One Way To Do It

“Take a daily walk,” my therapist told me. A daily walk would help manage my weight and might improve my mood.

Sure, I thought. A walk would make all the stuff in my head disappear. I nodded politely with a smile that rivaled the Mona Lisa and waited patiently for my session to be over. Yet another fruitless attempt at combatting an issue so ingrained that it successfully dodged all attempts at destruction. I pitied my therapist and her feckless attempts. The only real solution might have to be amputation.

Thankfully, the hour ended, and I paid my small fortune and propelled myself into the daylight and air that wasn’t drenched in lavender essential oil. My car would be my salvation. My car was where I could plug my music in and pretend I was someone important. My car had the cold cup of $1 coffee waiting for me in the cupholder. But my car–at least a few decades old–had picked that moment on that day to stop working like it had been threatening to do for the past week. I turned the key a few times more, hoping effort might persuade the engine to turn over, and I could avoid losing another small fortune that would go to the few luxuries I had in life–like food.

Nope.

I got out of the car, taking my coffee with me, and slammed the door.

Now what?

I looked back from whence I came–my therapist’s window interrupting the severe facade of an industrial park building.

“Why don’t you call a tow truck?” her voice echoed in my mind like some real-world Jimminy Cricket. I took out my phone and opened a search window.

That’s when I felt it: a small, lithe body, softened by a slick fur coat but sinewy underneath, wrapping itself around and between my legs. I looked down, and she peered up at me meaningfully and chirped the only way cats could.

Was this a new friend? My therapist was always telling me to try making new friends. I stooped down and lightly brushed the top of the cat’s head, covered in slightly dirty but neat black fur. No matter what, this cat kept tidy.

But my fingers could only graze the tips of her ears as she jerked her head away and bared her teeth to “hiss” or try to–like she didn’t want to, but if I stepped too far…brother, she’d let me have it. The cat reared back, rotated 180 degrees, and sauntered away, hind quarters up high, tail even higher, swaying with her momentum. 

I couldn’t say precisely why, but I began to follow her. We traveled across the expansive parking lot in the glare of the mid-day sun and out to the sidewalk, where she turned right and swayed on ahead, never looking back–either fully aware and secure in my following her or blithely unaware and unbothered.

Regardless, she walked with the confidence of someone completely at home on the streets. She seemed to know every possible impediment–an errant tree branch, downed by atmospheric breezes; a fire hydrant; a discarded beer can–and avoided them, not by snaking her way around them, but by angling her trajectory with laser precision so that she successfully gave any and all urban detritus wide-enough birth. She was tough, unaffected, but stepped carefully. I imagined life would be tough for a stray cat–having to fend for oneself; feed off scraps or hunt for vermin; find warm, dry spaces to rest in without exposing your physical vulnerabilities; and deal with the constant irritation of rough concrete on your soft toe beans. Most domestic cats had become accustomed to the creature comforts of living with people who would provide food, shelter, and safety. Shit, if those cats were ever abandoned. Most of them, I imagined, wouldn’t survive.

I wouldn’t survive.

At the corner, she stopped, sat down for a rest, casually licked her paw, and ran it over her face. Something in me wanted to scoop her up and carry her back to my car, call a tow truck for my one last high-ticket piece of property, and find my way to a pet store for cat food, toys, a bed, everything that would make her comfortable. She would be mine, the funny, little reject. And we would live together, each other’s last connection with another living thing. I wouldn’t need to keep buying and killing plants anymore. I wouldn’t need to spend so much time on social media anymore–doom-scrolling and stalking the people I used to know and their perfect lives. I’d have someone to care for, and she would take me out of myself. I’d have someone to live for. My therapist would be proud.

But what would I do when she inevitably died? She wasn’t a kitten, which meant we would only have a couple of years together, statistically. I imagined taking her to the vet and listening as he explained that the mass was a tumor and that she needed to be put down to end her suffering. I would think about how she seemed to be acting out more recently and that I should have known something was wrong. I could have taken her in earlier and maybe saved her. I’m so stupid sometimes.

No. Watching her walk, she struck me as one of those cats on the internet that lives well into her 30s. We would have a long, happy life together, and I would inevitably die before her, and she would be given to my next of kin to live a few more years. But, my will would stipulate that she be buried next to me. Then, we would haunt the earth together, and I would never be alone.

At some point, we ended up on a residential street lined with gracious ranch-style houses that had obviously been looked after in accordance with an HOA. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, and I imagined she was well looked after by the residents. That a couple of old ladies bought bags of dry cat food specifically to make sure she ate. It felt nice that she didn’t have to worry about food. That she was a stray, a cast-off, but loved from afar. I smiled to myself. 

The more we walked, the deeper we got into the neighborhood, and the nicer the houses became. Middle-of-the-road ranch-style homes, built in the 1970s and refurbished in the early 2000s, no longer lined the quiet street. Instead, lush green lawns and perfect little hedges were replaced by automatic gates and clean, white stucco walls, protecting long driveways and modern, box-style houses with walls of sliding glass doors. Or, I assumed, given what I could glimpse through the wrought iron and what I knew about real estate, which was admittedly limited to what I saw on television.

I marveled at my day’s progress, how the scenery seemed so different now, and my prospects much improved. I’d never live in this neighborhood, though. My mood began to shift, and I hated the cat for it. Why had she brought me this far? Why did I, with all my faculties intact, decide to follow her? Long walks, it seems, don’t actually improve your mood. I would fire my therapist.

Eventually, the cat stopped at one particular driveway, turned around a couple of times, and sat down on the apron, facing me as I approached. I walked up to her and stopped. She was tiny but so self-assured. She peered at me as if she had brought me a dead bird, like, “Look what I have done for you. We are part of the same clan, you and I.” I stooped down to pet her once more, figuring if she at least let me touch her, I could pick her up and take her home to start our life together.

No such luck.

She reared back and hissed at me, this time for real, dashed toward the gate, and jumped up to the top edge where she balanced, like an acrobat, for a minute. She looked back over her shoulder at me and chirped. I hadn’t won her favor yet, but she was willing to have me at a distance.

Then, she was gone. Somewhere over the wall, I heard a small, high-pitched voice shout, “Sprinkles! You’re home!”

Sprinkles. What kind of dumb-ass name is that?