A Cat Called Cupid: A Romantic Comedy Novella (7 page)

It was about the time that
the Big Orange Tom fastened his teeth around my throat that I realized I was about to meet my maker. I won’t claim to have ascended to heaven and stood at the pearly gates, or to have seen my life flash before my eyes, but if I’d had a mother around to yowl for, I would have been soliciting her assistance.

Now you may, quite logically, wonder where Bella was during this attempt on my life, and you may think less of her if you assume that she was standing calmly by like a bloodthirsty spectator at a Roman Coliseum during the days of the gladiators.

You would not be completely wrong in assuming that she declined to join in the fracas personally, but you would not be correct in believing that she stood idly by. The Big Orange Tom had me pinned, but when I dared to open my right eye for a second, I caught a glimpse of Bella high-tailing it for her apartment.

My only hope was that Bella would somehow alert Craig to my plight
, and that’s exactly what happened; however, by the time Craig arrived, I no longer needed to be rescued. My savior had already arrived in a most unlikely form.

I’ve never thought of Mastiffs as being good candidates for inclusion
in the canine choral society. I doubt I will wake up one morning to discover that a dog of that particular breed has an album out which has suddenly gone platinum, but I will venture to say that until the day I draw my last breath I will count the baying of a Mastiff as one of the most beautiful sounds known to cat.

As the baying got closer,
the Big Orange Tom released his grip on my throat. By the time Fred bounded into the parking lot, the Big Orange Tom was leaping the fence separating our complex from the street.

Fred, unaware of his new status of Savior of Feline
kind, meandered over to investigate. Normally, I’m not big on having a slobbery snout applied to my abdomen, but in Fred’s case I didn’t mind. Fred nudged me with his nose, and, when I didn’t respond, he sat back on his haunches and waited for signs of life.

That was how Craig and Bella found us. Me, bloody and broken on the pavement. Fred, sitting over me. At first, Craig jumped to the wrong conclusion. He
chased Fred off, scooped me up and carried me to the safety of his apartment. Ann was called, and I was hastily bundled into the car and off to the vet.

“You say he was attacked by a dog?” I heard the vet say, as
he prepared to put me under. I required stitches, apparently. It was that bad.

“
There was a dog standing over him when I found him,” Craig said.

“How big was the dog?”

“Big. A Mastiff.”

“These wounds are much more consistent with a cat fight.”

I didn’t hear the upshot, because
about then I faded away from the anesthetic. I remember hazily recalling the old saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” as the proverbial lights went out.

I guess the vet convinced my human protectors that Fred had not only been innocent in the whole affair, but had, mostly likely, chased away my attacker. I base this on the fact that a few days later, My Lady sent a basket of chew toys and dog biscuits to 12B.

I was relieved. A great injustice had been averted.

I mended up nicely. My stitches came out and the only lasting evidence
of my tangle with the ugly orange brute is a large notch in my left ear and a scar over my right eye. I wear these as badges of honor. I notice that passing Toms eye me with a great deal more respect than previously and defer to me when we cross paths. 

Craig and Ann settl
ed into a pleasant routine, going out on weekends, giving Bella and I much needed quiet-time. They stayed in on weeknights, generally at Ann’s. I think our pleasant little existence could have gone on like this indefinitely if Craig’s fiancée hadn’t had the temerity to show up.

To be fair to Craig
, it was his ex-fiancée who My Lady found standing on her doormat one Sunday morning on returning from an early morning run to the grocery store. I’d followed My Lady up from the parking lot, hoping for an immediate crack at the bag of cat chews I could smell through the shopping bag.

When we got to the top of the stairs, there was a strange woman standing outside of Ann’s door.

“Can I help you?” Ann asked.

“I’m looking for Craig? One of your neighbors said he might be
up here.”

It was a flashback to Vanessa, with one major difference:
this woman looked imminently more respectable than Vanessa. There was not the slightest whiff of the feral about her. If she were going to be a cat in her next life, she’d be a Selkirk Rex—not that I believe in that sort of thing, but if it is true, I’m convinced that humans will get upgraded to cats, if they keep their Karma clean. Really despicable characters will come back as lobbyists and teacup poodles.

This human version of a Selkirk Rex stood there on the mat, waiting for My Lady to make an intelligent reply.

“Craig’s not here,” Ann said.

It was a start, but it didn’t go very far in establishing who this sleek and elegant creature was, and why she was looking for Craig. I rubbed up against the elegant creature’s leg, just to gauge her reaction. You can t
ell a lot about a person by rubbing up against their leg. If they shrink back in horror, or make comments about shedding, then you know you’re dealing with a tough customer.

I wound my way in between
her black wool-covered pant legs, leaving a liberal layer of cat hair behind. Instead of trying to nudge me away with her foot, she reached down and tickled me under the chin. Normally, I’m all in favor of chin tickling, but I didn’t welcome this turn of events. Elegance and a heart of gold. Not easy to compete with.

“I’m Gwendolyn,” said the elegant creature
, and extended a hand in Ann’s direction.

Ann was tangled up in the handles of her grocery bags and had so much trouble extricating the required appendage that Gwendolyn took her hand back and inserted it in
to the pocket of her coat.  

“I’m Ann.”

“I know,” said Gwendolyn. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you—”

“Really?” Ann sounded a little frosty. “I haven’t heard a thing about you.”

Gwendolyn looked genuinely surprised and a little embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I’m very glad you did,” said Ann, sounding frostier than ever. “What exactly is it that I’m supposed to have heard about you?”

Just then I heard the sound of running f
eet on the stairs and a few seconds later Craig appeared. He didn’t say anything for a while—he was so out of breath—and no one else did, either.

“I see you two have met,” Craig said, when he was finally in a condition to speak.

“Yes, we have.” Ann gave him a look that would have made an icicle shiver.

“Hello, Craig.” Gwendolyn gave Craig a hug. Craig hugged her back, but I noticed he kept a maximum amount of distance between them. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first,” Gwendolyn added.

Craig looked sorry she hadn’t called, too, and for a few seconds everyone just stood around looking awkward.

“I just happened to be in town on business, and I thought I’d stop by and see you
,” Gwendolyn said.

There was another period of uncomfortable silence and then, because it was abundantly clear that Ann wasn’t going to invite either of them in, Craig said, “My place is downstairs
”. He started down, and the creature Gwendolyn followed.

After we got inside, and My Lady had untangled herself from her groceries, she picked up a throw pillow off the couch and gave it a few good punches in the gut. I understood her frustration, but that did nothing to
quell my disappointment that she had forgotten all about the bag of cat chews.

Later
on that afternoon, Craig came up. Ann let him in, and shut the door behind him, but she stayed standing and so did he.

“Who is she?”

“Who is who?”

That was the wrong approach to take. Playing dumb never works, not even for me and I’m a domestic house pet—a demeaning classification, but
nevertheless technically accurate.

“Who is that Gwendolyn woman?” Ann demanded. “And why have I never heard of her?”

“She’s just someone I used to know,” Craig said. “I saw her last month at my cousin’s wedding and—”

“And what? You slept with her?”

“Of course not!” Craig was getting mad. “I mean, not recently.”

“How recently is not recently?”

“Calm down,” said Craig. “It was years ago.”

Never tell a female human to calm down. It’s about as sensible as ordering a slavering
pit bull not to bite. It just enrages them. 

“Get out!” Ann shouted.

“Why? I don’t understand why you’re mad at me. I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did. You just admitted that you slept with her!”

“I did. But it was years ago, back when Gwendolyn and I were engaged. She’s married to someone else now, if you must know.”

He should have known that
this was not the moment to bring up heretofore undisclosed engagements, but Craig evidently lacks experience. Either that, or he has learned nothing from his previous mistakes.

“So you’re having an affair with a married woman?”
I don’t think Ann really believed that for a second, but it was a logical escalation of her previous accusations. Arguing is an art form, and My Lady was getting to be something of an expert.

“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Craig protested.

“Don’t be ridiculous” is even more incendiary than “calm down.” I toyed with the possibility that sometime during his early years Craig had been dropped on his head. 

“I don’t want to hear any more right now,” said Ann. She had deflated from enraged to sad in a matter of seconds. She had lost the will to fight, so she finally came out with what was really bothering her. “How come you never told me you’d been engaged?”

“It didn’t come up.”

I could see Ann’s side of things. About a week after she and Craig had become amorous, My Lady had given Craig a complete recitation of her romantic entanglements. She’d gone so far back—fifth grade, to be exact—and into such great detail that Craig had actually fallen asleep in the middle of it and had to be revived by a smart swipe of my paw to the side of his head before My Lady noticed and accused him of disinterest. 

“Fine.
I’ll leave. We can talk about this later,” Craig said, and left.
 

At first
I thought it was just a spat. I assumed—as with Craig and Ann’s previous conflicts—it would quickly blow over. After all, Craig had done nothing wrong. His only crime was forgetting to tell his current girlfriend about some woman he’d been engaged to at some time in the distant past.

Cat Hater
and his various predicates had all committed far greater offenses and gotten away with most of them. I was completely confused, and so was Craig.

I tried to provide
Craig with comfort. I purred long and loud when he rubbed my belly. I saved the choicest bits from the proceeds of my hunting excursions and left them as presents on his door mat—a generous gesture which did not make me popular with Craig’s next door neighbor. She didn’t know a tasty mouse liver when she saw one, apparently. I tried not to be too hard on her; we can’t all be born natural gourmets.

My efforts to comfort Craig appeared to be in vain. When he wasn’t at work he moped around his apartment. He stopped getting out of his pajamas
—or what passed for pajamas, in his case—on the weekends. The only time he seemed to perk up a little was when he got out his guitar and sang songs about lost love in a voice which seemed to suggest that the lyrics were telling his own personal story of heartbreak and despair.

Things were much the same upstairs. Ann stopped washing dishes and confined her cooking to opening boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. In terms of time spent on the couch in front of the television, she was coming close to breaking
Cat Hater’s record for back-to-back hours spent staring at the dreadful box. I’m afraid, if she’d been of the male persuasion, she would have kept a bottle at her feet, just to avoid having to get up to answer the call of nature.

Something had to be done, but I couldn’t come up with a solution. Bella and I did our best to jolly our respective humans out of their funks, but no amount of chasing phantom mice up the wall or cute and cuddly posturing made an iota of difference.

Within a week or two of Craig and Ann’s bust-up over Gwendolyn, there was another unsettling development.

My Lady started getting calls from creditors trying to track down
Cat Hater. The phone would ring, and Ann would listen, tight-lipped, to the person on the other end. The caller would insist it was a life-or-death matter that they speak to James Pigget. When Ann would claim she no longer had any contact with any James Pigget, the person on the other end would become hostile and accuse her of concealing Mr. Pigget’s location. Then, if Ann didn’t hang up quickly enough, the caller would imply that he—Jimmy, that is—was in very serious trouble with them. Random sums of never less than several thousand dollars would be mentioned. The voice on the other end would then go on to imply that if Ann refused to disclose James Pigget’s current contact information she might be personally required to brass up the amount required to retire Jimmy’s debt.

“They
totally can’t do that to you!” Flavia said. “It must be like illegal or something!” Flavia had taken to coming over several times a week and bringing food with her. Much as I found Flavia’s voice irritating and her manner overly familiar, anything that encouraged My Lady to shower and partake of solid food was a good thing.

“Since when do bill collectors worry about
what’s legal?” Ann asked.

“You should get Craig to help you,” said Flavia. “I bet he’d like totally know what to do.”

I thought this was an excellent suggestion. This counsel far exceeded the usual quality of Flavia’s advice, but My Lady didn’t bite.

“You know I’m not speaking to him,” she said.

“When are you going to be done torturing him? Why don’t you just like forgive him already?”

Flavia was on fire. I’d never heard her come out with two such intelligent suggestions in succession.

“How can I?” Ann said. “It was such a breach of trust.”

“No.
It wasn’t. A breach of trust is when your boyfriend steals from you.”

Ann just looked at Flavia. I wondered how Flavia had found out about
Cat Hater’s affinity for petty larceny. I was pretty sure Ann had never let it slip that Cat Hater was robbing her blind and she wasn’t doing a thing about it.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not with Jimmy anymore,
am I?” Ann protested.

“But you stayed with him
. Way. Too. Long. Am I right, or am I right?”

“Yes. You’re right.”

“So, even though you totally knew Jimmy jerk-face was like totally stealing from you, you didn’t even break up with him, but you like totally refuse to forgive Craig for a little thing like—”

“Conveniently forgetting you’ve been engaged is not a little thing!”
  

“OK! OK!”

“And I didn’t like Jimmy nearly as much as I like Craig,” Ann said.

A look of
triumph spread across Flavia’s face. I didn’t understand what was going on.

“I like totally get it now!”
Flavia announced.

“Get what?”

“You’re totally frig’n’ head-over-heels in love with the guy!”

“What guy?”

“Craig! You’re in love with Craig, you frig’n’ nincompoop.”

I’d
never had the experience of hearing one grown woman addressed by another grown woman as a nincompoop. I could have waited a lot longer for the occurrence without the slightest tinge of regret, but that’s what one gets when one keeps company with females like Flavia.

Ann was looking very pink. Flavia hopped up and down and
chortled in a self-satisfied manner. My Lady maintained a stony and dignified silence.

“Do you
like want to marry Craig or something?” Flavia demanded.

“Of course not!” Ann protested.  “I mean, we haven’t even been together
very long—”   

“I think you do!
Ann wants to m-a-r-r-y C-r-a-i-g! Ann wants to m-a-r-r-y C-r-a-i-g!” Flavia chanted, in a voice more suited to a playground full of first-graders than My Lady’s private domicile. 

“
I don’t want to marry Craig!” My Lady protested. “And be quiet. These walls are very thin. Mrs. Jackson will hear you.” 

“
Whatever! You like totally don’t want to talk about this, so I’ll just shut up,” said Flavia. I don’t think Flavia intended to permanently give up the subject. I think it was more that she realized withdrawing from the skirmish to fight another day was a better tactical move. I felt a sudden affection for Flavia—despite the obnoxious playground taunts. When I tell you that later in the evening I went so far as to jump up in her lap and allow myself to be cooed at, you’ll know how moved I was.   

The calls from creditors trying to track down Cat Hater continued. My Lady took to screening her calls, but it did no good. When she didn’t answer, they left intimidating messages. Ann insisted on listening to each and every one, even though Flavia tried to convince her not to.

Then
one evening as Bella and I were relaxing at the top of the stairs, lying in wait for a cricket which had taken refuge under a pot-saucer belonging to one of Mrs. Jackson’s geraniums and passing the time until it emerged by listening to some birds squabbling in the bushes below, Cat Hater appeared in the flesh at the base of the stairs.

I removed myself from his path
—knowing as I did of his propensity to place his feet in the wrong places at the wrong times—and Bella followed my excellent example. When Cat Hater reached My Lady’s door, he hesitated. He seemed to be engaged in an argument with himself. It involved a great deal of strong language and insults directed toward himself and the provenance of his parentage, all of which I thoroughly agreed with. He concluded his rant by admonishing himself to “Just get ### #### on with it, you #### #### ####### skeevy ####### little ######!”

W
hen he finally worked up the courage to ring the bell, however, it didn’t do him any good. Ann wasn’t there. She’d been kidnapped earlier in the evening by Flavia, who had insisted that Ann forsake the sanctuary of her apartment, even if it was only long enough to get a manicure.

Obviously,
Cat Hater had not expected to come and find nobody there, but after pacing up and down a bit and addressing himself by a variety of vile epithets—some of which he’d already used and some of which he hadn’t—he succeeded in getting ahold of himself. He took a pen and a scrap of paper from his pocket, scrawled a note and folded it up. He tried to jam it into a crack beside the door, but it wouldn’t stay.

There was another short period of under-the-breath profanities
before Cat Hater experienced a rare stroke of genius. He’d been chewing gum the whole time—a nasty habit of his, which did nothing to make him look any less cretinous. He now removed the gum, shook off the spittle, jammed the gross glob onto the back of the note with his thumb and stuck the note to the door. Then he left, kicking at one of Mrs. Jackson’s geraniums and quietly swearing to himself as he went.

Bella and I crept out from the cover of Mrs. Jackson’s flower pots and watched
Cat Hater stalk down the stairs and disappear around the corner.

It wasn’t until My Lady returned—freshly lacquered and with Flavia still in tow—that I was mad
e privy to the contents of Cat Hater’s missive.

“There’s
like something stuck to your door,” Flavia pointed out.

“It’s probably a not
e from Mrs. Jackson complaining that Cupid’s been digging in her flower pots again.”

This
spurious and completely groundless accusation had been leveled at me before. It’s actually Fred the Mastiff from 12B who does the digging, but my lips are sealed by gratitude so I let everyone keep on making erroneous assumptions.  

Ann had the note down from the door and was holding the glob of gum gingerly between her thumb and forefinger.

“It’s not from Mrs. Jackson,” she said. “It’s from Jimmy. He wants to talk to me.”

“He came here?
That—” Flavia then went on to call Jimmy a few of the less-than-complimentary names Cat Hater had called himself only fifteen minutes before.  Flavia hates Jimmy only a little less than I do, it seems.

“
Shhh!” said Ann. “Mrs. Jackson will hear you!”

Flavia kept right on cursing
Cat Hater, but more quietly. When she’d finally run out of steam, she returned to the kernel of the problem.

“Why didn’t he just call?” Flavia asked.

“He says he doesn’t have a phone right now. He says he’ll be back when he has a chance.”

“Wow!
No phone. Jimmy? Really?” Flavia was having a hard time believing that, and I was inclined to share her doubt. It was a stretch to imagine Cat Hater without a phone at his fingertips. He must be lying. Either that, or he was living under such reduced circumstances that he was sleeping under a bridge. 

“
What should I do?” My Lady said.

“You should
take your pretty little patootie downstairs and talk to Craig. Like right this minute!”

“Who asked you?”

“You just did. You were like, ‘What should I do?’ and then I was like, ‘You should take your pretty little patootie downstairs and—’”

Ann didn’t let her get any further, but I thought Flavia had made an excellent point.

“I’m not going to ask Craig for help!” Ann insisted.

“Fine. Don’t. If you won’t, I will.”

I’d never seen two women get physical—if you’ll pardon the expression—but that’s exactly what happened. Flavia started down the stairs. Ann reached out to grab her arm and got her by the sleeve instead. Flavia pulled away and there was a sound of tearing fabric, and Ann, temporarily aghast at her own action, let go. Flavia, abruptly released from Ann’s grasp, lost her balance and went down.

Mrs. Jackson’s flower pots got the worst of it
, and, in the chaos that followed, the cricket got away. Shame. Crickets are the perfect snack for a warm early-summer evening.

Flavia didn’t wait around for Mrs. Jackson to come out and survey the damage. She was downstairs before Ann even made it back
to the cover of her own apartment. I followed Flavia and Bella followed me. The three of us came to a standstill in front of Craig’s door.

Flavia knocked. Craig opened the door, but not very wide. He was wearing a shirt festooned with bits of whatever random snack substances
which had substituted for his supper. His hair was standing on end, and he was wearing only one sock.

“Can I come in?” Flavia asked.

Craig shrugged, but he didn’t open the door any wider.

“Really.
You and me totally need to have like a serious talk!”

Flavia didn’t wait around any longer for him to make up his mind
, and Craig—possibly weakened from weeks of eating nothing but potato chips and Chow Mein—let her push her way in. Bella and I slipped in on her heels.

“Look here!” said Flavia. “I know you don’t like me—
”

Craig mumbled something about how of course he liked her
, and he didn’t know what she was talking about, and where had she gotten a crazy idea like that? Flavia let him go on for a bit, but then she cut him off.

“It like totally doesn’t matter whether you like me or I like you,” she said. “But Ann
like totally matters to both of us, and she’s in like serious trouble and stuff.”

“What happened?”
Craig asked.

I think he was expecting to hear that Ann was hospitalized or
wanted by the police, because he looked a little relieved when Flavia said, “Jimmy came to see Ann today.”

“So?”

“He’s totally going to ask her for money,” Flavia informed him.

“Did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Ask her for any money?” Craig asked.

“No. Of course not. How could he?”

“What was stopping him?”

“He couldn’t ask.”

“Why?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“Who wasn’t there?”

I was following the thread of Flavia’s story just fine, but I’d witnessed the whole thing and that makes all the difference.

“Ann wasn’t there
,” Flavia said, very slowly and in a very loud voice, as if addressing an elderly Pomeranian suffering from the twin afflictions of dementia and hearing loss.    

“
Ann wasn’t where?” Craig asked.

“Ann wasn’t home. We went for manicures
, and Jimmy came while we were gone.”

“But he’s going to come back
to see Ann?”

“Yes.”

“And when he does, he’s going to ask Ann for money?”

“Yes.”

Craig sighed. Flavia’s not what you’d call a clear communicator, and this back and forth was taking a toll on Craig. He fished his missing sock out from under the couch, put it on, and ran his fingers through his hair. This half-hearted attempt at grooming only made him look worse.