There is a cat who has, for her own reasons, decided to share my apartment with me. We’ve been together for about three years now. I call her Jeannie, because I have to call her something, but that makes no difference to her whatsoever. She is an extremely difficult and dangerous example of her species, a startling blend of fear and ferocity.
Tonight, she is being even more difficult and dangerous than usual. Since I got home, she’s been charging me every few minutes and trying to remove the flesh from my legs. Usually when she does this it’s because she’s hungry; she’ll bite and/or scratch me, then run into the kitchen and, standing over her food bowl, she’ll look at me and mew piteously. But it isn’t time for her to eat yet, and anyway, she doesn’t seem to be hungry. Instead of running to her bowl, she’s been running to the front door.
It’s a cool, rainy night here in Huntington, very comfortable and still, and I have the door standing open. Because of this, it can’t be that she wants me to let her out; she can go out any time she wants. It’s been a mystery to me, and quite a painful mystery at that, trying to discover what she wants so badly. But I think I’ve figured it out. I think she wants me to turn the rain off for her.
I suppose that, to her, I appear to move in mysterious ways. After all, I can make it light or dark. I can make it hot or cold. I conjure her food, as far as she can tell, out of thin air (not that the air in here is ever thin, given how much I smoke). I can even turn the rain on and off inside the apartment (in the bathroom, anyway), so why wouldn’t I be able to turn it on and off outside?
So she’s sitting, hunched in the doorway, looking out at the lot and longing to go play, and occasionally looking at me over her shoulder, saying, “Can’t you do something about this? I’ve got important business out there!”
No, sweetheart, that’s another item on the long list of things I can’t fix. It's very sweet and cute that she thinks I can, but it's a little bit sad, too, because there actually isn't anything I can do. I don't need metaphors for powerlessness in my life right now; I've got plenty of the real thing.
“But there’s things need killin’ out there! I’m on a tight schedule! I’ve got a quota to meet! Come on, just turn it off for a little bit? PLEEEEEEASE?”
There’s no way to explain this to a cat, is there?
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