Lighting the Moon | Chapter II

I like being a cat. I recommend it, should you ever get the chance to shift your shape with demonic curation. You see, when I assume a fresh shape with my hunger's assistance, it is as if I hijack the nervous system and first person perspective of an actual being of that kind.

Do you know how sensitive, and useful, whiskers are? I can navigate through space in a way you can't, when I'm like this. I can show up in the middle of that incriminating phone call, or raging argument, or furtive threesome, and everyone just carries on. You mortals will do things in front of a cat you would never do in front of a human stranger.

I know. I sound like a pretentious twit. The smoker who quit and won't shut up about the symptoms of COPD. The dietary dictator who makes eating "clean" a chore rather than a salutary pleasure, having enjoyed sloppy joes and corn chips mere days prior to the conversion. I was one of you, it's true. I should not act as if I do not know what it is like to be a mortal primate. It's rather harrowing, if you're paying attention.

Your current culture is a mess, though. You don't talk about what plague and war have done to you.

Too soon.

Not soon enough. Before you know it, the whole affair will be a foggy memory, and various minds will interpret that fog to suit their purposes. You're already doing it. Who makes a vaccine the villain of a story about a plague? Sure, yours was on a planetary scale, but come on.

I was debating about corn cultivation with a charming farmer in what became Mexico during the Coclitzli outbreaks. The very name means "pestilence" in a language older than Spanish. Have you ever seen anyone bleed from the eyes and die screaming? How about a whole village? Half a province? Events like that radically alter how people think and feel and act for a long time. Some of you became reclusive and suspicious during COVID and stayed that way. Recluses tend to like cats, though.

My appointment this evening certainly does. He's an oddball. He wants me to kill him.

You've probably heard of this kind of thing. Death by x, where x could be anything from a law enforcement officer to chocolate. Everybody has a kink. Thing is, his neighbor, Pearl, phoned it in. She likes him well enough, though she knows he's nuts. She keeps him like an exotic fern.

It seems they've been chatting, and she's convinced he's not just a garden variety maniac. She used the adjective "worthy" rather liberally, which is to say, twice. Not consecutively, mind you. I'm curious.

He leaves the window open for the cat I've borrowed. The whiskers make slipping inside like kissing a beautiful stranger. He burned fish in here, not long ago. Stacks of books with spinal trauma are winning against navigable floor space. The degrees on the wall look counterfeit.

"Penelope, you won't believe it. There's enough salmon here for both of us after all. Don't ask about loaves."

Ah, he's one of those! As a cat, I have been the confidante of countless crackpots. Do you know that a witch was generally just a midwife who did the wrong person a favor? You think witches do all of the conjuring. The mad, fearful, stupid crowd conjures witches. We got on famously. Especially in the UK.

"Penelope, my fly was open for most of the lecture I gave this afternoon. They'll fire me soon."

He's serving half the fish to himself and half to me. I like him.

It's a bachelor, this flat, without so much as pockets. Sleep, eat, wash, repeat. I must remember to follow him into the bathroom. Par for the course. Look, there are all sorts of things under the sofa. There is also a mug on the edge of the battered table. You can't imagine how charged with erotic energy anything on the edge is, to a cat. They can't abide gravitational procrastination. "Just fall, already!"

Probably why they get on with witches.

He tries to put the bowl down on the floor with delicate care. There's a tremor there, some wobbling that he can't hide. I'm starting to get the picture. I can also smell him, and that's no fun. You know that shirt that you wear when you're washing all of your decent shirts? Would you want to live with it, if it became a person?

The salmon is sensational. Miso glazed, just a tear from soy's eye at the end. The skin is crisp. It looks like the singed scales of a silver dragon to my borrowed eyes. The whole place seems lit up like a baseball stadium, by the way. I'm not sure cats are ever in the dark. Crepuscular gloom is probably how things look to him. Always.

I start counting his eyelashes while we eat. I think when I stop being a cat, I'll ask my hunger to leave out the clothes. Risk and reward. They grow together.

"It's good, don't you think? I'm clumsy with the knife. It took forever to get the ginger and green onions sorted out. Maybe we'll see if science fiction's had another kid it's ashamed of after dinner. My sister's account is still as easy to access as she is."

Oh, we're going to watch a film after dinner! He's dating the cat I became. Quaint.

He waits patiently until I've polished off the excellent salmon. I think he gave me the majority of it, if you want the truth. He washes up, not at all concerned with mingling our bowls, then heads for the water closet. You've got to understand why I'm bound to follow.

I'm tingling with a bit of hydrophobia. That's hard wired. Technology has made humans forget what a threat being wet is, most of the time. There's more to it than that, though. Where do you run, when you're hurt? How many people can only weep in the shower? If you cut your finger or stub your toe or feel an episode coming on, where's the medicine?

Then there's the narcotic of the owner's vulnerability. I feel a frisson of protective duty, sure, but these eyes are a voyeur's favorite equipment. I can see almost everything. and I want to see the rest. Especially if it's strange, or sad, or vulnerably edible.

Predation. I learn something about it every time I'm a cat.

It's a good idea to have eyes on you when you're defecating. Ask Elvis. If the paramedics had gotten there in time...I tried a peanut butter and banana sandwich after his funeral. That took some of the mystery out of his passing. There was bacon, too, if I recall correctly. Treat me like a fool, treat me mean and cruel, my arteries are closing like book stores.

Now he's bathing. I feel revulsion and confusion ebb and flow. The idea that he can't keep himself clean without risking death by drowning makes me nauseous with pity. I may have eaten that salmon too quickly. I'm an obligate carnivore; what did you expect? I'm still thinking about that mug. The slightest nudge, and it would plummet.

He's almost through, and he'll be as I intend to be when he emerges. I put my paws on the edge of the tub and have a look. Greying. Awkward. Not so much a dad bod as a weird, childless uncle who you haven't seen since the funeral bod.

Still, I've had fun with worse. As it turns out, body count really counts. I suspect that's why you're all so hysterical about virginity and fidelity and what not. When doing the dance without pants was bound to make you sick or pregnant every time, as far as you knew, you tried to tame it. Never mind your worries about heredity. So many gods and goddesses, getting excited about what you do with your hidden parts. Commandments. Fatwas. Advertisements for the latest in prophylactic technology. Web sites where you can donate so that young, reluctant mothers to be can listen to tiny heartbeats that tap out "spare me" in morse code.

Once you've had fun with a great many humans, you realize, "Oh, this can actually be quite delightful. To think, I was going to promise the church or the temple or the luxury resort and the people sitting uncomfortably in it that I would do this with one illiterate, obese cobbler, or accountant, or IT guy, exclusively, for the rest of my brief life. Paperwork, solemnities in Latin, the whole thing. No, that will not do." I've been a bloody run away bride.

Experiences you're not sure you're allowed to enjoy are the most enjoyable experiences. It's the doubling of awareness, the "I can't believe we're getting away with this" of it all. I mean, bodies vary, but so do hockey games. The rules don't change. It's also very useful to find out what it's like to play for various teams, in various positions, in a whole host of uniforms. I've worn corsets and armor, a nun's habit and a prisoner's orange jumpsuit. They've all got lessons.

Now I'm not a cat, on his bed, and his ratty old towel can't hide his astonishment.

He takes a long look, trembles a bit, and says, "Pearl. You must know Pearl."

She's the neighbor who called it in. I think my teeth have given me away. Again.

"Why are you tired of life, George?" I'm curled up on his uncomfortable comforter, full of the knowledge of my own, dusky beauty. I ought to be a dim memory, just a fossil in the dirt. Thanks to my hunger, though, you could bounce a quarter off of my posterior from across the room. He should be grateful that Pearl loves him, even if it is the warm, bland porridge of maternal concern rather than the spicy adventure I'll give him before the end.

"I'm old and sick and I discuss books with people who haven't read them for a living. Look around. It's not a good living. What is it like to be undead?" He sort of bows, holding the towel in place as he does so, and meets my eyes. He left his glasses in the w/c. The blue of his eyes, unguarded, reminds me of the sea at dawn.

The original Penelope slips through the window, nods at me and makes her way nimbly over to head butt George's damp, surprised left leg. I've tasted the devotion of a simple, glowing heart before. With my schedule, I can't hold an animal captive and call it a pet. George is putting it together. He goes to the kitchen and starts preparing a second dinner for his first love.

"It's more wonderful and terrible than fiction could ever be, George. Would you like to try it?" I'm gambling that he'll decline. My contract does not include siring him, just drinking him into the gentle night.

"No, I think I've seen all I want to see, especially now that I've seen you. There are kind, intelligent people in the world, but most of them are powerless. I don't want to wait meekly to go blind, or lose the ability to walk. I don't want to soil myself in the middle of a lecture, or depend on Pearl any more than I already do. Some novels should have been short stories, don't you think?"

Penelope is showing off, weaving between his legs as he cooks and chirping. I miss living in her shape already. Those quick little claws. I'm waiting for her to notice the mug.

He does know how to cook. I wonder why he burned the fish whose pyre I could still small when I had Penelope's nose? Some hot olive oil spatters his midriff. He doesn't flinch. I wonder what he's got? Parkinson's? It's clearly neurological, but his grey matter must be sound. He didn't panic or fly into a rage when I turned up. No periventricular lesions, given that mood control.

"I'm sure that's true, George. I couldn't convince Borges to write a meaty novel, and I tried. Short stories alone: compact, delicate, whirling meaning machines. He loved cats too, you know."

He fills Penelope's bowl and she pounces on it with gusto. I'm sure she resents that we ate the salmon, but it smells delicious--chicken thigh? "I read that somewhere, years ago. How long did you spend with him?"

"Longer than we will be together, George, unless you want to kibosh this routine and tell Pearl she can calm down." I'm not sure if I should be impressed by his preternatural calm, or troubled by it. I suppose he wished for this.

He watches Penelope gobbling for a moment, sunny pride in his grin, then turns those melancholy blues on me again. "I am tired in a way rest can't touch. Fighting screens for the attention of surly malcontents with more money than brains who turn in glittering AI sludge instead of essays makes me want to die. I'm glad you're here." He walks slowly to the bed. "If you feed on me, some part of me will go on as long as you do, graceful and deadly. I like the sound of that."

So did I. "Come with me, George," I purr, and reach for the towel.

He was clumsy, but he had ample enthusiasm and surprising stamina. Cunnilingus is a lost art. 10,000 lonely nerve endings, awaiting eloquence. George was delirious with pleasure when I bit him on the inner thigh. I put the husk of him in a suitcase that has clearly been to lots of boring conferences, borrow a sweater and some jeans and sandals and scoop up Penelope. I can't get over the feeling that he might have whispered "wait" before there was no more waiting to be done.

Pearl answers my knock and knows right away. She takes Penelope into warm arms.

"He didn't suffer?" Pearl has huge, tender eyes the color of espresso. One looks like it's getting over a shiner. She's a social worker in the inner city. Occupational hazards. Penelope trusts her, I can tell.

"Not at all. What was it?"

"MS. His uncle had it, too. He couldn't bear the thought of a wheelchair with a bag of his urine hanging on it. Thank you."

Like most of them, she tries to give me a cheque, but I smile it away. I tell Pearl I have a friend with access to a crematorium. Jose is his name. He will be amused by the name of George's cat. Jose loves reading Homer.