Well a cat is a horrible thing with a long tail. It’s covered with fur and has bristling whiskers and when it fights it makes fierce, spiteful noises. It’s cunning you see
“So how are you?” I’m not sure we’re on the same side of this fight. That might be good. I’m not sure if I’m on the right side.
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“That.” I’m pointing right at it. Turn around and you might see it.
“It’s a portable computer.”
“It looks like a camera.”
“It does have a camera on it. Two of them actually.”
“Why two?”
“I don’t know. The company just likes to put extra features on their products.”
“Is it on?”
“No.” It looks on. The lights are on. The screen has a menu displayed. But I shouldn’t be too paranoid. I’m not interesting enough to record.
“What would you like to talk about this week?”
“I killed a cat.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“What made you say that then?”
“I had to say something.”
“Do you have a cat?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Her name is Petri, but I always call her Snowball.”
“Petri like a small, plastic dish for growing bacterial colonies?”
“Yes. But not that gross.”
“And what about Snowball?”
“I just called her that one day because I thought it was funny since she’s all black and now that’s her nickname.”
“That is quite funny.” Do you have a cat? I could picture that. At least if you were to have a pet, it definitely wouldn’t be a dog. Dog people are obvious. Cat people are curious. Or lazy. “What did you do this week?”
“Went shopping.” Hence the new designer dress I purchased while I was downtown. Not that you would notice.
“What did you buy?”
“This.” It was too expensive. Pouring coffee earned me enough to pay bills, but nothing extra, and the money from my father’s house was only budgeted to last me through school, so that was long gone now. “Stupid.”
“What’s stupid?”
“I am.” As if it’s not the most obvious thing in the world.
“Sorry, why are you stupid?”
“Because I shouldn’t be spending money. I complain about not having enough money to pay the bills. Or eat. And then I go out and spend what I don’t have on frivolities.”
“So then why do you do it?”
“Because it’s pretty.” It is pretty. They all are, all my purchases. Despite the fact I know I don’t have money, I still spend like I do. It seems a waste to live a useless life without at least being able to have beautiful things. And it makes me smile.
“I think it’s good to allow yourself these extravagances. Aesthetics plays an important role in healthy living.”
“But I’m irresponsible.”
“So.” It makes me a bad person. I’m unstable. I can’t take care of anything. I can’t take care of myself properly.
“Forget it.” You are forever doodling on your paper. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to let it go. You’re supposed to question me, find out my secrets. Not that that would change anything, you knowing. But if it’s not going to change anything, why does your ambivalence irritate me so? I can be ambivalent too. I’ll just sit here and wait until you have to ask me a question. And wait. And wait. At least you have looked up from your absent doodling. Sit and stare and wait. This is stupid. Why won’t you talk to me? It just occurred to me that you probably have no idea that I’m only two steps away from sticking a knife in your stomach. If I had a knife.
“What’s the laughter for?”
“For me.”
“That’s a good sign.” No it’s not. Fuck, you’re dense. It’s a very bad sign. People don’t just laugh spontaneously. At least, when I do it around other people they look at me strangely and ask me what’s wrong, so I figure normal people don’t do it.
“How so?”
“Laughter is an indicator of happiness.” A false indicator. “It shows you have a natural tendency towards living well.”
“Yeah, because I totally live well.”
“You do. It’s easy for a person in your situation to surrender to the symptoms of depression. But you are able to take care of yourself - eat, wash, dress. And more than that. You find yourself easily attracted to beauty.” You’re beautiful. “If you were incapacitated with a mood disorder, you wouldn’t see the details in life as poetically as you do. You wouldn’t be smiling at all, despite what might be your cynical interpretation as to the cause of your smile. You have a salubrious approach to life.” Your voice is soothing. Calming. I stopped listening to what you were saying at ‘symptoms.’ I already know what you’re going to say and I don’t particularly care to hear it. I won’t believe any of what you try to tell me anyway. I couldn’t believe you if I wanted to. It makes more sense for me to sit here, close my eyes and just let the sound of you pass through me, wrap around me. Comfort. Like my blanket at home in bed. I don’t want to go back there. But you’ve stopped talking and I can’t sleep here.
“Sooner or later there will be an accident and I will end up in the hospital.”
“That’s a bold assertion.”
“It’s the logical conclusion. I’m not going to stop cutting myself.”
“Self injurious behaviours can be viewed a lot like an addiction.” You’ve told me this before. “You have to want to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop.”
“Then you are you have some more work to do.” I don’t know what that means, but I don’t think you’re being nice and I don’t much like being talked down to, so I am not going to participate in this line of conversation anymore. If we start fighting, you will win and where will that leave me? “Well, it looks like that’s all the time we have for today. Have a good week.”
“Thanks.” Whatever.
……….
With a full day ahead of me and nothing to do, I prepared myself for the worst, but the afternoon passed pleasantly and without incident. I sat in the sun and read. It wasn’t until early evening that I felt things shift and the shadows seeped into my mind separating me from myself. Laura and Kayla took their protective places at my side, but I decided this evening I would take the offensive. I was not about to go to that place of confused exhaustion and terror, not for anything, so I took five sleeping pills, knowing the induced unconscious would protect me for a short time. All I wanted was to not think, not dream, not exist.
The alarm woke me at nine for work. It sounded muffled and distant, but irritating nonetheless, so I turned it off and returned to bed. At
I arrived late for the staff meeting at work. As people watched me enter the room and take a seat near the back, I hoped no one noticed I couldn’t walk properly. I shouldn’t have been driving. The sedatives sure were taking their time working their way out of my system.
The manager, talking about company protocols at the front of the room, was pointing to something on a board, some piece of paper, but instead of his finger, he was using the razor he carries with him everywhere as a pointer and all I could think about was how I wanted to cut myself.
Coffee samples were passed around and whenever the tray came my way, I took two hoping the sugar-caffeine combo would help alleviate the after-effects of the drugs still in my system. At one point during the meeting, the manager was reminding us about the equality and tolerance policy and I laughed. It wasn’t supposed to be an audible laugh, but people turned around to look at me. I just thought it was funny that people had to be reminded, and that it took two pages of the employee manual to teach them to respect other people, but obviously my amusement wasn’t shared.
The rest of the day passed without event, mostly because I was still too sedated to roll myself off the couch. But a few hours of staring at the ceiling did put me in a more relaxed state of mind. Sometimes, like this evening, when I’m in one of my better moods, I will contemplate the shape of a sleeping cat. They always look so much smaller when they are curled in on themselves, like a sphere of fur. A flattened sphere. Fragile. Vulnerable. Disembodied. Beautiful. Even people are beautiful when they are sleeping. They hardly possess the miasmic qualities they so viciously use to define their humanity when they are awake. No defences. No pretences. If I was to become a serial killer, my pattern might be to kill people in their sleep.
Kill the cat. The thought wasn’t mine. It came from somewhere behind the shadows. But once it was there, in my head, it became mine and I wanted to kill my cat. He hadn’t done anything to offend me, he was simply lying on the floor as cats do when the impulse to kill struck me. That’s all it was, a curious, instinctive impulse. I didn’t desire to kill him. Nor did I feel any need to unbind him from his life. It just seemed the natural thing to do.
For a minute, I watched him sleeping and breathing, his tiny head void of any idea of what I was considering inflicting upon him. It would be easy, to make the breath stop, even I could accomplish such a simple task without any instruments or tools. He was so small.
Then I got up from the couch and stepped on his neck. Little bits of black fur poked out softly from the space in between my toes. His body, his blood, was warm against the cold sole of my foot. I stepped down harder. Discomforted by this, he bit my foot in defence. In just return, I grabbed him by the neck and choked him with my left hand while I pinned him to the floor with my right, to avoid being scratched as he attempted to struggle out of my grasp.
It was disappointing, how quickly he surrendered. When he had abnegated, I held him a moment longer with a slightly loosened grip. He looked at me, directly in the eyes, and he was not sad or angry or afraid. It was almost as if he wanted me to finish him. Can a cat be suicidal? How long had he been waiting, wishing, something just like this would happen so that he could end his pointless feline life of sleeping, shitting, and eating? We bonded there, in that shared gaze and contemplation of death. So I released him. If his death was to be as insignificant as his life, to him, to me, I might as well not have to deal with the chore of double bagging a dead cat body for trash day.
Today, as last night, not a single feeling has been evoked in regards to the event. No remorse, no guilt, not even the desire to repeat the episode exists. Absolutely nothing. I though this must be how the dead feel, but quickly realised my error. The dead are better off. They have no consciousness of what they can’t feel. They don’t have to endure this cold separation of their minds from their bodies. The dead are better off.
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