The Little Bastard

From a distance, I noticed old Salmano standing on the doorstep. He looked flustered. When we got closer, I saw that he didn't have his dog. He was looking all over the place, turning around, peering into the darkness of the entryway, muttering incoherently, and then he started searching the street again with his little red eyes. When Raymond asked him what was wrong, he didn't answer right away. I barely heard him mumble "Stinking bastard," and he went on fidgeting around. I asked him where his dog was. He snapped at me and said he was gone. And then all of a sudden the words came pouring out: "I took him to the Parade Ground, like always. There were lots of people around the booths at the fair. I stopped to watch ‘The King of the Escape Artists.' And when I was ready to go, he wasn't there. Sure, I've been meaning to get him a smaller collar for a long time. But I never thought the bastard would take off like that."

Albert Camus, The Stranger.

* * *

I've always hated the cat. The mean, hissing, little beast wasn't even a decent cat color; not a black or a calico or even the golden amber color suggesting a greater feline heritage. Nature and fate had combined to color this vicious little animal a dull, gun metal, gray, with random black stripes across its back. Only its eyes had color – a yellow-green glow from the shadows.

It took me about nine and a half minutes as I was moving into my apartment to realize this animal and I were born mortal enemies. My friend, Sean, and I were carrying my couch up one of those indecently narrow stairways designed by obtuse architects who never actually lived in an apartment (and apparent never helped to move anyone into one), when suddenly the cat appeared in the middle of the couch. Despite my rather intense language and our attempts to dump the animal off the couch, it stayed where it was, arching its back as if every moment of my discomfort colored its life with a proportional amount of pleasure. Since we couldn't get put the couch down, the little beast rode up four flights of stairs until we finally reached the landing outside my apartment. Just as we were lowering the couch, the fiend darted away, disappearing temporarily, only to reappear the next time our arms were full, weaving between our legs in what was nothing more than an attempt to send us plunging to our deaths.

It kept this up all day. And, my friends, that was just the first day.

It is no significant exaggeration to say the hateful little animal began to haunt me. I could be certain the cat was lurking outside my door when I left in the morning and hiding in the shadows when I returned home at night. It made such a presence of itself that my dates occasionally thought the fiend actually belonged to me. I immediately discouraged such thoughts, usually with a few vicious comments about cats, in general, and this cat, in particular.

Of course, my dates always rose to the animal's defense. "Don't say that. He just wants some attention."

"Fine," was my standard reply. "I'll buy a pit bull. He'll get lots of attention."

Before you condemn me as cruel, rest assured the little bastard could mount a defense quite well and in a classic cat-style. For you see, every morning when I eventually ventured out of my apartment to cross the parking lot to my very own parking stall and my eyes fell on the shiny finish of the car that will be mine after just 39 more monthly payments, what do your think I saw?

That's right – cat tracks. Up the trunk and back window, across the roof and down the front window and again across the hood. Sometimes it was a straight line. Sometimes it was a crooked line. But it was always a line, as if during the night some drunken painter with a cat fetish decided to add a racing stripe to my car.

Not long after I moved into the apartment, I decided to put an end to this cat nonsense (no, I didn't buy a pit bull or a use any kind of firearm). I began, as we in the legal industry say, to make inquiries. I started with by leaving a message on the manager's telephone. She didn't call me back. I left another message. She still didn't call me back. I knew she was student and was probably pretty busy and since this wasn't a matter of life or death or building security, I just let it go. One day, while picking up my mail, I decided to just stop by her apartment. She wasn't home. All the Gods of the Feline-Centered Universe were conspiring against me.

As I headed back to my apartment, I realized the animal was following me.

Beneath me live a young married couple. She's cute and bouncy, in a curly-haired kind of way, and enjoys a sunny disposition that the rest of the world most certainly finds annoying. He's blond and curt and doesn't say much – probably still in shock from the wedding. I stopped them one day and asked about the cat. Did they know the owner?

"What cat?" they asked in unison.

I glanced around, fully intending to be able to show them. After all, the little beast seemed to shadow my every movement. Except, of course, now he was nowhere to be seen. "A small, gray cat. Kinda ugly." I made some sizing motions with my hands.

They shook their heads, again in unison.

"I can't believe you haven't seen it."

They blinked – in unison.

This was becoming unnerving, like Pet Cemetery meets The Stepford Family. I felt the need to produce evidence of a cat, so I pointed to my car with its paw-print stripe. "See? This is what it does to my car."

"Wow, that sucks." This was from the guy.

"This has never happened to you?" I watched and, sure enough, the heads shook, in unison.

"Why don't you just wash your car?" This from Mrs. Sunny.

"Because he does it every day." As their eyes narrowed -- you got it, in unison -- I understood two things: first, that they were beginning to question my sanity and, second, that somehow I had crossed through the dimensions into some bizarre feline version of the Twilight Zone.

I never found out if the cat belong to anyone. It was just there, like an annoying, hairy shadow you just can't shake because it's become part of you. Eventually, I got used to the cat tracks on my car and even came up with a couple of quippy sayings about why my car was always so decorated. In time, I came to stand outside in the morning, taking a break from work and drinking my coffee, just glaring at the cat glaring back at me. I even quit throwing rocks at the little bastard.

But I never came to like the cat.

* * *

I traveled a bit last week. Recently, I was offered a new job as a writer with an educational software company. During the interview, one of the managers asked me exactly what experience I had working with Macromedia programs like Flash, Shockwave and Dreamweaver.

"None," I admitted honestly.

They hired me anyway. Go figure.

Well, the first order of business was to send me off to the Big City for training. So away I went for three workdays and a weekend. I truly enjoyed myself but I felt a familiar sense of comfort when the cab from the airport – booked at company expense, no less – finally dropped me in front of my apartment.

I always clean my car for the winter. Well, I don't do it – I take it to a professional carwash where there are guys who actually like to clean and detail cars. There it gets cleaned and waxed and readied for the winter. I like to do it before the first real snow, so this year I took it in just before I left for the Big City.

The morning following my return home, I realized something was different. I'd made my coffee and stood outside my apartment drinking it, just watching the rain fall steadily down around the apartment building. It took a minute, but I finally put my finger on it.

The cat was gone.

Must be the rain, I thought. Cat's don't like water, right?

Then I saw my car. It was still clean, sans stripe.

I wish I could say my conscience spoke in some measure of kindness, but at the time, I really just considered it a minor miracle of feline self-restraint. I may even have muttered a "Thank God" under my breath. Later, when I had to drive to store, I paused for just a moment looking at my clean car, and then into the shadows and corners of the parking lot. No cat.

The next morning, as I was driving to work, I almost wrecked the car when I realized I was looking through a clean windshield. Perfectly clean. No tracks, front or back.

Well, that was three days ago. My car sits outside tonight, clean except for a few rain spots. I haven't seen the little beast -- the little bastard, if you will -- anywhere around. I must think the cat will turn up, because I'm searching the shadows and corners, trying to spot the reflection of those yellow-green eyes, every time I leave my apartment. Maybe I just hope the cat will turn up. But by now it is certainly hope because somehow, as I write these words, I know the cat is dead. I don't know how I know, but I know.

En Pace Requistat - you little bastard.

The Shadow One

:duel:

Ahh...you become enemies and form routines huh? One day it is gone...and you find you actual miss him.
Personally I am a cat person but certainly these kind I do not like. However, I do not take pleasure in knowing of their demise...it just isn't nice ... did that came out right?
When my old cat died - mum backed over him, it really was incredibly sad. Everyday I would catch myself looking out the window for him...going to the door to call him and realising he wasn't going to be around. As strange as it sounds the cat became your companion - adding spice to life.
Anyway, are pets allowed in the apartment building? If not consider sneaking one in...they don't seem to care ~D

Of course..I may be deeply mistaken - seems to happen a lot. :dizzy2:

this is a rather common happenstance for folks that havent realized yet that cats own the universe. i'm sorry if this offends or bothers anyone, but it just happens to be true. ask any cat. and the very simple reason you were 'stalked' is because of your refusal to acknowledge this simple fact. once you become aware of and console yourself to this simple fact, cats can be very enjoyable. the tracks on your otherwise clean car are just a simple reminder to us lowly humans of who is really in charge, particularly if they sense that you have not owned up to being owned yet. that you exist by the grace of their immeasurable, but someone annoyed, tolerance, is all that they ever really ask of us. grant them this and all is forgiven and correct again within the cosmos :)

K.

Quite possibly true but they sure can grease when they want food ~;)