Cat

Robyn Gertner

When we bring the cat home, the first thing it does is sniff around the Christmas tree and urinate at its bottom. Katy lifts one side of her face, almost like a wink. “The cat’s peeing,” she says. She’s still wearing her winter coat from outside. It’s fat and puffy and when she wears it Daniel calls her his little Eskimo. I glance over at Daniel who is looking down at the cat, half of his face lifted, too. “It’s getting used to its surrounding,” I explain to them. “I bet it’s nervous.” “Well, I won’t touch it like that,” Katy announces, and walks out of the room. I put my palms on Daniel’s collarbones and kiss the skin in between them. “I told you it was a bad idea,” he says. And then he walks out of the room, too.

–***

Katy names the cat Blackie because its thick fur is black, except when it licks its body to clean itself and the fur turns wet and slick and changes to silver. “You let her name it what?” Daniel says, but he says the word what louder than he says everything else. “It’s her cat. I thought she could name it whatever she wants.” “She’s six,” Daniel says. “You couldn’t offer her a smarter name for the thing? Proteus, maybe?” I shrug and he rolls his eyes, which he never used to do, and somehow we’ve been reduced to gestures. “You wanted to get her the cat and now look.”

***–

“Here, Blackie,” Katy says. She sits cross-legged on the carpet. “Here, Blackie Blackie Blackie,” she tries again. The cat turns its head around to look at her. She shakes a toy mouse at it. “Come on.” It lets out a soft meow and she shakes the toy mouse harder and lets out a grunt. I didn’t know six year olds could grunt. The cat bites at the carpet and tears out a yarn from it, holding the thick strand between its paws like spaghetti. “Mo-ooom,” Katy whines. “Make it do something.”

–***

It’s date night. Katy is with her babysitter next door. Daniel and I watch a movie together in the bedroom. It’s about a man who does card tricks but one day he becomes a killer and begins to kill hitchhikers he picks up from the left side of the road, only the left side, and every so often Daniel says something about the camera direction and the lighting and asks me, “Don’t you agree?” And I say, “Can you really just become a murderer like that? Just one day?” He doesn’t say anything, so I wait. Then I put my hand on his leg and inch it up. “What are you doing?” he says, annoyed. “We’re watching a movie.” “Oh,” I say. “But it’s date night.” He puts his index finger to his mouth. “Shh, sweetheart,” he says.

–***

Daniel is taking Katy out to play in the snow. He holds out her Eskimo coat out so she can slip her arms in. I watch them outside through the window. The cat watches, too. She makes small cat noises while they build a snowman together. Daniel wades up the driveway, lifting his feet with each step like he’s in water or maybe sand. He opens the front door and sticks the top half of his body in the house, dripping with snow. “We need a carrot,” he says. Drip drip. “For the nose.” Drip drip drip. I look in the refrigerator. Things I find: grapes, half an apple wrapped in aluminum foil, an overripe avocado. “No carrot,” I shout. I hear a grunt and the heavy front door slam shut.

***–

“I can’t wait for Santa to bring me presents,” Katy says, holding the cat like a baby, its belly to the ceiling. The cat struggles to turn right side up. “Look,” she says, squeezing tightly. “Blackie loves me.” I’m examining her expression and thinking, she used to look like me. When she was younger, maybe. Now who does she look like? She buries her face in the cat’s dark fur, rocking its body side to side. Then the cat twists quickly and its claws slide forward and it jumps out of her arms. Katy shrieks as a fast line of blood appears across her chin and the cat lands on the carpet just like a ballerina.

–***

We wait in the emergency room, the three of us. It is mostly empty. There is a man in the corner vomiting in a bright orange bucket. Katy is sobbing in short gasps, her legs dangling several inches above the floor, her head tilted back so that Daniel can press a towel to her chin until a doctor can stitch her up. “Shh, sweetheart,” he says.

***–

I watch Daniel put Katy to bed and he brings the covers to just below her chin but he does it in a way that is so gentle and careful that I didn’t even know a child could be tucked in so gently and carefully. Her chin pops out and the stitches are obvious from this angle. They look like bloodied teeth. I find them disgusting and funny.

–***

It comes down to doctor or princess. Katy reluctantly agrees to doctor when Daniel explains they make more money. He buys her a children’s doctor kit that’s made of brown leather and has a petite handle. The kit includes a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope, a thermometer, a syringe, and gauze bandages. “I have to give you a shot or you’ll die,” she says seriously, and sticks the thick, plastic needle against Daniel’s arm, pushing the syringe’s top down. “There.” She rests her small hands on either side of the fake wound and kisses the space between them. “My little Eskimo saved my life!” Daniel calls to me.

–***

The cat won’t go near Katy who now waits by its bowl. “It has to eat eventually,” she says smartly. Hours go by. She sits there all day with a coloring book, waiting. Finally the cat inches in, casually. Katy makes a grab at it, but the cat sways away with little effort, uninterested. Like a balloon. Immediately Katy’s face shifts into something that wants and detests at the same time. Her green eyes turn big and angry and hungry. She watches it move around for a while. “Sometimes I want to kill it,” Katy admits through her teeth. Her face calms after a moment and she goes back to coloring. Then, “Can you make me macaroni and cheese?”

–***

The corner of our living room still smells like urine. I take all the ornaments off of the Christmas tree and buy a new tree and put all the ornaments back on. There are twenty-seven of them. I’d thought we’d collected more over the years, or maybe less. I’m counting the ornaments again when I notice that the cold air leaking in from our cracked window screens is getting worse. Daniel has told me that we should replace them to increase the value of the house. For when we sell it. But I don’t want to sell it, I’ve already explained to him. Daniel told me not to worry. He told me it’s a just-in-case thing. But just in case what. Just in case what. Now I’m sitting on the couch with my hands in my lap thinking about as many words as I can that could take the place of that thing he refers to. I only come up with one.

***–

“There is a Christmas party next week,” Daniel tells me. “Okay,” I say. “What should I wear?” I think about the dresses in my closet: a blue long one with beads on the top; another long one, tan, plain; a strapless one that hits just under the knees and has a woven design at its sides. Daniel adjusts his posture. “I thought I’d bring Katy, actually. Most of the men didn’t bring their wives last year, and I thought it would be fun for her.” I think of the cat. I imagine it dodging away from Katy’s reach. “There will be a Santa there,” he adds. “Don’t you hate Santa?”

***–

Katy is standing in the center of the living room with her stethoscope on. “I’m listening to the air breath,” she explains, holding the chest piece up above her head. “And how does it breathe?” I ask. She moves the piece around like she’s examining a floating, invisible body. She listens. “Slowly.” I’m noticing that she looks smaller than usual against the backdrop of our enormous Christmas tree, which is strange because she should be taller with each passing year. Then the cat comes out of nowhere and crosses in front of her, on its way to the litter box, or maybe to its bowl, or maybe to meow at the treats bag that sits atop the refrigerator, and the cat’s right legs are both reaching forward, reaching, reaching, suspended in the slow air being breathed in and out by the stethoscope, when Katy pulls her own right leg back and snaps it out, and her foot catches under the cat’s belly and now the cat is flying, flying, like in those martial arts movies they show in mall kiosks when all the men are jumping and flying and running and flying and doing tricks and flying, and it hits the wall with the kind of sound you wouldn’t expect it to make. Like someone getting punched in the stomach. I stand there, horrified. Katy runs over and lifts Blackie’s swollen, limp body from the floor and holds it against her chest, whispering softly into its fur.

–***

Tonight is the Christmas party. I will not be wearing any of my dresses tonight. Not the blue long one, or the tan long one, or the strapless one. Katy will be wearing her holiday dress. It is black and velvety on top and then opens up into a red organza skirt with a large bow in the back. Daniel has already left for the office to help set up. “Could you drop Katy off tonight?” he asks me on the phone. “I have to meet Santa in the lobby.” “I need to bathe her first,” I tell him. He lets out an annoyed breath. “Can you speak slower?” he says. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying. You sound like an alien.”

–***

Katy dips her head back and I pour a cup of water onto her scalp to rinse it. “There’s soap in my ear,” she complains loudly, her voice vibrating against the porcelain tub. I run my thumb over her chin, lifted up in the air. The stitches have been removed already, and the skin is now clean and smooth and white like canvas, and there is the sudden sensation of furniture being rearranged in a room, and the inability thereafter to remember where the furniture once stood. It is almost if there were never any stitches to begin with. Almost as if there was never a cat to begin with. Or as if Katy has been rearranged. I take my thumb that is still on her chin and I slowly press against it, pushing her down into the water in a way that is so gentle and careful, you would never know this could be done so gently and carefully. She makes an unfamiliar noise. “Shh, sweetheart,” I say.

#

Robyn Gertner earned her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She has written for Publishers Weekly and Seventeen Magazine. She recently completed her debut novel, How to Wire a Family Tree, which she is seeking representation for.