
The cat just spoke to me. I shook my head, immediately regretting it as the rain droplets my curls had been collecting were loosed, splattering against my face and collar.
“Hello? I ask if you were gonna apologize?” I stared at the cat, having watched its mouth move in synch with the words I heard. The reality of the situation did not match reality as I’d come to understand it in my thirty-five years of life. All thirty-five of those years had been talking cat free so an indignant house cat speaking to me was alarming to say the least.
Words poured out of me though I couldn’t remember deciding to actually say them. “I’m going insane. Off my rocker. Loony as the moon.” My voice had gone all thin and weak.
“Yeah. Obviously. I was here having a perfectly good nap and you took it upon yourself to ruin that nap with all the running and the stomping and the dripping. You look a decent fellow and decent fellows apologize for being inconsiderate.”
Not only was the cat talking to me, he was lecturing me. The weather app proclaimed there would be no rain today. Clear skies and pleasantly cool. The weather app had been wrong as the sky broke at midday and dumped a bucket of ice water on my head. Darting into an alcove to shelter from the sudden autumn storm, I hadn’t noticed the bundle of calico cat dozing in the corner of my impromptu hide.
I was disabused of the notion that the alcove was mine and mine alone when that calico bundle lifted its head, made direct eye contact with me, and berated me.
“Oh you absolute ass’ ear! Now I’m wet. Awake and wet.” It’s chin lifted infinitesimally higher then. “Are you going to apologize or just stand there being as dim as you are damp?” The first cat to ever speak to me called me an dim ass’ ear. Now the name-calling cat stared at me, it’s almond eyes drinking me in, still waiting for me to find my manners with that uncanny stillness only felines have mastered.
“Oh!” A knot formed in my stomach as I searched for words and logical ways to arrange them. “Um… yeah. It was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella. I thought I’d wait out the shower but I didn’t realize this was already spoken for. I didn’t mean to disturb your slumber…erm…sir? Ma’am?” My apology tumbled out of me like a leaf skittering down the lane, thrown and tossed by an uncaring wind. Also, I was apologizing to a cat. I was apologizing to a talking cat. I was apologizing to a talking cat that I had awoken and made wet.
“Thank you for that at least.” The cat unfurled its forepaws and reached out with one, then the other elongating its body with each fluid step forward. It’s tail, speckled with splotches of orange, brown, rust, and black on a field of white, arched first up and then out, quivering as the whole animal embraced and enjoyed the stretch. One of its eyes, which had been closed as it reacquainted itself with motion and muscles, slid open. “You’re supposed to say ‘Ooh, good stretches.’ At least that’s what every other human does when I do that.” Having finished it downward cat, upward speaking asana, the talking cat sat upright, its front paws tucked in close to its hind ones, tail coiling around like a waiting cobra.
“I think that is customary, yes.” I nodded. Then swallowed. Then continued. “You’ll forgive me a few more failings of decorum, I’m sure. I’ve never spoken with a cat before. To, yes. On countless occasions. Most don’t respond, you see.” I was not unfamiliar with cats and their behavior. I owned four of them and talked to them all the time. More aptly, I suppose I talked at them given that some cats could apparently respond, as I was actively learning. Quite sure I was in need of a drink, a doctor, or both, I decided to go for broke here. “Again, I beg your forgiveness in advance, but what the hell is happening? Am I going insane or have I arrived at the destination and am free to disembark from the crazy train?”
The cat blinked at me.
I blinked back.
The cat angled its head away from me, it’s pupils briefly widening to deep black chasms before narrowing again. Instinctively I turned to see what had garnered its sudden attention. In the tree just behind me, the kind that obstinately grow in the tiny patches of earth scraped out from between the sidewalk slabs, sat a crow. Cats can talk but are still distracted by the presence of a bird anywhere within a 200 foot radius. I was learning so much about the animal I thought I knew about already.
I turned my head back to the cat to find it consuming me with its gaze once more.
The cat blinked at me.
I blinked back. “Okay.” I tried to find my most reassuring voice. “Okay.” That second attempt was far more encouraging. “I had a moment. I had a very realistic hallucination.” That felt as good an explanation as anything else. “The rain caught me by surprise.” Each word came out faster and faster. “Adrenaline rush. And then a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty, teensie-weensie psychotic break.” I nodded, trying to exude the confidence I did not feel. “The cat did not speak to me.” Every affirmation felt like a lie. “I have a vivid imagination and need to stop reading fantasy before bed.” I let my eyes drift closed, focusing on my breathing. My chest rose and then fell. Up went my shoulders and then back down again.
Opening my eyes, the cat was still watching me. It blinked at me.
I blinked back.
“Feel better now?” The cat asked. I heard a horrid noise then. A piercing, whining, awful noise. It took me longer than I’m proud of to realize I was making the noise. I was screaming. Broken, jagged gurgling sounds wrenched themselves from my throat. When I ran out of breath, I sucked in fresh air and started again. The cat didn’t even flinch in the wake of my wailing. It’s tail twitched arrhythmically but other than that, it watched a grown man fall to pieces, stoic.
From the tree behind me, the crow watched, even more closely than the cat. I might have heard what it said but I was too busy unleashing a lifetime’s anguish from that primal core somewhere inside my soul. I might have heard when it said “I told you not to do that to him. Priscilla will be displeased if you bring another one gone insane by your antics. You know they don’t fare well if you speak to them before she explains.” I might have heard that. I didn’t.
I did hear how the calico replied, however. “I know,” the cat literally purred this. Cats can speak through their purrs. More things I know now. “But I’m allowed to have my fun as well.”
The cat blinked at me.
I screamed back.
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