The Cat

Errol Hatch was penning a letter.

He paused and looked up for a minute to think, and his gaze fell on Snickers. She was a cat, curled up in the bay window looking out onto the street. Errol noticed she was smashed into the window frame’s far right corner by now, whereas half an hour ago she’d been lumpily arranged right in its center. She was following the slipping sunlight across the sill and, of course, she did not move a muscle more than necessary in doing so.

Errol paused in his thoughts - the ones pertaining to the letter. He looked at Snickers’s gray coat. The sunlight illuminated a billion little specks of dust sprinkled over the ends of her fur. A cat sleeping the day away and a cat accidentally getting into a bag of flour looked much the same. She was so artfully lumped, bunched and coiled that, as long as he’d known her, still he could not determine what exactly he was looking at - where her head and shoulders were; where her legs began and ended, or where she’d managed to store her tail.

Suddenly he was enlightened: she stirred, and her puffy unkempt head raised up with ears perked. Some bird was jabbing on in the lilac bush outside the window, or maybe she’d seen another cat. He watched her stare out the window, keeping the rest of her lumpy arrangement quite still while her ears twitched this way and that. Finally, after some further dust-collecting and ear-twitching, she slowly turned her head to observe Errol himself.

It was a cool, disdainful stare out of yellow eyes that greeted him. A rather hateful expression, actually. She had never looked at him in any other way. She blinked slowly and went on looking at him. As usual, he was held by her gaze. He looked at her and would go on looking at her until she deigned to look away. He looked at her with soft, curious eyes, his whole face a picture of schoolboy wonderment. He was not at all bothered that her chosen expression for him seemingly betrayed a growing plot to murder him in his sleep.

In fact, what was she thinking?

He tilted his head, mulling over the question while they locked eyes. Her slow blink, and those eyes emanating something between vacancy and profound scorn… What were the thoughts of a cat, and how many?

This was an unofficial hobby of Errol’s - wondering in vain what his cat thought of him while she held him under her sovereign gaze.

Yes, what are the thoughts of a cat?

Of course one can’t know most of the time. If the loathing in Snickers’s expression was a true reflection of her feelings, she couldn’t be blamed. After all, from every sane point of view the relationship between herself and Mr. Hatch was perfectly disgusting. She could not remember ever having lived anywhere else, but still felt acutely that something was dysfunctional about the whole setup.

She lounged about the man’s furniture, and whenever the fancy took her she would dig her nails into whatever he owned that had a good, hearty texture. In the beginning she did it excessively, and then watched his reaction in amazement: He would discover the mutilation to his couch or nice leather shoes; he would exhale and rub his eyes angrily - then he would look at her, his face would soften, and suddenly he was picking her up and rubbing his bony fingers over her fur and cooing little baby sounds in her ear. She’d scrunch up her face and arch her back, trying to get away from his oniony lunch breath.

He always, faithfully, brought food home for her and prepared it, pouring it into a little silver bowl; mixing wet with dry until he’d created a nice even texture, and then laying it before her with a friendly call. She sensed that a whole world precluded this moment of eating - a world of searching, sniffing, hiding, stalking, pouncing, playing. A world she longed to be part of. She could only imagine that when Errol went out, that’s what he was doing to retrieve her food - though why her hunger should be his concern baffled her almost as much as the unnatural state of the food he brought.

Well. She was baffled at first. Over time she had learned, by degrees, to accept the arrangement between them. It was rather pathetic, and not what she would have chosen for herself - being stuck behind a bunch of windows and doors so this great, awkward human could lurk about and let her scratch him from time to time - but this was how it had always been. She embraced her position, as much as any cat could, and watched Errol Hatch scrape and serve her with insane deference. The way he looked at her in pure, shining admiration abhorred her as much as her own gaze ought to have frightened him.

And so, inevitably, she gradually realized that he actually deserved loathing. She treated him accordingly. Clearly he craved the abuse, for whenever she knocked over the fish bowl or scratched up his shoes or stole bites of food from his plate or swatted him in the face, he responded with love and praise. He was, therefore, a creature who desired mistreatment and overt disdain.

Well, she could live up to her role, and she did. She held court in queenly fashion, and together they embarked on endless court sessions mirroring the scene that played out now - her folded up comfortably in a warm spot, staring authoritatively down and doing her utmost to convey all the revulsion she felt; him gazing up with soft interest and warm affection.

Errol Hatch truly felt most comfortable - flourished, in fact - being dominated. He perked up a bit at any chance to answer abuse with adoration; to remain loyal to a fault; to submit to an authority that did not justify itself by intelligence, strength or kindness. He lived as a free citizen of democracy, but he would actually have thrived, joyously, in a monarchy. His heart would have fluttered most happily to be able to take off his cap and bow and scrape as lords and ladies passed him by in all their pomp and splendor. The opportunity to say “Yes m’lord” and “Yes m’lady” and “If it please your lordship” would have been his utopia. Social perimeters locking him forever in relative poverty would have been just his cup of tea.

But he wasn’t born to any of that. The next best thing had been to bring home a cat; to have a small, furry sample of abuse and mistreatment within his walls.

There was only a little triangle of sun left in the corner of the bay window. Snickers stared at Errol Hatch a moment longer, then closed her eyes. The sun would be in the dining room now. Slowly, languorously, she unfolded her lumps and stood, and stretched. Without another glance at that pathetic man, she leapt neatly down from her perch and went out of the room, to lump herself up in the next sun patch.

Court dismissed. Slowly the spell of Snickers’s gaze lifted; the haze cleared and Errol’s thoughts gradually returned to the letter before him. Ah yes, he knew how to finish. It was all arranged and clear in his mind now.

Another several minutes passed while Errol Hatch’s pen moved rapidly over the page. Eventually he set the pen down and read over it all, and punctuated the last sentence with a sigh. Then he got up and crossed to the middle of the room, where a chair stood alone, waiting.

I have always regretted… never told you… can’t go on… all seems meaningless… Please, forgive me. Yours with love, Hatch.

The sun had long departed Mr. Hatch’s study by now. It was in the dining room, keeping Snickers warm. So there was not even his shadow to keep him company as he hung there - looking blissfully and finally miserable.