A Cat Called Cupid: A Romantic Comedy Novella (4 page)

Things quickly deteriorated
from there. Cat Hater accused My Lady of hacking into his phone and sending messages to Vanessa. Ann came back with an unflattering but accurate assessment of Vanessa’s personal appearance, general deportment and moral character.

“And how
’d ya ####### know that? You’ve never ####### met her!” 

“Because she showed up here last night!”

I would have thought Cat Hater might have already inferred that from a close reading of the texts, but it seems he’s not that quick on the uptake. This didn’t surprise me too much.

“Why the
#### would she ####### come here?”

“Because you told her to.”

“I sure ### #### didn’t!”

“You sent her a text with my address!
You told her to come here!”

“I already
### #### told ya! I didn’t send that ####### text! How ### #### could I? My ####### phone was here the whole ####### night!”

“
Well, I didn’t do it! I swear. I read the texts, but I didn’t send anything!”

“Then who
### #### did?”

I remained on top of the bookcase throughout this heated exchange. Suspicion never rested on me. In fact, My Lady and
Cat Hater seemed to have forgotten I was even among those present.

“And why
### #### does my phone smell like ####### tuna?” With that off his chest, Cat Hater departed the premises—I hoped—never to return.

After he left
, Ann sat back down at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands. I don’t think her distress was due to sorrow or regret. I think she was just confused, and I couldn’t blame her.

My Lady got up from the table and came over to my perch on top of the bookcase. She stood there for several minutes
while she stared out the window and absently stroked my back.

“Am I losing my mind, Cupid? Or have I just been sleep-texting?”

It seemed impolite to point out that asking questions of one’s cat might be the first sign of an impending mental breakdown, so I kept my mouth shut.
 

Later that evening
, Craig called.

It was as if th
ose telepathic messages I’d been sending had finally gotten through. I’m joking, of course. If there was anything to telepathy, don’t you think cats would be wielding a much greater influence on the Powers That Be? Believe me, if cats were running things, the world wouldn’t be in such a sorry state.

I gathered
by eavesdropping that Craig had invited My Lady to accompany him to dinner that evening. This was an exciting development, but my silent cheers were cut short when Ann turned him down. She was tired, she said. It had been a rough day. Craig reissued the invitation for a later date, and Ann said she’d think about it.

This was a
n unsettling turn of events. When two cats of the opposite sex meet for the first time, there is a period of sniffing around and sizing up. However, if there is not a near instantaneous acknowledgment of mutual attraction—usually in the form of hissing and the swiping of claws and a little exploratory biting—then one or both parties lose interest. I feared that Craig—not unlike his feline counterpart—might never repeat the invitation.                  

The situation called for intervention, so I scratched at the door to be let out. I had a job to do.  I also missed Bella and the smell of the great outdoors.

Ann let me out without hesitation. She seemed to have forgotten her resolution to confine me to quarters. The poor thing was obviously distracted. This worked to my advantage.

I hurried downstairs and did my best Bella impersonation in front of Craig’s door. It worked like a charm.

Once inside, I retreated to my favorite spot under Craig’s dining table and contemplated my next move. I’d briefly toyed with the idea of feigning a relapse of my old injuries; a dramatic collapse followed by a period of piteous moaning would be guaranteed to lure Craig into returning me to My Lady and thus reestablishing contact. But I soon dismissed this course of action as being more of a personal sacrifice than I was willing to make. Feigning a relapse would certainly lead to another period of indoor confinement, and I was not willing to trade my sanity even in return for My Lady’s happiness.

I decided, until I thought of something better, to use my time to figure out where Craig’s strengths lay. As far as I
’m concerned, competency in operating a can opener and a solid technique for scratching behind one’s ears go a long way. Unfortunately, the human female possesses considerably more complex needs and desires.

As I’m sure you’ve already realized, My Lady is not all that picky when it comes to men, but it couldn’t hurt to figure out if Craig had any unusual qualities which might be exploited to his advantage.  I decided to do another survey of Craig’s bedroom, so I stealthily left my post under the table and nosed the bedroom door open.

At first I didn’t find anything of interest. Craig is not neat, and I say this as a creature with a healthy appreciation for disorder. A bare floor is a cold floor, I’ve always believed, and it’s nice to have a variety of empty boxes and bags to crawl inside when one craves a quiet retreat.      

I picked my way over piles of shoes and discarded articles of clothing. I came within an ace of toppling a stack of magazines next to the bed, and
, when I leapt up onto the nightstand, I upset an empty glass and knocked a random assortment of articles to the floor. These landed soundlessly on the carpet. I doubted Craig would notice for weeks that anything was out of place.

From my vantage point on the nightstand
, I took a look around. Then I saw it. The key to Ann’s heart, the object which would make Craig appear to be a man-among-men. I jumped down and hurried over to take a closer look.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human beings it’s that they are remarkably open to suggestion
; you have only to bring something to their attention, and they invariably believe they thought of it themselves.

To that end, I knocked the guitar over. It toppled with a satisfying crash and jangle of strings. I made a hasty retreat under the bed and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.    

“Bella!” Craig yelled. He obviously thought she was the culprit.
This was unfortunate, but I’d make it up to her.

From my vantage point under the bed, I watched as Craig righted the
guitar and stood there looking at it. Then, just as I’d expected, he picked it up, carried it to the living room, and started to tune it.

This was the moment of truth. If Craig were totally talentless, then my efforts would have been in vain. I don’t have much of an ear for music
; my tastes run more along the lines of those recordings of birdsongs humans listen to when they suffer from insomnia. Nevertheless, even I could tell that Craig was good. Very good. I waited until he was warmed up and had started to sing along—he had a pleasant tenor voice—and emerged from under the bed. I went to the door and scratched to get out.           

Craig put the guitar down and opened the door for me, but I
declined to depart. I sat on the threshold and refused to budge. Craig tried picking me up, but I gave a hair-raising yowl the moment he touched me. It was an Oscar-worthy performance. Anyone within a mile would have been forgiven for believing I was being jumped by a medium-sized Rottweiler.

Craig shrugged and returned to his guitar
-playing.
 

Now, it’s about this time in the evening when My Lady makes a habit of going down to the mailboxes and seeing what the US Postal Service has brought this time
: bills, mostly, and magazines full of photographs of oddly-dressed female humans who appear to have been chronically deprived of nourishment. I was worried that her distressed mental state might cause My Lady to break her routine, but I needn’t have been. Humans are creatures of habit, and I soon heard her footsteps on the stairs. It couldn’t have been better timing.

Craig was still playing and singing
some song about love being like something until you’ve something or other. It doesn’t matter. The important part is that he was putting plenty of pathos into it. If there’s one thing the human female responds to with complete predictability, it’s expressions of heartbreak and loneliness. Strange, I know. My theory is that it has something to do with the high rate of absentee fathers, or maybe it’s the result of a vitamin deficiency in the formative years.

Ann paused as she spotted me. I wiggled my whiskers a little in greeting, but I kept my tongue. She stood there and listened
to Craig’s playing for a moment, then tiptoed over and tried to remove me by stealth.

She should have known better.
Instead of allowing myself to be quietly scooped up and returned to My Lady’s domestic headquarters, I repeated my imitation of being attacked by a Rottweiler.

The effect was instantaneous. Craig dropped his guitar and came to the door. My Lady stood there, looking embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to apologize. He did that earlier, when I tried to pick him up.”

“Do you think he’s hurting somewhere?”

I weighed my options. I could lay it on thick and risk a trip back to the vet, or I could play it cool. I decided to play it cool. I purred as loud
ly as I could and rubbed up against Ann’s ankles.

“He seems fine now,” Craig said.

“He does, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. He does.”

“Amazing, isn’t it? How animals recover.”

“Yes, it is.”

This conversation wasn’t exactly riveting, but it took an abrupt turn for the worse.

“Nice evening,” Ann said.

“Yes, very nice.”

“Unusually warm, for
March.”

“Yes. Very warm for
being so early in the spring.”

“How warm do you think it is?”

“About mid-sixties, I’d say?”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes. It got up to sixty-seven yesterday.”

“Did it really?”

“Yes. Tomorrow, I hear it’s forecast to get up to seventy-one.”

I was about to give in
to the impulse to bang my head against the door jamb in frustration when Ann finally managed to break the conversation free from this whirling vortex of inanity.

“Would you still like to go to dinner?” she asked Craig.

“This evening?”

“Sure.”

“Well, after I got off the phone with you I went ahead and made myself a sandwich.”

It took all
the self-control I could muster to restrain myself from reducing Craig’s pant-leg to ribbons. There are times, I’ve always maintained, when the last thing one should do is tell the truth. As far as I was concerned, this was one of those times.

“Oh,” said
Ann. She sounded distinctly disappointed.

Her disappointment must have been enough to sooth
e Craig’s wounded pride, because he abruptly changed tack and suggested that they should go out for ice cream. He couldn’t have proffered a more tempting invitation. My Lady would probably accept ice cream from the Head of Hades himself, if mint chocolate chip was in the offing.  

Ann went upstairs to get her jacket
, and I docilely followed her into the apartment. As soon as she left, I retreated to the bedroom closet and curled up on a pile of sweaters. I had earned a nap. Besides, there was nothing more I could do. For now it rested in the hands of the Supreme Deity. Even Cupid can only do so much.

It appeared
that the excursion to get ice cream had been a success. Sort of. Over the next few days, I saw quite a lot of Craig and so did Ann.

Th
is was all fine and good, as far as it went, but the thing which had me worried was the lack of—how shall I put this?—amorous expression.

It was obvious
to me—from close observation of their rates of respiration, dilation of pupils and other subtle changes in physiology—that both My Lady and Craig were not averse to the notion of a conjugal coupling; however, it appeared that neither was aware of this mutual attraction. It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch humans are with their more primitive urges.

Craig
came up to borrow My Lady’s vacuum cleaner, which resulted in an impromptu invitation to stay for supper. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—and that may well be true—but it does no good if the woman in question hasn’t an inkling that she’s succeeded.

I was worried. There was a very real danger that Craig and Ann would get stalled out in the
Friend Zone, I think the colloquial expression is.  This could go on for years, each one fancying the other, and yet neither one working up the courage required to do anything about it. Watching their timid approach to romance made me grateful to be a cat. Felines never get sucked into such endless tiptoeing around the question of “will we, or won’t we?” When it comes to cats, it’s generally more a question of “behind that bush over there, or right here on the sidewalk?”      

I also feared that
, absent encouragement from Ann, Craig might meet a more openly enthusiastic female and take the path of least resistance.

My fears were soon realized.
Not even a week later, as I made my way down to the bushes by the mailboxes for a tryst with Bella, I met Craig going out.

The human male, as a rule, takes very little care of his appearance. I’ve met cats who’ve been forced by circumstance to set up
housekeeping inside overturned trashcans who pay more attention to hygiene and grooming. However, there is an exception to this human male tendency to personal neglect, and that exception is when a man goes out on a first date. That’s why, when Craig came out his door with his hair slicked back, wearing an ironed shirt and reeking of mouthwash, I knew he was on his way to meet a woman.

This was a sinister development. I could not stand idly by, so with a tinge of regret about postponing my appointment with the expectant Bella, I followed Craig out to the parking lot.
I stayed close on his heels to avoid detection. He unlocked his car door and started to get in, then, providentially, his phone dinged, and he paused to read his text.

If there
is one thing I’ve learned from observing Ann’s boyfriends over the years, it’s that once a man has transferred his attention to an electronic device, one could present him with a stark naked woman slathered in peanut butter, or drop a hammer on his head, and he wouldn’t notice. Craig was no exception. By the time he had returned his attention to his physical surroundings, I was safely inside the car, crouched on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a one for travel. I have a tendency to get a bit carsick, so I was relieved when we finally arrived at our destination 20 minutes later. 

Now, I could have revealed my presence as a stowaway right then and there, but I didn’t. I’d taken the risk of a quick peak out the window as Craig was pulling up to the curb. We were parked in front of a house, so I hunkered down and kept quiet. I wanted to get a good look at My Lady’s competition.

I entertained myself
while I waited for Craig to return with this female interloper by curling up in the back window and watching a trio of sparrows fight over something on the sidewalk. Craig returned with the female sooner than I expected, and I was so distracted by the sparrows that I was forced to make a hasty and undignified dive for the floor.  

“I thought we’d go to this
good Italian place I know,” I heard Craig say, as he started up the engine.

“Oh, I’ve gone low-carb,”
the female said. “Did I forget to tell you?”

I took a pe
ek at this interloper. Craig must have seen something in her. I certainly didn’t. She reminded me of those poor undernourished creatures in Ann’s fashion magazines. If she’d have consented to place herself in my capable paws—extremely unlikely, I know—the first thing I’d have done would have been to force-feed her a gallon of pasta.

“How about Thai?” Craig asked.

“MSG is a carcinogen.”

“French?”

“I’m vegetarian.”

“Pancake
House?”

“
I’m lactose intolerant. Those places put whey in everything.”

“Where would you like to go?” Craig sounded flustered. I didn’t blame him.

“There’s this vegan raw place, out by—”

But I’d heard enough. I’d given this emaciated creature a chance to charm me, and she hadn’t. I’m
terribly fond of Craig, and if I’d really believed this woman was right for him I would have considered letting nature take its course, even if that meant Ann lost out.

However,
this woman wasn’t right for Craig. I wasn’t sure she was right for anybody.        

I straightened my spine, filled my lungs with air and let it out in a tremendous meow. It was a masterpiece of vocal expression and the effect was instantaneous.

“You
have a cat in your car!” the interloper screeched. Humans rarely resist the impulse to state the obvious. It must be the result of a glitch in the evolutionary process.  

Craig reached around and patted me on the head.

“Oh, this is the neighbor’s cat. He must have jumped in when I wasn’t looking. We’ll have to drop him off before—”

I hopped up on the backseat and tried to look nonchalant.

“I’m horribly allergic to cats! They make me puff up!”

Puffing up would be a marked improvement, but it seemed rude to point that out, so I flopped down on the seat and tended to a little deferred maintenance on my back
left paw. I had one of those stubborn claws which just refused to shed.

“Let me out!”
The interloper was frantic. She couldn’t seem to figure out how to work the door lock. I could have done it for her, of course—one just jams one’s paw down on the little button embedded in the armrest—I didn’t, though. It’s probably cruel of me, but I wanted to see what she looked like puffy. 

Craig let her out before I had a chance to observe the effect of my dander on her overactive immune system. It’s just as well, probably. I’m not sure it would have been very much of an improvement.

We drove home in silence. If Craig was disappointed, he did a good job of hiding it. He turned the radio up—not something I normally condone, but I was
, after all, a guest in the car. He banged out a rhythm on the steering wheel. At one point he actually whistled. It seemed that the low-carb eating, MSG-averse, lactose-intolerant vegetarian had already ceased to cast her spell.

When we got back to the apartment complex, I refused to get out of the car. I clung to the seat with my claws
. When Craig finally managed to pry me loose, I latched onto him instead.

It’s a testament to Craig’s good nature that he didn’t make more of a fuss about me
sinking my claws into his shirt like that. I kept up a steady stream of pseudo-traumatized vocalizations. I laid it on pretty thick, and it worked. Instead of unceremoniously extricating himself when he’d carried me to the bottom of the stairs leading to Ann’s apartment, he continued on up and knocked on My Lady’s door.

Here’s where advance planning might have helped. Earlier in the evening, when I’d left for my tryst with Bella, My Lady
had been laying out her supplies to give herself a dye job. I think Ann would make a beautiful brunette, but for some odd reason she insists on going red. This requires considerable upkeep, and it was in the midst of this upkeep that Craig attempted to deliver me back to headquarters.

Craig
waited in front of the door for a while after he rang the bell, but nothing happened. I’m sure that it wasn’t that Ann didn’t hear the bell; it’s more likely that she was too embarrassed to come to the door wearing an old sweatshirt, with a plastic bag over her head and hair dye running down her face.  I don’t doubt that she peaked through the peep-hole, went quietly apoplectic, and prayed that Craig would go away and take me with him, which is exactly what he did.

He took me back downstairs. I quickly recovered in the company of Bella and half a can of Klassy Kat Rations. I wasn’t sure what to do next. If I scratched to get out and went back up the stairs, my evening’s efforts would be wasted. True, I’d put the k
ibosh on Craig’s date, but after getting a good look at the interloper and becoming acquainted with her misguided views on diet—not to mention her distasteful attitude toward cats—I didn’t really think that would have ever gone far, even without my intervention.

So I waited
, and my patience was rewarded: first, by a little mutual light grooming with Bella on the back of the couch, and later, by a knock at the front door.

Craig went to open it.
It was Ann, looking a bit freshly-dyed, but otherwise presentable.

“Are you looking for Cupid?” Craig asked.

It was a pretty silly question. Ann was looking for Craig, and Craig of all people should have been able to figure that out, but he’s remarkably lacking in perception.

“Is
Cupid here?”

Th
is was an even sillier question, because My Lady was looking right at me when she asked it.

“Do you want to come in?” Craig asked.

“Well—”

“I ordered a pizza. Have you eaten yet?”

“I hate to be a bother. I just came for Cupid.”

“It’s no bother. It’ll be here any minute.”

After that, there was a little awkward back and forth in the doorway, as Ann attempted to get inside, and Craig tried to shut the door behind them while she was only halfway in, and she stepped on his foot in an attempt to get out of the way.

Safely
inside, Ann came and perched on the edge of the sofa. She reached up and absently rubbed the underside of my chin.

“I didn’t hear you earlier, when you rang. I was in the bathroom
,” Ann said.

My Lady
is not normally so cotton-headed. I blamed it on the cocktail of pheromones emanating off of her. A similar cloud surrounded Craig.

“Oh.” I could see the wheels turning in Craig’s head. If she hadn’t heard him ring, how had she known he’d been there? He must have decided against pursuing th
is line of inquiry, which was fortunate, because just about then Ann turned the color of a freshly eviscerated field mouse. She’d just realized that she’d given herself away.

The pizza came
, and they sat down on opposite ends of the couch to eat it. There was such a large gap between them that Fred—the larcenous Mastiff from 12B—could have fit comfortably in the middle.

Something had to be done, so I
leaped down onto the coffee table, scattering papers, pizza box and the remote for the TV. I was chastised for my misbehavior, of course, and threatened with banishment to the great outdoors. Ann would have made good on her threat, too, if I hadn’t had the foresight to make an immediate dash for Craig’s bedroom and the safety of the underside of his bed.

When it appeared that the immediate irritation at my untoward behavior had dissipated—based on the fact that I no longer heard my name being used in vain—I ventured to sneak out from under the bed and peak into the living room. I’m not sure what Craig had to complain about. It wasn’t as if I had disrupted his organizational paradigm. He didn’t have one to disrupt.

Craig and Ann were retrieving the scattered items from the living room floor and returning them to the coffee table.  Craig picked up the remote and held it in his hand, staring at it.

“Do you watch
The McNamaras
?” Craig asked.

“Every once in a while,” Ann said.

That was a lie. My Lady Ann loves
The McNamaras
. I’d go so far as to say she’s obsessed with them. I suspected that she was—at that very moment—torn between the desire to rush upstairs and turn on her television, and staying where she was and hoping for a romantic breakthrough with Craig.

For those of you unfamiliar with this questionable piece of televisual entertainment,
The McNamaras
is one of those highly-scripted pseudo-reality shows which humans watch just so they can feel better about their own sorry lot. It involves a great deal of crying and screaming and other dysfunctional goings-on. I don’t know why, but Ann eats it up.

“I never miss an episode,” said Craig.

“Really?” Ann asked, trying not to look too pleased at this revelation.  

“I know it’s totally kitschy
, and I probably shouldn’t even admit to liking it—”