Cat.

 

He thinks that he is a tiger and the yard is his own private jungle. I keep calling him “Little Mate”

He rolls his eyes and goes back to stalking the rusting barbecue listing  drunkenly beneath my window.Black and white. Big black patch over one eye. Looks like someone dipped their fist in ink and cleaned his clock.

I want him to like me. He’s so small. I chat to him when he is sitting on my sofa ignoring me while I contort myself through a million sit ups.

“So….” I pant ” Do you live….gasp….round here…or….”

He yawns, showing off tiny needle teeth and does that feline yoga thing when they stick their hind leg right up in the air and makes licking your own butt-hole look like the classiest maneuver in the world outside of a curtsy.

“Your problem Michele….” he lowers his leg and looks at me with a thousand yard stare “Is that you try too hard and desire conditional loyalty under pressure”

I finish my set and take a belt on my soda water. Tiny little black and white kitten sitting pretty as you please on the 25th anniversary addition of Elle magazine handing me my ass. Its gotta be the heat but seeing that he had a point I’ll give…..

“What do you mean under pressure?” I stand up and move closer.

He holds up a paw and looks at me like I just took a dump in his catnip stash. I halt and sit down next to the rusty table my old roommate left behind. Seeing that I am done with trying to invade his space, he does that cool C shaped stretch and commences pacing up and down the sofa.

 He looks intent. A feline James Cagney. If I still smoked I would offer him one.I start unstrapping the weights from my ankles and pay attention.

“If they are not for you they are against you right?”

“Sure” I reply defensively

“By the way” he says “Your form is shot on those sit ups. Hold your core in”

Before I can tell him where he can shove that he continues.

” You want people to chose. You try so hard to be everything to the people that you love. When they let you down”  He raises his eyebrow, do cats even have eyebrows? I shake my head  “And they will let you down, you expect them to take your side in conflict”

“What’s so wrong with that” I sniff  at my clothes drying and stiffing with nasty salt.

“The Conflict is yours! Yours Michele and believe me no one is that interested in a hermit living in a shed who…”

“Who what? What? What is it that you think  I do” I yell.

“Nothing.” he says,resettling on the magazine pile. So he can look down at me, I’m so sure. “Your not doing a fucking thing. ”

“What the fuck do you know! I write,I train…I…I….”

” Yeah, you, you, you what?”  he narrows his eyes “You push yourself so hard that you don’t have to think. You keep going and going but its not advancing ,its just the circle getting bigger but more limited at the same time.You can’t go back and solve anything but yet you keep trying.” He gives me a look of such disdain that I feel ill.

“What do you want me to fucking do?” I yell

“I don’t know? ” He does that stretch again “Why not start with anything and go from there?’

“I told you ,I ….” I bluster

But he’s got to me and he knows it .I am a puddle of  the past melting into the grass near Miss Lilli’s potted succulent collection clustered like gossiping women on a rotting board. Dinosaur plants. I am fueled by fear.Fear being the polar opposite of love. If not fear,revenge. I avoid everything and then take it out on myself day in,day out. I find no peace. No answers are forthcoming. There never will be.

“Yeah you told me.” I concur.

“Little cunt” as I have now rechristened him, smirks.

I lose it.

“What do you Know! Your just a cat, not even! A kitten! A fucking kitten!” 

I rage pointlessly. Knowing that my anger is made of paper and ice he ignores me. The tantrum melts and drifts away to nothing. Much like the life I am leading.

“Yeah?’  He says slowly 

” Well at least I’m not a fuckin’ pussy.”