When You’re Away
The couple in apartment 2B has had their radio on for two days straight. They aren’t home, will not be home for the next five days, but they’d told the sitter to leave it on for the cat. The sitter comes in at 8 AM sharp, always to the tune of the morning report, the keys turning in time with the newscaster’s greeting: “Good morn-ing New York Cit-y!” Dump the cat’s food in its bowl, the sound eliciting a thump from the bedroom and a sharp cry as the fluffy Persian pads into the kitchen. Old water down the drain, fresh water filling the bowl halfway. Scoop out the cat’s shit, encrusted in biodegradable litter, and flush it down the toilet. She’s out the door at 8:15, just as the radio blares, “And now, your mid-morning traf-fic re-port.” The door’s closing echoes, brushing up against the sound of the cat’s quick, neat bites.
The cat gets wet food every other day. It delays the sitter’s exit by only a minute, the door’s opening rather than its closing heralded by the traffic announcement. The cat keeps its ears back while it eats, flicking them at sudden spikes in the radio’s volume. As the newscaster reports on accidents and delays, impatient drivers on the streets below punctuate his words with honks and screeching tires as they speed through the light in front of the apartment complex.
There is a cat tree next to the bedroom window, granting the Persian a better view of the streets than its owners. Most days are lazy, its white fur glowing golden and warm from the steadily strengthening sunrays of mid-spring that stretch their way beneath the blinds. In the mornings, just after the cat finishes feeding, it will sometimes crouch there and observe with a twitching tail the beetle-like cars that trundle just outside of reach. Occasionally, the Persian darts out a paw and startles itself upon impact with the window, every time leaping back and hissing at the solid glass that has prevented it from reaching its prey. After a self-conscious cleaning, it settles itself into a loaf and gazes down at the streets once more.
The cat sleeps with its tail over its nose. It has gone into the bathroom and curled atop a towel that had fallen from the rack and into a coil that makes for a perfect nest. The bathroom door is mostly closed, the cat having slipped in through the slimmest of cracks, and such a barrier turns the radio’s chatter into an unintelligible hum.
Before they’d left, the owners had changed their sheets, the bed slept in only once and then encased in its unscented comforter. They hadn’t yet washed their towels.
