Cat Ladies

Gandalf comes home with one eye. Not one plus another one. Just one, which is one less than he had when Hazel let him out to do whatever he does during the day. He yowls when he rubs his face against her black leggings, smearing blood all over her shin and calf. Most of her clothes are black because they match his fur. At least, that’s how it started and that’s what she tells people. She picks him up and stains her shirt red too.

“What happened?” Hazel asks a creature who offers only wordless screams in response. He writhes in her arms. Even on the best of days he hates being held, or maybe it isn’t so much the holding as it is the pressure against his lungs. His claws sink into her white skin. She bundles him and his claws into an old towel and goes to the car, which is also black except for the rainbow stickers on the back bumper.

“It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” Hazel lays him down on the passenger seat, where he gives up trying to fight his way through the towel. Her head hits the doorframe when someone taps on her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” says the owner of the finger. Dark roots are invading her platinum hair and she has to look up to talk to Hazel, but that doesn’t seem to bother her. Penny. She rents the other side of the townhouse and she doesn’t have any hobbies aside from telling Hazel to be quieter when company comes over and yoga. But she doesn’t do enough yoga to stretch an unwavering contempt for existence—hers and everyone else’s—out of her being, and doesn’t do nearly enough to mitigate the constant threat of implosion. A bloodied white Persian cat with two eyes pants in her arms. “Your cat attacked my cat.”

“Yeah, well, mine is missing an eye, so.” Hazel shrugs. “Do you want to come with me? Maybe they’ll give us a two-for-one deal at the vet.” She laughs a little. Penny doesn’t.

“I don’t think you’re funny.”

“I’m not doing standup—I’m trying to go to the vet,” Hazel says. “Are you coming with me or not?”

Neither of them knows exactly how it happens, but Penny ends up in the passenger seat holding the cats, who are both too tired to do any more damage either to each other or their owners. Hazel does her best to look anywhere except at the fake blonde next to her. A purple crystal dangles from the rearview mirror.

“You drive like a crazy person,” Penny says. The amethyst isn’t doing its job; there are only bad vibes in the car.

“You already thought I was a crazy person, so I don’t see how that changes anything.” There’s a pause. Hazel turns the music up to drown out the weird noises the car makes these days. Penny takes it as an insult.

“You’re just . . . off-putting. Your whole aura is—there’s something wrong with you.”

“Is it my ‘aura’ or the way I look?” Hazel asks, already knowing the answer. She has black hair, black eyeliner, black boots. The tattoo of Baphomet on her shoulder is black too.

Penny doesn’t answer. This time she’s the one who turns the music up.

Five hundred dollars later, Hazel is taking a sleepy one-eyed cat from one of the techs. She doesn’t love him any less. Actually, he looks pretty gangster, but she’s still talking to him like he’s a baby.

Penny isn’t saying much at all, but when her card gets declined her eyes get watery. “Can you run it again?” she whispers to the receptionist.

Declined again. Penny presses her free hand to her forehead. “Can I set up a payment plan or something?”

“I got it.” Hazel inserts her card before anyone can stop her. Penny looks at Hazel with her mouth open but doesn’t argue. The drive home is silent.

That evening, there’s a knock at Hazel’s door. She wipes her hands, which are covered in powdered sugar, on her pants before she answers. Probably Amazon with the new cat toy she ordered because Gandalf deserved it after what he went through, not that he’d know what the toy was for. Unless he would. Sometimes he looks at Hazel like he’s a god disappointed in his creation. Anyway, it isn’t Amazon—it’s Penny, dressed in fancy white gym clothes, holding a glass baking dish of something homemade.

“I brought you cinnamon rolls,” she says. “They’re vegan.”

“How did you know I’m vegan?”

“I didn’t. I’m vegan so I made vegan cinnamon rolls.” Penny ascends the three steps to Hazel’s door. “I just wanted to say thanks for what you did at the vet.”

“Well, this is really nice.” Hazel takes the dish from Penny. “You wanna come in for a second? I’m watching Hocus Pocus.”

“No way!” Penny smiles. “That’s my favorite movie.”

Hazel makes hot cocoa to go with the cinnamon rolls and they sit down on opposite ends of the sofa. Penny keeps her arms tucked into her sides and her feet flat on the floor, like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Hazel spreads out on the blue suede. Pokes Penny with one foot. “Are you gonna sit like that all night?”

“Sorry,” Penny says. But she doesn’t loosen up, just scoots a little farther away.

Hazel stares at her for a second, then stands. “I know what’ll help.” She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a bottle of vodka, which she perches on the lip of Penny’s mug. “Tell me when.”

They watch the liquid go out and the air come in and the mixture is almost overflowing from the porcelain by the time Penny tells Hazel to stop. Hazel puts just as much in her own mug, then raises it with a smile. “To cat ownership.”

“To cat ownership.” Their glasses clink. A tradition is born. Saturday night is for cheesy movies and girl talk. Penny comes to love the scents of incense and sage, and it turns out Hazel doesn’t actually own an ouija board like Penny assumed out loud when there was only cocoa left in the mug. She just likes black. And Hazel discovers that she looks alright in pink too.

One Saturday, after the seasons have changed once or twice, Penny doesn’t show up. And she was so excited to watch Christmas Vacation, which they both thought was just a dream until they described the whole thing in eerie detail to each other. But once they realized it was a movie and not a shared prophetic dream it wasn’t all that eerie anymore.

The cocoa is getting cold and the menu music is driving Hazel a little crazy. She sends Penny a text. Then another. And another. Then she tries calling and there’s still no answer; Penny doesn’t even decline the call. So Hazel snoops. Not the bad kind of snooping—the neighborly kind of snooping. There’s a mysterious silver Audi in Penny’s driveway. The other side of the wall begins to speak with two voices, one female, one male, each trying to outyell the other until Hazel is sure the competition will end in a singularity. When something thuds against the dividing wall, she puts on her shark slippers and goes next door.

No one answers when she knocks, so Hazel rings the doorbell. Once, twice, three times. The voices get louder but no closer. She tries the door handle. Unlocked. “Penny?” She crosses the threshold just in time to watch a black suit strike Penny across the brow.

Hazel doesn’t know what comes over her, and she definitely doesn’t know how to fight, but it doesn’t matter because she’s a lot bigger than the stranger in the suit is. And she watched a lot of football with her ex. It’s a perfect shoulder tackle: the forward lean, the squared shoulders, the uppercut. They struggle on the hardwood floor and Penny screams or maybe it’s Hazel or maybe the stranger or maybe all three of them together and one of his fists catches Hazel in the jaw so she hits back until he’s crying and spitting blood and begging for mercy.

“Who do you think you are?” Hazel snaps.

“I’m her husband!” He might be beautiful if it weren’t for his personality. And his freshly-broken nose. Oops.

“I tried to file for divorce two years ago,” Penny squeaks, her back against the wall. “He wouldn’t sign so I ran. And today he found me.”

“I just wanted you to come home,” the man sobs.

“You have a funny way of showing it.” Hazel gets off him. His hands go to his face and he doesn’t stop groaning until the police get there, and then he only stops because he has to explain why he didn’t deserve anything he got. Luckily, they don’t believe a word he says. Probably because of the stalking injunction, but that’s neither here nor there.

Penny stays over at Hazel’s that night, wrapped in her favorite blanket and full of unspiked cocoa. The movie plays in the background of their conversation, filling in the frequent gaps. There’s a lot to say; it just takes a lot of effort to say it.

“What do you do for work?” Penny asks, tired of talking about the heavy things. Gandalf is purring in her lap, his stomach exposed. The white Persian sleeps against Hazel’s thigh.

“I’m an accountant,” Hazel says.

Penny can’t help laughing. “You are?”

“Did you think I was a mortician or something?”

“Honestly, yeah. My next guess was a psychic,” Penny says. They both giggle. Hazel felt like this once before. In high school, with a friend she doesn’t talk to anymore. Penny is prettier.

They spend the next night together. And the night after that, and eventually they decide it doesn’t make sense to pay separate rent so one day Penny just doesn’t leave. It happens on a Saturday, when it’s Penny’s turn to pick the movie. The cats are asleep together in one bed, even though they each have their own. Gandalf with one eye, the Persian with a notch missing from one ear. Both just as beloved with their scars as they were without them.

“A zombie movie?” Hazel laughs as Penny selects it from the menu. Not only is it a zombie movie—it’s an indie zombie movie. “Are you feeling okay?”

Penny shrugs. “I figured you liked zombies.”

“Oh yeah?” They sit closer now, so close their legs touch, and sometimes their hands in fleeting accidents that aren’t always accidental. “What makes you think that?”

“Your aura. It’s dark.” Penny brushes Hazel’s raven hair behind her ear. “You scare me a little.”

“I look a lot meaner than I am,” Hazel says, her cheeks hot.

“I don’t know. You did kick my ex-husband’s ass. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.” Their lips meet. Penny’s fingers slip between Hazel’s. They have to draw away from each other because they’re smiling too much. “Is that enough?”

“Not quite,” Hazel says, and pulls Penny back in.