Just two more days to go, before the girlfriend would arrive. I’d been busy putting up photos of parrots. The cat had been busy taking them down and shredding them.
It knew better though than taking down the photos of the girlfriend that I’d taped against the wardrobe - but it had been very loud and disapproving of my reading poetry aloud:
“So, love, it will be with us, both
lion and prey - our mouths so deep in richness
only the wild scent of earth will be left
to tremble, after.”
The cat yawned.
“More of that stupid Neruda?”
“Jane Hirshfield, actually. And she is still alive and well and quite able to kick you into six impossible shapes before breakfast.”
Not mightily impressed with any Jane that wasn’t moonlighting as a demonic parrot, the cat yawned again, stretched its back, yawned, stretched and then started to lick its left foreleg.
“Do cats worry about their sex appeal?” I asked.
“Now what?”
“Just this article I read.”
“So now you’re worried that stupid woman won’t have sex with you? Humans!”
“Go figure; cats don’t do poetry, don’t start a band to impress the girls… You’re such boring beasts.”
The cat held up its paw and did that cushion-to-daggers thing.
“See these?”
“Yup.”
“One more poem, one more word about that woman and these claws will make sure sex will not be an option for a very, very long time.”
Then the cat stretched its back one last time, got up and strode out of the room – or tried to: cat flaps are not particularly stride-friendly contraptions.
“And however sharply
you are tested -
this sorrow, that great love -
it too will leave on that clean knife.”
“I heard that” spoke the cat, from the kitchen.
My time to yawn.
The cat had its arsenal of retractable filet knives; I had the imaginary shadow of Suleiman, the psychotic parrot, looking over the cat’s shoulder.
So, the threat of mutually assured dissection would help to keep things nice and quiet around here – for now.
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