Page 4 of Kitten

The instant I returned the shadow dog to her wall, her eyes narrowed, and she shrank into her haunches in preparation to leap. I held the shadow steady. She launched herself across the room, ricocheted off the wall, then crashed onto James’s desk. Spooked by her own noise, she then skittered into the kitchen.

“Oh!” James stood. I burst into laughter. He smiled, but I could tell he didn’t think it was funny. “She spilled my coffee.”

“I was just trying to get her to like me.”

“She’s not that difficult. You can get her to like you by feeding her lunch.”

But when I tried, Silver didn’t so much as sniff her bowl. This upset me because her food was clearly luxurious. The can it came in was so gorgeous I thought about fishing it out of the trash and using it to hold jewelry, or keys. My mother would have grand and exact ideas about how to repurpose it. I couldn’t believe it was made for cats, who as far as I knew did not have taste.

“What about this?” I emptied her water bowl and filled it with some milk from the refrigerator. “Cats like milk, right?”

“I think most cats are lactose intolerant,” said James.

“Really?” I set the bowl down. Silver sniffed the milk. Then she began to drink, lapping gently at first and then with increasing passion. When she was done, she looked upat me, pearls of milk shivering on her whiskers, and let out a small burp. A warm feeling flared in my chest. I had the urge to clutch her tight.

“Impressive,” James said. “I think you’ve won her love.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. “Hey,” I stuck my finger out and waved it in Silver’s direction. “Come on, do the trick.”

Silver looked away. James stuck out his finger, and she ran to meet it with her nose.

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“She’s known me for ages,” he said. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Do you think she can tell I’ve never met a cat before?”

“Wait, what?” James looked surprised. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, is that a big deal? I didn’t have pets growing up. And dogs were more fashionable when I was a kid.”

James didn’t say anything. I continued. “I mean, I’ve metdogsbefore. You run into them all the time on the street. But cats don’t really go outside. It’s actually pretty difficult to meet a cat. You’d have to go into people’s houses.” I began to worry I’d shared too much.

“Wow,” James said. “You’ve never touched a cat.”

We spent some time talking about the likelihood of meeting and/or touching a cat. I began to doubt myself. Maybe I really had touched cats. But when I tried to imagine the sensation, nothing happened inside me. “My mother said pets weren’t worth the heartbreak when they died,” I said.

Silver’s head turned. James, who had been having a goodtime questioning me until now, took on a sympathetic look. “That’s a bit harsh. And I’d beg to differ.”

Then he waved his finger in the air and Silver returned her attention to him, tottering over and rising on her hind legs like a competition pony plumping for applause.

—

Despite her belief in theunworthiness of pets, my mother wasn’t completely unyielding. She let me keep a lizard I found in a flower pot when I was six. After it died, she said, “I told you so.” But she’d overestimated my attachment to the lizard. I only wanted it because I knew that she kept lizards as a kid, snuck them into the kitchen and fed them strips of dried seaweed when Bill, her father, wasn’t looking.

I cherished these stories about my mother’s childhood, which transpired just a few neighborhoods from mine, nestled against the leafy Little Rock woodlands. She rarely spoke about her past, so I took care to memorize the details.

For my eighth birthday, I begged for a dog. Instead, my mother gifted me a red woven bracelet with jade beads. Bill had made it for her when she turned eight herself, her first birthday in America. It was an ugly thing, gray in places and missing several beads, but I loved the idea of it wrapped around my mother’s then-thin wrist, becoming gross and soft with time. She clapped when I tightened the string. We kissed on the lips, making exaggerated smacking sounds the way people kissed in black-and-white cartoons, which we watched that night until we fell asleep, our bodies pressed against each other on the edge of the couch so our necks hurt in the exact same place when we woke.

The next day, she surprised me with a trip to the animal shelter. I hopped from pen to pen and became enamored with a Labrador while my mother became attracted to a timid runt. Nobody knew its breed. The runt nosed into her elbow, as if they already knew each other. With a look of devastated adoration on her face, my mother turned to me. The Labrador was too big, she said, didn’t I want this poor thing instead? A bad thing unfurled inside me, grew bigger when I looked into the runt’s pleading eyes. I said no. It cried when she returned it to the pen, and I was sorry, but the relief of being alone with my mother on the drive home was immense.

—

In the evening, after hewas done with work, James went on a run. I admired the force with which he tied his shoes, bunny-ear style. His fingers yanked the ears straight and taut, always holding for a second to solidify the knot.

I had a text from Lou. It was her third time in two days asking for money. I owed her around a hundred dollars for the previous two months’ utilities, but my paycheck was delayed, and my savings had dwindled to the point that if I took out more, my bank would charge me. I messaged back:

Can I have another day? They’re supposed to pay me tomorrow