numb ourselves with poche designer clothes and cars, I deserved to be reminded of how far worse things could get. That didn’t impress Dr Martin either. To be honest, she looked rather bored, and I nearly told her that I bet she benefited from women’s lack of self-esteem as a result of being exposed to impossible beauty standards in the media for years. But that would have been unnecessary and uncool, and maybe Dr Martin was just a tad sleepy, or I was projecting, being myself bored with my insurgent bullshit. Insurgent ideas - no need to put myself down like that. Anyway, I continued to speculate, finally pleading that I was lonely, and dissatisfied with most human interactions - no, my interactions - and at least the pitiful woman didn’t speak about five-year plans. Dr Martin raised one of her eyebrows. “Go on”. She made me feel special like I wasn’t just wasting my breath on trendy nail colour talk, but rather speaking to someone who, like me, had no one, and unlike me, could do very little to change that. The nail colour comment was also uncool - I was surrounded by smart people, and it was me that failed to connect with them on a deeper level. Dr Martin looked pleased. “We should start from here next time.” 

When I took Fortuna from the vet after her neutering surgery, I thought I would die of worry. She was unlike herself for a whole week, not getting down from the armchair in the kitchen. I would pour drops of water inside her recovery cone, knowing that she would lick them before they’d reach her ebony fur, and this way get hydrated. I didn’t leave her alone the whole week for more than twenty minutes. On Thursday, my downstairs neighbours came up to check I was still alive. That was comforting. 

After a week, she started walking around the house, bumping into every corner of furniture because of the recovery cone. It would crack me up to see her so clumsy, unable to work out the dimensions of the cone and then simply adjust her movements. After a few more days, things went back to normal. She started jumping out of wardrobe drawers and running to the kitchen whenever I would rustle a paper bag or open the fridge. When I was starting the coffee machine, she would come, jump on the counter, and smell all its buttons. In the morning, I would feel her delicate whiskers tickling my cheeks, so I started waking up early on weekends too. It wasn’t so bad. When she would go exploring around the flat, smelling every pair of my shoes that I’m sure she must have smelled dozens of times already, she looked like she was on an adventure, genuinely taking an interest in the objects I dumped in the hallway. I would say to myself “she’s such her own person”. Funny - the downstairs neighbours must have a point since Fortuna is not even a person. 

In late February, an alert was sent by the local council about excruciatingly low temperatures expected that weekend. I started to worry about the bagger - was she holding up, perhaps going to a shelter? The last time I saw her, she was awfully quiet. I suspected she was unwell but I didn’t know what to do about it. Actually, she only asked me if she could hold Fortuna in her arms for a little while. I wasn’t pleased - I had often heard her say ruthless stories about slaughtered pigs or hens. But I let her, and Fortuna started purring in her lap, and for a brief moment, it felt like I was the outsider in the picture. 

“She ain’t no bad luck”, she said while caressing Fortuna’s ears, “You could name her Lucky, miss.” 

I wanted to tell her that’s sort of what I did but just nodded and smiled. “Thanks”. I’m the lucky one.

I put on the thickest clothes I had, grabbed an extra winter hat and a scarf and started looking for her. I couldn’t find her in any of her usual spots. That is a good sign, I thought. Maybe she went to a homeless shelter. But I returned home feeling uneasy. 

When I didn’t see her the next week either, I searched for the closest shelter and headed there to inquire about her. I knew so little about the woman, at times I felt I couldn’t even describe what she looked like. Probably because at times, I was afraid to look at her, out of fear of making her feel judged, or under observation. Especially during one of her hysterical and maniacal outbursts of laughter after making a gross joke, I felt ashamed to look at her, as if looking at her would take her joy away - a joy I couldn’t understand, but didn’t want to ruin. 

Still, a comely representative of the shelter recognized her. 

“Was she someone close to you?”

“No. I would just see her sometimes.”

“I see. I regret telling you this, but she died last week.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip. “Would you mind sharing her name? Just her given one.”

“Sure, let me check.” The woman types something on her computer. 

“She’s been with our shelter for over ten years, yet I am afraid we can’t know for sure if this information is accurate. It shows here her name was -” and she turns the computer screen towards me. 

“Lucky. Thank you.”

I quit my job the next day.