How Can I Write When I Have A One-Eyed Cat From Cairo?
The life of a cat lady is busy
‘We’re getting a new cat,’ I said to my husband. ‘He’s only got one eye.’
‘Can’t we afford a cat with two eyes?’ he said.
You really can’t get the husbands these days, can you?
Smokey found his way to me via a teaching assistant, via a PE teacher, via the PE teacher’s mother who was a cat-lady-with-children, who lived in Egypt, who died and whose will stipulated that her sixteen cats must be re-homed in England by suckers — I mean, kind cat ladies like me.
He sits on the carpet, a furry motor with a winsome miaow — a plaintive little wrench of a miaow. He blinks his one eye, and the sewn up fur of the other eye contracts in sympathy, a ghostly remnant. He purrs and twines around me as I try to write. Rolls over, pushes his chin into my outstretched hand, kneads the carpet, springs, gambols, insinuates his whiskers onto the chair leg, follows his body, luxuriating onto his back, his belly white, soft and sated in joy. His paws splay and knead, each little scimitar plucks the carpet. A lamb of a cat.
The upshot is I have not been writing.
But I have cleaned the filter in the dishwasher. I have vacuumed the air vent on the freezer. I have scrubbed dried…
