cat dream
I had a weird dream last night.
I had slept badly and her work alarm had woken me up and by the time I fell back asleep it was well into the morning, eight or nine, the sky outside was bright grey and the street silent, which is different.
I wake in my parents’ house to an alarm I didn’t set. No one home – they will be in Shanghai, by now, I think, or maybe on the plane. It’s quiet. It’s so quiet and then I hear a little scratching, coming from above. I pad across the landing, through my open door, to the entrance of the attic. This door is open, too; a dim light creeps down from the upper floor. Am I a child again, have I gone mad, chasing lights around an empty house? I would gallop up the stairs, taking them in twos, and as some armed robber struck me in the stomach and the light began to fade I would hear him mutter, ah, thank God she’s an only child! Any sane, siblinged adult would have bolted straight for the exit!
Instead, I ascend the stairs slowly. No robbers – the room I arrive at is in disorder, stacked boxes collecting dust against every wall, the smell of damp clogging the air, air so quiet you can hear my socked feet cross the threshold. The source of the scratching sounds pitifully worn-out (how long since someone has been up here?) stopping every few seconds to draw in a soft, wet, shaky breath. Then the scratching resumes.
I shuffle towards the sound, which is coming from a box shrouded in a yellowed sheet, place a tender hand atop the box, expecting cardboard, and instead through the sheet feel cool metal bars. The scratching has completely stopped, the breathing reduced to a whisper. I’m your saviour, I think. Here I’m finally doing something good. I pull the sheet off slowly.
Inside the box is a little cat. She is the very image of Evie, if Evie had been neglected and left to the elements, because her fur is matted and her nails are long and curved, and there is brown goo collecting in the corners of both her eyes, bits of crust embedded into her coat. I lean in. I lean in, and she lets me, incredibly, goes very still in the way that animals do when they have decided to trust you, which really seems something for a cat in this state, and I think, there, we’ve done it, and I reach into the cage and she comes toward my hand and I think, there, and then she is on me.
It happens faster than I can tell it. The claws find my neck before I notice movement, gripping on like the dickens, four points of pressure that tighten as I stumble back, and I am sort of falling down the attic stairs, one hand scrabbling at the banister, the other groping at empty air, the cat a warm little devil I can’t shake. Blood runs down my neck. The house spins and I can’t hear much else but my own breathing. The rain, which I hadn't noticed starting, is hammering the skylight now, a sudden, wild downpour, and the noise of it is enormous, filling the whole house, and this gives me an idea so I start to run.
The kitchen door is already open – why are all these doors already open? I lurch into the garden and the rain is biblical, drenching us both immediately, and the little animal grip goes slack. My neck-blood runs pink and then clear; she is still clinging to me, now sodden and tinier than before, and here in the light she looks ashamed and pathetic.
We stand there together in the wet. I can feel her tiny heartbeat against my collarbone. Muddy leaves and dirt are blowing through the kitchen door and we stand there, soaked, staring at the sky.