thepalms

I got a cat a few years ago from a woman I knew. She shared a house with a friend of mine, but was moving to a place that didn’t allow pets, and besides, she said, it just wasn’t practical to have a cat when you are a gypsy. I sort of cringed at her use of this word, but she said it with such calm understanding that I figured, hell, what other word is there?

I still have him. He’s black with green eyes and an inscrutible face. Sometimes he behaves erratically for no particular reason. He is quiet, but has learnt by example from my other cat, how to be more vocal. Sometimes he sings, trumpets a low, shrill, rumbling noise, for no apparent reason at spontaneous times.

He is defiant and proud and intelligent. Hey, maybe I’m anthropomorphising, but I can’t help it – I’m human. It’s what we do. The woman who gave me him said that he was a nice little companion and that pets give us energy. I didn’t quite understand what she meant by this, but I nodded reflexively and continued to watch him sleeping on a chair in the lounge room.

Later she came to visit to see how he was doing. He had put on lots of weight and was cohabitating with my other cat quite well. There had been major territorial arguments when he first arrived, and ever since that day I brought him home from Brunswick East in a cat carrier, my other cat has never been underlyingly relaxed. He used to be. He used to be proud and affectionate. Now he is unsure and affectionate.

When the woman saw him for the first time after giving him to me, she said he looked like he had gone through puberty. She told me she named him what she did because he had two contradictory personalities. Very calm and stoic, and very suddenly erratic and violent. She mentioned the energy thing again. She said you have pets because they give you a certain energy. You feed off their energy. I nodded reflexively again like I sort of got it. I wasn’t going to judge her for calling herself a gypsy and for talking about her pet’s energy and for naming him after an Indian goddess. It was all coming from an honest place.

I have been told before that I have an inscrutible poker face and that I resemble a cat. Not because I have felinic features but because I tend to sprawl out in front of heaters on the lounge room floor, and enjoy rubbing my head against things, and sometimes I scratch my head with my feet and eat off the floor. Maybe this is the energy I have recieved from my cats. Slowly we are morphing into the same creature.

We continue to share spaces together. Sometimes I feed him and my other cat. He likes to sleep on my bed, but in the morning, he usually scratches at the door, and so I have to get up, knocking my head on hard surfaces as I do, and let him out.

The end.

... OR IS IT?????