Matchmaker Cat (A Romantic Comedy Short Story)

Published by

Elly Books

Copyright Elizabeth
Kyne 2011

Smashwords edition

This ebook is licensed
for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting
the hard work of this author.

Chester looked
at me with wide, disapproving feline eyes.

‘What?’ I asked
as I closed the front door behind me.

He continued to
sit in the middle of the hallway; his ginger tabby fur sleek and
neat with his nose pointing into the air like the lord of the
manor. He leaned out to the side as if peering at something behind
me. Even though I knew there was nothing there, I turned my head
too, and saw only the scratched paint of the wooden door.

‘Sorry
Chester,’ I said. ‘I didn’t bring anyone home with me today.’

He actually
seemed to be disappointed. The line of his mouth pointed downwards
and there was a sense of loneliness in his eyes. Then the
almost-human emotion disappeared from his face. He stood up and
walked off towards the kitchen: holding his tail high in the air so
I had the perfect view of his bum hole.

‘Stupid
cat.’

I put my
handbag on the first of a row of coathooks that were held to the
wall by a couple of wobbly screws, took off my coat and hung it on
top. I made my way to the kitchen, but hadn’t quite left enough
space between me and the bicycle which I kept in the hallway, and
whacked my ankle on the pedal.

‘Ow!’ I glared
at it, like the infernal machine had stuck out its pedal on
purpose. ‘Bloody thing.’ I hobbled down the hall with a stinging
big toe.

I live in a
two-storey terrace house which dates back to the Victorian era,
when they evidently had a peculiar idea of how to arrange living
space. The corridors and stairs are so narrow they leave precious
little room for actual human beings - always embarrassing when
having fat friends to stay - while the rooms themselves have
ceilings tall enough to dwarf even my six-and-a-half foot brother.
I know it’s because the house was designed in a time of coal fires
when grey smoke would hang at the top of the room, allowing the
people living below to breathe clean air, but that’s of little
consolation to my central heating bill.

The Victorians
also didn’t have microwaves, fridge freezers, washing machines and
dishwashers, which goes a little to explain why my kitchen is as
cramped as it is. It’s one of those long thin ones where there’s no
room to swing a cat (not as if I
would
swing a cat, you
understand - although, with Chester, I’ve been tempted on
occasions). A lot of the cupboard space got hi-jacked to put in
modern appliances, so many of my kitchen implements live on the
counter - mugs on mug trees, utensils on racks, pans hanging from
hooks. Even so, I try to keep it relatively tidy.

Chester was
waiting for me when I walked in, sitting forlornly by his bowl as
if I were a cruel mistress who’d kept him starving all day. This
was not true, as the bowl still had half the dried food I’d left
out for him that morning.

‘Honestly,
Chester, anyone would think I should be reported to the RSPCA.’

Chester, rather
than speaking up in my defence, continued to wear a deprived look.
He even let out a pitiful
meow
.

I looked
through the cupboard of moist, meaty cat food that left a dent in
my credit card every month. ‘I bet you’re going to get more
enjoyment out of this meal than I got out of mine tonight,’ I said
as I chose a pouch of rabbit in gravy and wondered, not for the
first time, how gravy had any relation to what a cat might eat in
the wild.

Chester
stretched himself as tall as he could while sitting down, full of
anticipation. I know it was because of the food, but in my head, I
decided it was really a sign he wanted to hear more about my
disastrous date with Derek.

‘I’m telling
you, Chester, I had an uncomfortable feeling about him as soon as I
walked into the restaurant.’

A friend of a
friend had persuaded me to meet with Derek. He felt sorry for me
and said Derek could do with company because ‘he’s so lonely’.
Having met the man, I understood why.

‘He was wearing
a tie,’ I explained. ‘You have to give the guy credit for making an
effort - but he looked as uncomfortable as a young kid at his first
job interview. He kept fiddling with it and running his finger
between his neck and collar like it was strangling him. I’ve never
seen a man fidget so much.’ I ripped open the pouch and got a whiff
of catty gravy. ‘I know he was nervous, and you can’t blame the
man, but the only things he seemed to want to talk about were the
weather and house prices. I nearly fell asleep in my soup.

‘The thing that
finally did it was he picked his nose - honestly, Chester, even you
would have been disgusted. He thought he’d done it behind his
napkin, but I saw what he was up to. Then he used the same hand to
eat his bread roll.’ The memory of it turned my stomach. ‘And that
was the end of another pathetic attempt at me having a
relationship.’

I bent down and
squeezed rabbity gloop from the pouch into Chester’s bowl. He stood
beside it, leaning forward like an athlete on the starting line.
When I stood up, I half expected him to pounce on his dinner like a
lion upon a gazelle. But Chester isn’t one to do what people
expect. Instead, he looked at the pile of easy-to-chew rabbit and
nudged his nose forward to give it a gentle sniff. He paused, as if
considering. Then he turned away from the bowl and walked out of
the kitchen with a superior air, leaving me standing with a half
empty pouch in my hand.

‘Chester!’ I
called after him. But he was gone.

As I put the
kettle on, I wondered which beast was the more unfathomable - men
or cats.

I made myself a
mug of tea and took it into the lounge.

I stopped at
the doorway because the soft glow from my computer screen
illuminated the room. Not unusual in itself, but I could swear I
hadn’t turned it on that morning. Even if I had, after half an hour
of being left idle it’s programmed to go into sleep mode.

I flicked the
lightswitch and the one weak energy-saving lightbulb at the centre
of my ceiling struggled to cast an orange-tinged light across the
lounge. Chester let out a startled meow and leapt from the computer
table onto the floor.

‘Chester!’

There was my
answer to how the computer happened to be on: Chester had somehow
woken it up.

My cat tried to
pretend he hadn’t been lurking anywhere he shouldn’t and wandered
over to the coffee table where he rubbed his side against one of
the legs. It was this sort of behaviour that had left a thin film
of cat hair on my carpet and upholstery. The place was overdue a
hoover. It was overdue a tidy and a dust as well, but with so many
bookshelves over-filled with dust-attracting volumes and a saggy
past-its-use-by-date, faded red sofa taking up most of the space,
there was little incentive to make the effort.

I took my tea
over to the computer table and put it on top of the pile of credit
card and utility bills I’d left to deal with later. My first
thought was to turn the machine off, but then I figured I might as
well check my email.

The web-browser
was running. It was open at a page with a large photo of a smiling
man in his forties and, alongside, a bunch of paragraphs about
him.

I turned to my
cat. ‘Have you been playing with the mouse again?’ He stopped
abusing the leg of the coffee table and looked back at me like he
didn’t understand my human words.

I decided to
ignore the stupid cat and turned back to the monitor. I was about
to close down the website and open up my email account, when the
first paragraph caught my eye.

‘
Looking to
meet a woman in her late thirties / early forties for walks in the
woods, trips to the cinema and romantic evenings at home with a
bottle of wine.’

As I read, the
man seemed to be smiling at me from the screen. His eyes drew me
in, as if he were speaking the words directly to me. I read
further.

‘
I never
thought I’d turn to a dating website, but after years of living
alone, I think this could be a great way to meet people.’

I’d never turn
to a dating website either - I was desperate, but not that
desperate - which made me wonder how on earth the page had ended up
on my computer. I must have Googled something obscure and pulled it
up by mistake, like the time I searched for a pantomime script of
Babes in the Wood
for my neighbour’s school and ended up
looking at entirely the wrong sort of babes.

I felt the
brush of warm fur at my ankle. Chester was suddenly at my feet.
‘Hello, what are you after?’ I stroked him on the top of his head;
he seemed to like that.

This was all
very well, but it wasn’t getting my email read. As I reached for
the mouse, Chester jumped onto my lap and knocked my arm away.
‘You’re such an attention seeker!’ I stroked his fur with my
mouse-hand and felt the rumble of his purr as he arched his
back.

As soon as I
took my hand away, he demanded my attention again by jumping up
onto the computer table. ‘Chester!’

He walked along
it, his tail dangling perilously close to my tea. ‘Come on, get off
of there! You know you’re not allowed on the furniture.’

I was about to
cup my hands over his furry body and lift him back onto the floor,
when he sat right on the middle of the mousemat and placed his
front paws on the mouse buttons. On the screen, a window popped up
over the image of the smiling man.

Yes, I would
like to meet this man
, it said along the top of the window.
Underneath, it had a box to tick and space to fill in my
details.

I looked at
Chester - with his paws sitting on the mouse - then I looked back
at the screen. I looked at Chester again, his eyes blinking
innocently in the glow from the webpage. It was impossible for the
two things to be linked, and yet they seemed to be. An eerie
feeling came over me, like a ghost was leaning over my
shoulder.

One of the
man’s eyes in the photograph peeked out from behind the pop-up
window with a warmth that seemed to chase the ghost away. Almost as
if he were inviting me to fill in my details. Without stopping to
think about it, I typed in my name - Rosemary Woodvine - and my
email address, and hit the enter button.

*

The smiling man
in the photograph was called Horace, a name he was embarrassed
about and always shortened to Riss. He told me he’d been teased
rotten at school and called Horrible Horace and other, less
gracious, names. It had knocked his confidence for six and, while
friends of his were busy going out with girls and kissing behind
the bike sheds, he was on his own reading books or building train
sets.

By saying that,
it’s probably obvious that my request to connect with Riss was
accepted. We exchanged emails for a few days, finding out little
bits about each other and generally chatting, until he finally
invited me out for a meal. Of course, I said yes.

He had the same
smiling eyes in person as he had in the photograph. In fact, he
looked exactly the same, a forty-two year-old face with an amazing
amount of confidence for a man once known as Horrible Horrace. He
was dressed in a smart shirt and lived-in jeans; like he’d made an
effort, but hadn’t tried too hard. He made our meeting relaxed and
comfortable without the pressure that often comes with a first
date.