Cats Die

©Chris Page

This is a short online sample of Cats Die. The full story is published in the ebook collection Shorts, a collection by Chris Page.

Cats Die

Chris Page

'What's the difference between melancholy and sad, Dad?'

'Hmm. I am sad because my cat died. I am melancholy because all cats die eventually. Sad is pretty quick, but melancholy goes on and on and on.'

Rory and Tanya, five and seven years old, sprawled across the sofa and his lap, were quiet a moment, perhaps trying to fathom the subtle distinction their father had just alerted them to, or perhaps trying to locate some melancholy within themselves.

If the latter, they won't find any, they are simply too new for melancholy. Melancholy is for silly old losers like their father.

H and the kids are having a rare five minutes together and they are reading a book about another melancholy old loser called Joe, who has lost his cat up a tree.

For H, for anyone, it is tough at the age of thirty-nine to accept that you are a silly old loser. The understanding can seriously spoil your life. But H is resourceful; he can deal with it. In fact, he plans to take it lying down.

H is horrified by the utter predictability of Joe's story. Joe dotes on his cat. But the darn thing took a stroll up this tree hours ago and can't get back down again. It is way up there, near the top and Joe is way down here at the bottom. The cat sits up there all on its own, quite unbothered by its predicament, fat and smug and very aloof.

A neighbour comes along with a ladder and offers to help, but Joe refuses because he doesn't want to put the neighbour out. The neighbour tells Joe he would love to get the cat out of the tree because it is such a fine animal and no man should be separated from his cat. Joe says no. The neighbour goes away. Then the fire brigade comes along but again Joe refuses help because he thinks a whole fire engine and crew and mechanical ladder is too much palaver for one silly cat even if the fire brigade is specifically there to help people. The fire brigade goes away. Next the local human pyramid team comes along and say they would love to make a human pyramid tall enough to fetch the cat down. They insist that building human pyramids is their absolute favourite thing and it would be no trouble at all. Joe doesn't want to be responsible for anyone falling off the pyramid or being hit by a low flying jet. The human pyramid team goes on its way.

Along comes a snotty-nosed boy with a catapult, who tells Joe he is such a good shot he can ping the branch with a stone and the cat will drop out of the tree and into Joe's hands. Joe is horrified. Suppose the boy accidentally hits the cat, suppose he did hit the branch but Joe missed the falling animal, suppose the boy missed the tree altogether and the stone pinged on someone's head. So the deadeye, snotty-nosed little dick goes on his way too, leaving Joe to stare forlornly at the cat, no closer to getting his hands on it, his flow of opportunities apparently all dried up.

It was not clear to H what or who Joe was waiting for.

As he was reading, H's mind was elsewhere speculating on the ending of the story. Joe will do nothing useful and will continue to refuse all offers of help. Eventually a big wind will come along and the cat will be blown out of the tree and into Joe's grateful and relieved hands. Then, of course, in the same wind the tree will topple, impaling Joe and his cat with its spiky branches.

'Did your cat die, Dad?' asked Rory, throwing H with this abrupt return to the theme of sad and melancholy.

'Yes, it did, young man. Very much so.'

'When did it die?' Tanya wanted to know.

'Years and years ago. Or was it years and years and years ago? I forget which.'

'Did you cry?'

'What do you think?'

'I think you cried like a poof.' They giggled cruelly.

H was not sure whether he was more put out by the barbaric stereotyping in the remark or by the emphatic dismissal of crying as a legitimate response to nature. Tears, after all, are the wine of melancholy.

'Can we have a cat, Dad?'

'Nope.'

'Why not?'

Why not? Well, cats die, don't they.

'I know where we can get a cat,' Rory announced, inadvertently throwing one among the chickens cooped up in his father's head.

'There's a bunch of kittens of the garden of that old house where nobody lives,' Tanya went on. 'They must have been very naughty because their mummy has left them out there with no food.'

H felt tears at the back of his eyes scratching to get out.

Rori corrected his sister. 'They weren't naughty, just stupid. They keep their eyes closed and they keep falling over and bumping into things. And they are very noisy. If we did that, Mummy would put us in the bushes too.'

'If they stay there, will they die?' Tanya wanted to know.

'I'm sorry, kids. I don't do cats. I do picture frames.' And schoolgirls. 'Someone else can rescue them.' It is H that needs rescue.

'H?'

H was convulsed by the sensation of steel talons scraping down a blackboard deep in his soul: his wife was speaking to him.

'I'm nearly ready. Could you get the kids in the car for me, please?'

He ungritted his teeth to acknowledge her and to motivate Rory and Tanya toward their coats and shoes.

H now regularly suffered this involuntary reaction of pain or repulsion when his wife addressed him. He didn't dislike his wife Ñ indeed he had always loved her. There was nothing terrible about his wife: she was one of life's cool people, and he would be the first to acknowledge this, albeit somewhat mutteringly. There was nothing hostile in the way she spoke, she was always very reasonable, she merely sounded like a woman who was energetically juggling an active family life, a part time job, a burgeoning career as a painter and a parallel burgeoning career as a rising star in the Labour party. H suffered so at hearing his wife's voice because of everything she was and everything he was not. H was an administration officer with Haringey Council and he had a second career as a maker of wonky picture frames, but that was semi-stalled at the moment; as a career it was pretty non-burgeoning. H was a man swept to one side, ambitions overwhelmed in the wash of the juggernaut that he had married ten years previously. He just couldn't work with all that going on, with all his wife going on.

And that was the other thing. She was always so bloody right. How was it that someone could be so unfalteringly, unerringly correct all the time?

Here is a sample from a conversation that very morning.

Mrs. H had shown the temerity to ask H to do something with the kids for five minutes while she got herself sorted to go out. They were in the bedroom. Mrs. H was getting dressed and H was finding any excuse he could to stay in the room and ogle. It was all very fascinating in a frustrating sort of way to see all those layers of silky and cottony under things go on Ñ Mrs. H had always been very good at silky and cottony under things. That was one of the reasons he had married her. It used to be a lot of fun taking them all off. Now they seemed to go on to keep him out.

H protested at the burden she wished to place on him.

'Look, love. I'm on my way to an important Framer's Guild event and I really have to get ready. This could be my big break. You know, from side job to career. There'll be big painters there, painter's agents, buyers from the major trendy shops. The whole thing.'

This was nothing new to Mrs. H, she had heard it all before. She had suggested he get involved with the event in the first place. Incidentally, H was lying through his teeth. He was hoping to be on his way to a secret assignation with a schoolgirl. He was planning to do his framing networking only on the second day of the event, tomorrow. Adultery with an eighteen-year-old was his plan for today and his overarching plan for dealing with melancholy.

'Making the corners of your frames square would be a big break in your career. Whatever happened to craftsmanship?'

'I know, I'll read a book with the kids,' said H in a u-turn that would qualify him for high office. 'You had better get ready to go out.'

'You're very good. Great imagination. Unorthodox. Everyone gives you that. Very original, all those colours and stains and charred bits, montage Ñ puns even. No one else in the world does that with picture frames. But to say you are going after the alternative market when the real fact is you can't make a square joint to save your life is a cop out.'

'I won't see the kids till tomorrow and then barely,' said H decisively, edging toward the door.

'And anyway, H, what about the bits in the middle? You used to be a darn good painter. Weird, but good Ñ and better than me. It's like one day you went into retreat from reality, gave up painting and everything else and now you are only concerned with the bits around the edges.'

'The edges of reality? The last stop before insanity? Oh, very good. I've been accused of many things in my life but this is a first for lunacy.'

'I didn't say you were mad, you daft sod. I meant you were going to disappear off the face of the world. Or perhaps disappear up your own arse, but my metaphor isn't as flexible as the corner joints on your frames.'

'Oh, thank you. Artistic assassination and psychoanalysis at 10am on a Saturday, which happens to be a very important Saturday. Now, I really must get ready. I mean, do something with the kids.'

'And you're not wearing that shirt are you.'

'Well, just at the moment I am.'

'It has egg stains down the front from where you dribbled your breakfast. You don't want to go to your frame maker's convention with egg on your shirt. No one will want to take your wobbly joints seriously.'

'Thank you, darling. I'll just go bury the shirt in the garden and myself with it.'

This is a short online sample of Cats Die. The full story is published in the ebook collection Shorts, a collection by Chris Page.

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