2. A woman arrives to her dark house in the hour where late meets early and finds her cat in tears. Oh, poor baby, says the woman, suddenly self-decentered and able to let go her rumination that some nights are miserably plain. She opens her loneliness to the needs of the cat, her capacity to nurture like a confined body of water released. She tells the cat she is sorry. The cat cries a rhehr, rhehr, rhehr like dry coughing and the woman puts her face to the cat’s neck, blowing hot breath into her fur. After recalling that there is no longer much reason to stay up the woman places the cat on the floor, and the cat responds with a mournful wuaoh, wuaoh.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Moments between Woman and Cat
1. A woman and her cat are having morning poops together in the bathroom. The woman says oh, baby, you’re so fucking cute. The cat keeps silent during the shit act, ever poised, but when finished, replies to the woman with a prissy mraer, shovels away her waste, or only part of it if she’s cross, hops out, walks to the woman’s leg and, while looking her in the eye, which the woman reads as love, presses her bottom to it. The woman smiles and says you little fiend, show me that ass!
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Wow. This was a very evocative take on the whole Cat Lady cliche. You took it a step further, where the cat is actually physically replacing the woman's loneliness. Your first line about the morning poops really sets the tone for the piece. It's kind of creepy but also kind of sad. I pity this poor lonely woman but at the same time already wonder about the amount of intimacy she has with this creature. You work in her instability subtly but seamlessly.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to assemble a collection of woman/cat stories? They would work. I like the play with sound (it works to convey the emotion of the cat, which gives one a glimpse of what it's like to communicate with an animal--aha, form + content). The "you little fiend, show me that ass!" shows the way the woman thinks about her relationship with her cat as if it was any other friendship. She communicates through those thoughts while the cat communicates through the mraughs. The second story, of solidarity and reunion,is beautiful.
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