Гвен Купер - Love Saves The Day

Way in the back of our closet are a lot of clothes she never wears anymore—she wore them a long time ago, she says, back in her “going-out” days. Some of her clothes have feathers on them, so of course I thought they were birds and tried to catch them with my claws. That was the only time Sarah ever got really mad at me. But if a human doesn’t want her clothes chased by a cat, then she shouldn’t have clothes that look like birds.

It took me a while, but I’ve finally gotten the whole apartment to the point where it has a comfortable cat-smell. It’s not anything a human would be able to smell, but if some other cat were to come here and try to move in with us, she would know that another cat already got here first. The back of the closet especially has a very homey and safe aroma. Sarah put some old things of hers there for me to sleep on, and it’s the closest thing I have to my own private cave.

And, best of all, our apartment is filled with music. Most of it lives on round, flat, black disks that Sarah keeps in stiff cardboard holders. All the cardboard holders have pictures or drawings on them, and some of them look exactly like the posters hanging on our walls. The wall where the music lives, though, doesn’t have any posters hanging on it. That’s because that whole wall is nothing but music, from floor to ceiling. Sarah tells me I’m not allowed to mark any of it with my claws, which means it belongs just to her and not to both of us. Still, I get to listen to it with her. The black disks don’t look like they should be able to do anything, but Sarah puts them on a special silver table that can hold two black disks at one time. Then she presses some buttons and moves some things around, and the disks sing their music. Sometimes we only listen to one or two songs, but there are times when Sarah makes the black disks sing all day. Sometimes, although not very often, Sarah sings with them. That’s always my favorite.

It’s because of music that I adopted Sarah in the first place. This was when I was very little and had been living outside with my littermates. We were running away from some rats one day, which are the most disgusting creatures in the whole world. They have horrible long teeth and claws, and they smell bad, and if they’re not chasing you to hurt you then they’re trying to steal whatever bits of food you’ve managed to find. Then it started to rain—a huge, terrifying thunderstorm that I was sure would drown every living thing that couldn’t find a hiding place. My littermates and I, between running from the rats and then trying to hide from the rain, got separated. I ended up tucking myself under a broken cement block in a big empty lot. I was scared to be alone for the first time in my life, and I started mewing in the hope my littermates would hear me and come find me.

Instead, Sarah found me. Of course, I didn’t know she was Sarah then. I just knew she was a human—taller than most of them, with brown hair to her shoulders. She looked older than a lot of the humans who live in Lower East Side, but not really old.

Usually, I’m very good at staying hidden from humans when I don’t want them to find me. Most people would walk right past my hiding places without ever seeing me. I don’t think Sarah would have seen me, either, except that she stopped in front of the lot and stared at it for a long time. She stared so long that the clouds went away and the sun came out, and that’s when she spotted my hiding place.

I thought she was just going to walk away and leave me alone. Instead she came closer and squatted down to hold out her hand to me. But I’d never been touched by a human before and didn’t trust any of them. Plus, I couldn’t understand what she was saying because I didn’t understand much of human language back then. I backed up until I fell into a puddle, shivering at how cold the rainwater made my fur.

And that’s when Sarah started singing. It was the first time I’d ever heard music—almost everything I’d heard until then were ugly and scary sounds, like machines, and things shattering on the sidewalk, or humans yelling at my littermates and me when they chased us away.

Sarah’s music was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I’d seen beautiful things before, like the plates of perfect food that people ate at outside tables in warm weather. Or the shady grass under trees in the park that humans go to, which meant my littermates and I could do nothing but hide from the humans and look with longing at how pretty the sunlight was and how cool the shade looked.

But when Sarah sang, it was the first time something was beautiful just for me. Sarah’s music was my beautiful thing, and nobody was going to chase me away from it or try to take it from me.

I couldn’t understand the words she was singing, but there were two words her song kept saying: Dear Prudence . She sang Dear Prudence right to me like it was my name. And it turns out Prudence was my name. I just didn’t know it yet.

But Sarah knew it all along. That’s how I knew I could trust her, even though she was a human. I decided then and there to adopt her, because it was clear we were supposed to be together.

Mice hardly ever find their way into our apartment, but whenever one does I catch it and present it to Sarah, to show her that I’m willing to do things for her in exchange for her doing things for me. And I practice very hard at catching mice even when there aren’t any around. I train on empty toilet paper rolls or crumpled-up balls of paper, leaping on them and rehearsing my fighting techniques so that when a mouse does come in, I’m ready. If I work hard, I hope that Sarah and I can be a real family one day, instead of just roommates.

It’s as I’m thinking this that I see, from my perch on the windowsill, Laura across the street. She’s getting out of a car with a man I don’t recognize. Laura and the man are carrying a bunch of big empty boxes.

And I couldn’t tell you how I know it. Maybe it’s because Laura so rarely comes over even when Sarah is here. I get a tight feeling in my belly that spreads up to my back and makes my fur stand up higher than it usually does. My whiskers pull back flat against my cheeks, and the dark centers of my eyes must be bigger because everything suddenly looks too-bright and startling in its clarity.

Even before Laura gets to the front door of our building, every part of my body knows already that something terrible has happened.

2

Prudence

LAURA AND THE STRANGE MAN BRING THE SMELL OF OUTSIDE IN WITH them. They also smell like each other. Not exactly like each other, because male humans smell different from female humans, but enough so I can tell they live together.

If Laura had come in by herself, I would greet her at the door with a loud demand for explanations. Although humans aren’t as good at understanding cat language as I am at understanding human language, a firm and direct meow usually prompts a response. For example, if Sarah hasn’t remembered to give me a cat treat, I’ll stand next to the kitchen counter and meow pointedly. This always makes Sarah either give me a treat or explain why she hasn’t by saying something like, Oh no! We’re out of treats! Let me run across the street and buy you some more . Sarah says this means I have her “trained.” Training is what humans have to do to dogs, because a dog doesn’t even know when to sit or lie down unless a human tells it to first. (The humans who keep dogs must be very patient and kind to burden themselves with such simple-minded creatures.) That’s not how I think of Sarah at all. It’s not that I train her, it’s just that sometimes I have to gently remind her.