My Metaphorical Cat

by Pamela Langley

My cat and I are in the throes of a cold war. We've been tangoing around each other for the past three weeks and, until a nestful of bobbing robinettes become prone to flight, our divide will endure. Because, she's been known to drop baby bird bits around the house in an evil sort of Hansel and Gretel trail. She sprawls atop my desk in the afternoon sun like a basking seal, lazy eyes at half–mast, feigning indifference. She hopes to fool me with a false sense of disinterest so I might absent–mindedly open a door to the wild beyond, but I'm on to her.

The birds are, at most, two and a half feet from my office window, and a mere three feet off the ground. A sturdy, slightly curved branch leads to their abode like some kind of winding predator escalator, and I wonder what the parents were thinking, choosing to nest a kid's reach up a rhododendron bush. The babies usually stay cautiously still, but this time of day the worms burrow down deep, so while mom and dad frantically dig, they're twittery with hunger. Kittie hears them and the tip of her tail flicks like a hungry snake's tongue tasting the air. She arches her neck and turns her head to look, jingling her bird–bell against a metal, "JESSICA" pet tag. Her skin twitches and her lips slip back primordially over her possum teeth as one sailboat ear arcs to the starboard side. I shut the open window, blocking temptation. On this side of the glass barrier her eyes narrow to new–moon size as she blinks at me with utter disgust.

It hasn't always been this way. We were once deeply in love. She was a warm pillow on frigid nights, and great comic relief. With gliding grace, she'd meticulously clean her swirls of rust and grey — her feline perfection an aesthetic reward. I learned to rub her head just so to coax the hypnotic song of her vibrating contentment. But the blush is off the rose. She's delivered one too many massacred songbirds on my front doorstep, and the jig is up. Somewhere along the line I've taken up the cause of the dwindling bird population, and the cat and I are talking divorce. I feel it's my duty — my sacred mission even — to protect these nestlings who apparently come from less than superior genes. Their proximity says blind trust to me, and I'm nothing if not a sucker for the vulnerable. Though we make eye contact through the glass, the parents are unconcerned. They've left it to my vigilance. So the princess is currently foiled; her harp–string whiskers in an angry twist.

I've been pondering the questionable wisdom of my intervention. I'm worried I've become an imperial stormtrooper of a pet owner, getting involved in bird sanctuary for all the wrong reasons. The birds built an exposed nest on a risky piece of real estate in Jessica's domain. On the other hand, my cat is no longer what she was meant to be. She's been manipulated, domesticated, fed stuff she never hunted. She's got an instinct to stalk, but no need to, and has lost her sense for a clean kill. She's a gorgeous, wicked, slinky–toy who grasps little creatures, flopping onto her side while ecstatically thumping out their innards with her hind sabers, or playing "you can go now" while repeatedly changing her mind — until they're no longer playing.

But now I've locked her in and sealed all exits. In protest of her imprisonment, she's devised tactical maneuvers. She's become a vomiting, shredding, mewling furball factory. Recently, after a thwarted escape attempt, she sat five feet from me glaring, her tail swishing like a witch's broom. After a three–minute stare–down she bowed her triangular head as though paying me homage, her eyes fixed on mine. Instead of penance, she skewered each claw into the spanking new carpet and — before I could foil the onslaught — expelled her breakfast in uniform chunks. Finished, she sauntered into the kitchen and began a round of self–cleansing. The captive is in revolt.

More recently — during a heatwave — I locked her in the guest room with my only cooling fan, a bowl of Fancy Feasts salmon entre, and catnip toys, only to return a few sweaty hours later to a bedspread frayed like a hula skirt, urine deposited beside the litter box, and a colossal furball plopped at the entry to the room. From the softest corner of the shredded bed she cast me a good look at her incisors with a languid yawn. So she's won some battles, but I'll win the war.
 

Reflecting on this and other recent incidents, I realize that my cat is becoming a metaphor. My cat is a metaphor. She's an unjustly sentenced death–row inmate, a third–world country brought to its knees, a piece of embattled land called Jerusalem, a wildly energetic teenager on a strict curfew. She's every kid who's been punished for exuberantly scrawling their name in crayon on the wall above their bed. She's every washed–out football player in a barroom brawl. She's every protestor who's labeled un–American. She's me at sixteen hitchhiking down Pacific Coast Highway, answering an urge to be somewhere else. And I wonder if it's the bird I'm saving, or the cat I'm controlling.

I'm acutely aware that things are coming to a head. The cat and I are eyeing each other like gunslingers, and when I reach for her she darts away like a fingerling trout released to a stream. I know she'd leave me in a heartbeat if she could. I look at the fuzz–headed baby robins, nodding like those loose–necked dogs I've seen on the back dashes of Chevys in East L.A., and wonder when they'll fly away already. This parental control thing has me down. The whole nature of our predicament has me down. I realize I'm a corrupted priest — protecting the sacred while there's sin to wash from my own hands.

I was reading Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies last night when I stumbled upon an enlightening explanation for my protective resolve. She says that her preacher told her that the world is sometimes like a giant emergency ward, and "we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes." And I thought that was a lyrical call to nurture. I reason that my cat's random acts of violence disturb me in that they illuminate the consequences of my own arbitrary nature. The prize — for both of us it seems — often overshadows the karmic debt.

Metaphorically, the huntress cat has wedded my residual guilt, evoking a villain fouler than the Coen brothers' motorcyclist from hell. Together I picture the cavalier me and the instinctual cat, straddling a Harley with pistols in each paw, enemies of "the little things." But my intervening conscience is positioned nest–side, blocking our destructive path. From deep within my impoverished soul, I'm answering the call to save those birds — embodying my neglected inner hero, eradicating an untamed youth.
 

The sun has shifted in the sky and I woke yesterday to the scent of earth passing from full–bloomed to the over side of ripe. The cherry trees across the street are tinged pumpkin, and there's a snap in the air. I turned the blinds of my office to find no birds in the bush. I walked out and peered into the soup–bowl nest, emptied of all contents save one unhatched egg the color of a Tiffany box. Rolling the small oval in my palm, I smugly contemplated life and all things nascent. I credited myself with increasing the songbird population by two, and returned to the house. But the cat knew. She stared at me relentlessly, meowing whenever our eyes met, until I capitulated and watchfully let her outside. She sauntered out casually, then headed in the direction opposite the vacated nest. No harm, no foul, I thought, proud of my guardianship.

But don't you know that a few short hours later — right around tuna time — I opened my front door to call Jessica in, only to find a feathered sacrifice to the gods of irony. From just far enough away she peered at me ensuring I understood, then turned away from my defeated calls. The clink of her double bird–bells followed her skunky tail around the corner and out of sight, jangling a noise that echoed with the sounds of "checkmate."

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AUTHOR NOTES:

Pamela Langley

Pamela Langley has just become a senior at Marylhurst University. In addition to creative writing, she has a blog, The Paper Garden, is a guest author at Radical Noesis, and has had articles published at Panoptic World, the website of journalist, Mathew Maavak, as well as the Uncommon Thought Journal. Her creative inspirations occur most often in the shower, resulting in a damp path from her bathroom to her computer! She is often dominated by her compelling cat, keeps in shape by scrambling after her two ADD dogs, and stays sane because of the gentle efforts of her husband, Aaron.