Cat and Mouse
The cat sat on the counter, looking like an Egyptian statue, staring at him as he made a pot of coffee. He turned to get the cream out of the refrigerator and almost tripped over the stupid cat.
“What the hell, cat,” he said and gave the thing a little nudge with his foot. “Always under foot, I swear this cat is trying to kill me.”
“You’re imagining things,” Anne said. “That cat is a sweetie.”
As she said this, the cat rubbed against her leg. She bent down to pet the sleek gray coat. The cat was a stray that she rescued from the field next to her office. She noticed the cat one day when she was leaving the office and the thing was playing with a field mouse. It was still alive and she watched the cat toy with the mouse. The cat would let it escape and then pounce on the tiny, frightened thing. Then, as though they were done with their game, the cat just let the mouse go and then looked at Anne with its green-gold eyes and meowed.
“Oh, yeah, real sweet,” George looked at the three claw marks on his forearm, fresh scabs covering the inch-long scratches. Two days ago, he went to pour a cup of coffee. The cat was sitting on the counter in its usual statuesque pose and with a quick, growly meow the cat clawed him.
As the weeks passed, Anne got closer and closer to the cat. George was starting to worry about her obsession over the cat. One day, the cat threw up in the morning and Anne stayed home from work to care for the cat. Another day, George nudged the cat out of his way with his foot, as he had done dozens of times, and Anne started yelling at him. At night when they would watch tv, the cat sat between them and she stroked the thing’s head. When they went to bed, the cat went with them and slept by her head. Sometimes he would wake and the cat would be sitting next to him staring at him as though it was working out how to suffocate him in his sleep.
“That cat is starting to freak me out, Anne,” he told her one morning over breakfast. “Sometimes, I wake up and the cat is just sitting there staring at me. It’s creepy.”
“Nonsense. That cat loves us,” Anne insisted.
“No, the cat loves you. The thing hates me. Look at this,” George showed her all the places the cat scratched him. HIs forearm was healed but scarred, his hand had fresh claw marks, his thigh had long streaks of red on wounds that were partially healed. She looked at the scratch marks but then quickly turned to the cat and absentmindedly ran her hand from head to tail, head to tail, head to tail as though she hadn’t even seen the scratches.
One day he came home from work to find Anne sitting on the couch stroking the cat. She looked at him with a mocking indifference. She continued gazing into his eyes with her green-gold eyes, her nails sharp and pointy, she had an urge to scratch him. The cat looked at him with its blue eyes, stepped off the couch, and rubbed against his leg purring loudly.
