Stinking Black Fuzz and the Shoes

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It was the only window in the whole apartment – a seven-hundred square foot box with only three distinct rooms (living room and kitchenette all-in-one, bathroom, and bedroom), devoid of natural light save for a small window next to an old, sunken twin-sized bed.

She didn’t resent the small living quarters, and she loved her window. This was all she had ever known, if you didn’t count the three weeks following her birth, which she only remembered through fuzzy half-memories, just certain smells, sounds, feelings. She looked at the dirt and grass outside the window. She had brief moments where she thought she could almost remember what those outside things felt like, and the wonderful aromas they gave off. She was almost certain she must have been born on the beautiful dirt-filled ground, so fragrant and warm. She recalled it being warm wherever she came from. That, she remembered distinctly, and missed dearly. It was always kept cold in the apartment. On days when warm sun shone through the window, she basked unabashedly, arms and legs spread wide for all the world to see.

Those days were her favorite. But today it was raining. The outside world was gray and lifeless, as much as the inside of the nondescript apartment. The small animals that lived outside were hidden away in their shelters, the birds would not come out and chirp. It was on days like this that she found herself restless, bored beyond belief by the monotony.

She had her toys to play with, and those would occupy her for some time. The red and white ball with the bell inside was her favorite. She would swat at it and watch it go flying in the other direction, ringing joyfully as it rolled. Something would overcome her, and she would chase, pounce, and attack with her perfectly sharpened nails at the ready. The satisfaction of her triumph over the small, plastic ball would wash over her and she would attempt to replicate it a few more times until this, too, became tedious and overplayed.

She enjoyed jumping onto things. She would make a challenge out of it. How high could she jump? Which precarious surfaces could she land on with perfect, agile grace? Perhaps the floating shelf above the couch, or the hollowed area between the top of the kitchen cabinets and the ceiling. And while this was fun for a while, boredom would soon lurch its way into her path yet again.

She loved when her boy came home every evening. She knew the exact spot in the sky the sun would be at when he came back. Around that time every day, she would sit on the windowsill and watch. She would see how close to his arrival she could predict he would be there. She had gotten very good at it.

When her boy came home, he would feed her immediately, which she appreciated. Though she preferred the meaty morsels he gave her from his meal to her own dry, barely palatable hard pellets. He would dangle her feather toy in her face for a few minutes, tugging it away each time she caught it. Eventually, he always admitted defeat and she would relish in the fact that she won the feather toy battle mercilessly yet again. He would rub her head, remove the gunk from the inside corners of her eyes (which she pretended to hate but admittedly, she enjoyed a little), and kiss her on the forehead. And that was pretty much it. His attention would turn to cooking or watching the television screen, or his smaller, hand-held television screen. And she would lay on him, rub up against his legs and face, and even spread out on her back with her stomach in full view which she knew he liked, and chirp and meow incessantly until he gave in and paid her more attention, which he always did. Sucker.

Lately, though, her boredom had seemed to take over. She would tire of her games and toys more quickly, and even her imagination as she replayed scenes of slaughtering the animals that lived outside her window seemed to be getting duller and less imaginative. She was having a difficult time thinking of any new, fun ways to hunt and kill.

Because of this, and because she found it seemed to make her boy pay more attention to her when he got home, she had found a new hobby where, every day, she would find a new place to mark her territory, other than the uninspired litter box. At first, she urinated in the bathtub, which was fine, but her urine would always splatter back onto her legs and she would have to spend such a long time grooming her black and orange-patched fur until it was clean again. Plus, she felt the bathtub idea was too mundane. After all, her hard work would just be washed down the drain every night, with not even a whiff of her scent left.

So, she came up with the most brilliant idea her unusually large and intelligent brain had ever spawned: marking the shoes. It was perfect! Once she had done it, the aroma that emanated from those soiled shoes never faded. As an added bonus, whenever her boy would put them on and go out from now on, all the other animals would know he was hers. She really impressed herself sometimes. Soon after she began her new hobby, the boy started paying more attention to her. Sometimes the attention was louder than it used to be, but she didn’t mind. Soon, he began bringing home new, fresh shoes just for her. When he brought a new pair home, she would roll all over them and do her cute chirp she knew he loved, just so he would know she really appreciated him thinking of her. He would then say something loudly to her and shoo her away, and then they would start it all over again. Just a little game they liked to play.

He started placing his shoes atop high perches, just to challenge her. It offered her endless entertainment finding his new hiding places and figuring out how to reach them. She continued to leave her scent on each pair of shoes, and everything was great for a while.

Today, though, as she watched out the window as the sun began to sink, flicking her ebony tail back and forth, her boy did not come home when she expected him to. She was always able to predict within a few minutes when he would come walking by the window. But today, nothing. She waited and worried, and worried and waited. She kept her eyes focused on the window, her body tensed with concern. She wanted her boy to get home and see the new present she had left for him today, and see if he had any new presents for her.

The sun had nearly disappeared in the distance by the time he walked by the window. She meowed with delight and sprinted to the entrance to greet him. When he came in, he was holding a strange box, not like the ones her presents usually came in. And seeping from inside the box was a putrid new smell that filled her nose unpleasantly. Her boy set the box down and knelt to look into her eyes. He smiled wide, showing all his teeth. She could never tell if that was a good thing or not.

“I got you something, Zelda. I think you’re really going to like it. You can play with it, and you won’t have to be alone all day while I’m gone. Hopefully it will help with our little shoe problem.”

She kept her distance from the smelly box as he opened it from the top. He reached inside to grab the contents and pulled out a black ball of stinking fuzz…with eyes.

Her back arched and all the hair on her body stood up. She stood to the side to make herself look as big and intimidating as possible to this demon fuzz ball. It was so tiny, there was no way it would want to stick around after seeing how big and mean she was, and after smelling all her territory marking. Surely it would respect the code at least.

The small creature meowed pitifully and attempted to approach as it held unabashed eye-contact with her. The audacity of this thing was completely appalling. She took a step back, a moment of weakness on her part, but made sure to spit a horrifying hiss at the thing to make up for it. Seemingly, the little monster didn’t care. She observed it more carefully as they did their stand-off, and it needed grooming, badly. Did this thing not know how to wash itself properly? I mean, its fur stuck out at every angle and yet, other patches were flattened and greasy. It was as if it were just teasing her, begging her to fix its atrocity.

The thing seemed to have lost interest in her and was sniffing around at her boy’s shoes. She used this as her chance to approach while it was nice and distracted, but she made sure to keep her tail puffed in case the little terror got any big ideas. She got close to it and sniffed its rear-end. Absolutely disgusting.

She certainly didn’t want that smell to fill up the place and cover up all her hard work. Though dejected at the thought, she knew what she had to do. She un-puffed her tail, and went to work, starting at the little one’s mangy head with her tongue. The tiny animal seemed to like it, and sat admirably still as she did her grueling work.

Her boy smiled.

“Zelda, meet Figaro.”

Thank you so much for reading! This story was loosely based on real events involving my own two cats. And while they have more than one window and even a screened-in back porch, back when I only had my first cat, she did begin peeing on mine and my boyfriend’s shoes to our dismay. I would like to mention that I did take her to the vet and make sure she was okay before we determined she was simply bored and needed more engagement.

So, my answer was to get another cat. My boyfriend thought it was crazy that my solution to our cat problem was to get another cat, but then again, he is not at all a cat person - though I argue that it’s because his personality is, in fact, too much like that of a cat for him to actually get along with cats.

The second cat we ended up adopting was Figaro, and while yes, she is not a black and white cat like the Figaro from the movie “Pinocchio,” my little sister who was nine years old at the time picked out the name and what kind of sister would I have been if I had said no?

Anyway, the shoe homicide ceased almost immediately, and my cat does often groom Figaro’s messy, messy head of black fur.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story inspired by my cats as much as I enjoyed writing from the perspective of my cat.