Гвен Купер - Love Saves The Day

The day seems to go by more slowly than usual while I wait for Laura and Josh to come back so tonight’s wonderful holiday dinner can get started. I try to pass the time by sleeping in the places I don’t get to sleep in when Josh is home, like the cat bed on the desk in Home Office and the spot on the couch where Josh likes to sit and watch TV sometimes while he waits for Laura to get home from work. I’ve learned, though, that if I roll onto my back and pretend to be deeply asleep, Josh isn’t as likely to make me move. “She looks so comfortable,” he says to Laura. “I feel guilty.” Whenever he says this it makes me feel sorry for humans, who are forever doing the wrong thing and then having to feel guilty about it.

I’m also drawn again and again into the kitchen, even though none of the holiday foods have started cooking yet. I should probably spend more time here, because kitchens are where some of the best things live. In Lower East Side, the kitchen was where I sometimes found things that are lots of fun to practice my mice-fighting with, like the twisty-ties that keep bread closed in its bag, or the plastic straws that Sarah sometimes uses to drink her sodas through. (I could never make Sarah understand what straws are really supposed to be used for, although I tried to show her many times. Finally I started hiding my straws under the refrigerator or the couch, so she wouldn’t try to take them back from me to use the wrong way.) And there are delicious things to eat and drink in the kitchen even when there isn’t a holiday dinner, like tuna fish from a can, or the thin pieces of turkey meat that live inside crinkly paper in the refrigerator. Sarah had to stop keeping things in the kitchen like cream for her coffee and cheese when the doctor said dairy products would be bad for her heart. Maybe if I come in here more often when Laura and Josh are here, I could get some of those little treats again.

The day may have felt long, but I can still tell that it’s much earlier than usual when I finally hear Laura’s key in the lock. It isn’t even dark outside yet. I knew Laura was anxious about tonight, but I didn’t realize she was so anxious that it was worth leaving work early for.

Laura and Josh did something this morning to the dining room table to make it long enough to fit seven chairs. Now Laura reaches up to the highest cabinet in the kitchen for cloth mats (which are much nicer than the rubber mat she put underneath my food and water bowls and don’t have insulting cartoons of smiling cats all over them). Then she goes to the front-hall closet and drags out two huge, heavy boxes. From these she starts taking out fancy plates and glasses that are nicer than the plates she and Josh usually eat off of. Laura’s hands move slowly, and she lingers to look at each plate as she sets it out. Once everything is on the table, she looks out the tall windows behind the table and watches the coffee-colored pigeons across the street. She stares at them so long that I turn to stare, too, but as usual the pigeons aren’t doing much of anything except flying in pointless circles.

It isn’t very long until Josh comes home. He comes up behind Laura to give her a big hug. “I can’t believe you got home so early!” he says happily.

“Pass Over is a time of miracles and wonders,” Laura tells him, using her “dry” voice.

Josh goes upstairs to wash his hands, and when he comes back he starts helping Laura, pulling platters down from the higher cabinets and taking bottles out of the refrigerator while Laura turns the oven on. “Do you think your mother will be offended we got all the food from Zabar’s instead of making it myself?”

Laura sounds worried, but Josh laughs. “She’ll respect you for it. Zelda hasn’t cooked voluntarily in years.”

The air in front of the oven isn’t even hot yet, which means it’s still going to be a while before the food is ready. I decide that napping in the closet upstairs is the best way to make the time shorter between now and when I can eat. As I’m leaving, I hear Josh tell Laura, “I’m going to vacuum in the spare bedroom. I was noticing this morning how dusty it is in there.”

“Sounds good,” Laura says, in a distracted-sounding voice. My Prudence-tags ring softly against my red collar as I climb the stairs, and I hear the dull thud of Josh’s footsteps following me.

I’ve just settled down comfortably in the back of the closet when Josh flicks on the light in the ceiling. There’s so much extra light all of a sudden that I can’t see much—just the blurry shape of Josh standing in the doorway, pushing what looks like a tall triangle with a handle at the top and a flat square thing on wheels at the bottom. It’s attached to a leash, which Josh plugs into a socket on the wall right next to the door.

My eyes adjust to all the new light, and now I see Josh leave this strange object so he can walk over to the Sarah-boxes. He starts moving them around and pushing them into arrangements different from the one they’re supposed to have—the arrangement I’ve spent days memorizing. I rush out from the closet to leap onto the boxes, thinking that maybe the extra weight of my body will make them too heavy for him to move. But I don’t slow him down at all. He just says, “Come on, Prudence, out of the way,” in what he probably thinks is a friendly voice, nudging me gently on my backside with his foot until I’m forced to jump out of one box after the other.

Once the boxes have been lined up in two rows on either side of the floor next to the rug, Josh goes back to the strange thing standing in the doorway. He kicks its base and a white light comes on. Then it begins to scream!

It screams and screams without stopping even to catch its breath. It doesn’t scream like something in pain, but like something that’s vicious and wants to hurt somebody. Maybe even a cat! It’s a monster—just like the monsters I’ve heard about in TV movies that everybody says aren’t real. Except this one is! It roars in anger because Josh holds tight to its neck and won’t let it get free, even though it gnashes and pushes itself back and forth trying to break away from him—glaring fiercely right at me from its one awful eye that lights up near its mouth. It gobbles up all the spilled litter from my litterbox and the little bits of my fur that have rubbed off over the last few weeks. It has to move over the litter a few times before it gets it all, but it sucks my fur right up. It’s trying to find me! It’s not satisfied with just the scraps of my fur—now it wants to eat a whole cat!

I knew Laura didn’t like having all the Sarah-boxes up here, but I never thought she’d send Josh to kill them—and me at the same time. I try bravely to defend at least one row of Sarah-boxes from this terrible monster. I puff up all my fur, to make myself look much bigger than I really am, and I hiss at it and rake its smooth head with my claws as a warning. Humans are usually intimidated by this, but The Monster is obviously much stronger than any human—except Josh. He just says, “Shoo!,” waving his hand in my direction as if I were a dog he was chasing away. That he can control this horrible beast with only one hand must mean he’s the strongest human in the entire world. Finally I give up and run to hide deep in the closet, my heart racing. I can hear The Monster roaring near the closet door, but it doesn’t come in after me. Probably it can’t see very well because it only has the one eye. Still, I don’t know how well it can hear, and my heart is beating so loud! I concentrate on trying to quiet my heartbeat, and soon I hear The Monster’s roar get fainter and fainter, until I know it’s gone to look for cats in another room.

I wait until I can’t hear it at all anymore before I dare to creep out of the closet again. None of the Sarah-boxes seems to be hurt, although everything’s in the wrong place.