missing the cat

I'm sitting in my room in London with comically large headphones on, writing, listening to tunes and keeping one eye on the Red Sox game. The game's muted; Fox has the broadcast and I can't take that level of stupid on my own time. I say it's my room. It's not, really. My room is in Scotland. I'm in the room I stay in while staying at my parent's house. It serves mostly as my mom's office. On the shelves next the desk I see a picture of her with her sister and a card I sent her for Mothers Day. But there's a bed and I sleep in it, so for the time being it's my room. 

It's a job that brings me south, a temporary contract at a small and rather lovely wine company in West London. It looks like this is the beginning of a more significant move for me, back to a city I used to know better. There's a lot to do in the meantime. I've got this job, I've got a book to write, I've got to fly to France at the end of August, all the time looking for a permanent job and splitting time between Scotland and London.

I've got a page in my notebook devoted to a scrawled calendar, dotted with question marks and asterisks. There are can't-miss events and shouldn't-miss birthdays. If I've not looked at the page for a day or two, it takes me awhile to decipher. Such is the next three months. Written on paper and sound in theory, but nothing set in stone.

It will all be fine. I'm not stressed, though going from unemployed and the odd bar shift to this is certainly a change. It's a change for the better. But I miss the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves and my cat asleep at my feet.

late nights and shallow graves

We sat around a wooden table in a bungalow in the suburbs. 

I don't know how many glasses of red I had, but there were four bottles on the table and only three of us. The Doors played through the speakers while I topped us up using the the careful precision of a drunk. My friends rolled cigarettes as the grey light brightened through the window. Like the glasses of wine, I've no idea how much they smoked but the room looked as though a low fog had rolled in. The cat joined us for awhile, but left when our chat got bad. 

I sipped the nth glass and we spoke about the future and old times and explained just what we were all doing wrong to each other. Beads adorned the doorways whilst old beermats adorned the doors themselves. A lifetime or two's accumulation filled the house with bygone trinkets and energy efficient bulbs cast it all in a sepia light. 

Day arrived and still we drank and chatted, though the pauses became longer and themes shifted with rambling fluidity. The ashtray filled with the scrunched ends of rollups. 

We finished the wine and gathered our things. I was in the kitchen when she discovered the cat. It had died on the porch, in a pool of its own urine. Less than an hour before it had sat on my lap as I scratched its ears. Shortly after that it lapped fresh milk from its bowl. And then it died, ears scratched and full of milk. It wasn't her cat. It was her flatmate's cat. Her flatmate was on holiday in Portugal. 

The other guy and I offered to dig a grave. It was the least we could do. She was upset. He and I were trying not to laugh. It was horrible and hysterical, and there was nothing more we could do than dig a grave and try not to laugh. 

We found a spot shaded by trees and set about it with a shovel and spade. There were roots everywhere, and we were drunk. It was slow going. I nearly took my toes off a fair few times. The earth wouldn't break. Before long we were sweating. The hole didn't seem to get any deeper. Birdsong rang out and the odd car drove by. Eventually we got it dug.

She put the body in a bag and noticed that rigour mortis had set. She lay it in the hole and while we helped to fill it in, she did most of it herself. Then she disappeared inside for a moment, returning with a bottle of silver tequila. Her eyes were red on her pale face. We swigged straight from the bottle and took a moment to pour some over the freshly-filled grave. 

early mornings and an expectant gaze

The cat knows when I'm waking up before I do. I think my breathing changes, because he pads right up to my nose, without touching it, and waits there until my eyes open. And so my return to consciousness is greeted and punctuated by his expectant gaze. If I just close my eyes to drift off again, he'll prod the pillow in front of my face with his paw and utter a small meow, weighted with impatience. 

If my strategy works, and it's a big if, he'll bugger off, usually climbing to the top of my closet to cover whatever jumper that isn't yet entirely encased in cat hair with his fur. Most mornings, though, it works. It works because he knows I'm waking up anyway. So up I get, hobbling on my morning legs to check his food. If there's more than a bite left in the bowl, I swear at him and go back to my room, trying not to wake my flatmate. 

Not many mornings have been warm enough to crack the window open. When it is warm enough and the window is opened, the sounds of the lobsterman, the seagulls and the harbour drift through my room. The cacophony acts as audio caffeine. I'll slump into the chair at my desk and fiddle with my glasses, wondering whether they're dirty or if my eyes just can't quite focus yet. 

It's usually around then, after my eyes focus, that I check the clock and realise it's before 6. And so I swear at the cat again and go back to sleep. 

the toy grabber

The words filled my heart with a mix of despair and dread. I'd look through my toys, through Star Wars figures and Legos, squirt guns and Matchbox cars to no avail. Defeated, I went to my mom.

'Mom, I can't find my Boba Fett.'

'Where did you leave it?'

'I dunno - the floor somewhere? I can't find it anywhere!'

'The floor? Oh dear, I guess the Toy Grabber got it.'

The Toy Grabber. My nemesis. A mythical beast that, in my mind, looked like a cross between a large rat and a Jawa. Its mission was singular. Any toy not put away properly became its property. It struck swiftly and with little warning; toys left in communal areas of our apartment, especially the floor of the hall, disappeared the fastest. I never saw it. My room tended to be sanctuary, though sometimes, if it got really messy, The Toy Grabber broke the truce and something special would disappear. Something like a Millenium Falcon. Anguish and resentment followed; dejected, I would tidy what toys that remained and sulk. Or I would throw a belligerent-brat of a tantrum. Often it was a mixture of the two.

I begged, pleaded, bargained and bellowed for the swift return of my toys to little avail. The Toy Grabber didn't work that way. It heard no pleas and felt no compassion. I imagined it stood atop a mountain of neglected toys, not just mine but all of the neglected toys in the world, ignoring the chorus of calls for their return.

Weeks, sometimes months would pass until prodigal toys reappeared. By then I had forgotten they were missing, perhaps that I ever owned them at all. It was almost like getting new toys.

It was only after about a year that I realised that my mom was The Toy Grabber. It made little difference. Its stoicism remained. Only now I knew that there was no mythical mountain of missing toys; now I knew that the missing toys were hidden somewhere. And so my pleading became merely a token gesture, and my efforts shifted to discovering my mother's hiding place. I searched everywhere: closets, cupboards, under beds, behind couches, high and low. I remember one large, silver plastic bag - I think it was from a shoe shop - that I became convinced was The Toy Grabber stash. It lay at the bottom of my parents' closet. It had those hard plastic handles that could be snapped shut. It was always snapped shut.

I never mustered the guts to open it. Eventually, I learned to pick my toys up after myself and The Toy Grabber faded with the rest of my childhood.

There's a small wooden cigar box that sits on the floor to the right of my bed. It's a Cohiba box. It used to hold Siglo I's. Now it holds countless bits and pieces: green stems from Poppy Appeal poppies, hair ties, short pieces of plastic tubing, zip ties, wine foil, paperclips, fake mice and many more. They're the cat's toys. If he plays with them on my bed while I'm trying to sleep, they get confiscated. They get put in the cigar box.

They get put in The Toy Grabber.