A Cat and His Man by David Serafino

Carmen's a fusty dresser, lace and pearls, normal looking, which puts her out of Nick's league, plus she's never given him any reason to like her except his first day at the office when she handed him the standard corporate welcome basket: a canned ham, a selection of chips and a bag of peanuts. He's got a crush on Carmen anyway. Nick ate the canned ham and lollipops years ago, but the wicker basket still occupies a place of honor on top of his fridge.

Here's Nick's boss: “I like you, Nicky, but you're a numbskull.” Poised on the edge of the desk is Carmen, the boss' secretary. “A nitwit, kid. A nincompoop.” The boss believes swearing is vulgar and that by not swearing he'll avoid being perceived as vulgar by even the keenest reader. He is aware, however, that after Nick closes the door, everyone on the floor will hear him trying to fuck Carmen.

Here's Nick coming home from work: the postman nods; a downstairs neighbor half-smiles; and when Nick opens the door to his apartment, Reginald jumps down from the basket on the fridge, slips between Nick's legs, across the parking lot and into the woods. He won't be back until dawn. 

Nick sets his alarm for six, but wakes to Reggie yowling and clawing the woodwork around his bedroom window. He opens the window and Reginald scuttles past him to his food bowl, eats like an excavator, then before Nick's shower has warmed, the cat has finished breakfast and returned to his fridge-top basket.

Fridge hums, cat purrs, Nick sighs. His job pays alright, and he has a decent apartment for someone his age, which makes him feel guilty for not being happier, more grateful, what with everything going on in the world, but really he thinks a cat's life is superior to a human's. This comes clear riding the bus to work one November morning. Outside are bare cornfields, stripped trees, a threatening sky, frost like ground glass. Nick should be asleep in a basket on a warm, humming fridge.

Lost in thought, he walks past Carmen without saying good morning. He's never done that before.

“Uh, hello?” He doesn't hear her. “So rude.” Nick feels like a nap. He puts his head on his desk, elementary school-style, breath warming his nose until the boss bellows. Carmen holds his oaken door open for Nick.

“Rudeness, Nicky? You know I won't have it.” The boss intimates that he might fire Nick and replace him with a nice rug from Home Depot, then reads several other profanity-free put-downs from a list he perfects in his spare time. The boss orders him back to work, but instead Nick goes to the men's room to practice hissing and showing his teeth. His nails are too short. He decides to let them grow.

That afternoon, Nick leaves his bag in the hall and follows Reginald into the woods. Reggie waits while Nick's entangled in briers and brambles. Faced with clumsy humanity, Reginald reserves judgment. He leads Nick to a stream to drink and wash up. He brings Nick to a downed tree where they can scratch their backs. He keeps his human moving, keeps him warm. 

Just after dark, he leaves Nick alone. Nick calls out, but Reginald won't answer, not so much as a rustling leaf. Nick sits to avoid panic. He will have to wait. Nick doesn't know the way home or to town. He might die tonight, frozen in his work clothes. 

When Reginald returns with a dead baby owl, he lays it at Nick's feet, and Nick is overwhelmed. To demonstrate the depths of his gratitude, Nick takes the owl, sniffs it, and licks the blood on its beak. It tastes like his own. “Thanks,” he tells Reggie, putting the owl in his pocket. “Just saving it for later, see?” 

Reginald sees, because Reginald can see in the dark. He leads Nick through the woods into town. In the alley behind restaurant row they snoop in dumpsters. Someone threw out half a pepperoni pizza, still in the box. They bring it to the park to eat. After dinner there are places where they must urinate, then it's time to go home.

They enter through the bedroom window to the sound of Nick's alarm. He turns it off, skips his shower, spends the morning sleeping on the couch in the sun. When the sun moves into the bedroom, so do Nick and Reggie. That evening they battle with the neighbor's tabby, shrieking and spitting and bloody claws, and Reginald is wounded, but not gravely. He might not have held off the larger cat if not for Nick. With their victory comes new territory, and Reginald permits Nick to mark it first.

Nick arrives late to work the next day, but not that late. The boss calls him in, and Nick says good morning. The boss growls. Nick is sympathetic. This is the boss' territory, won at great personal cost, and he wants to defend it, but the boss is insecure, and anyway, Nick’s not interested in his turf. The linoleum floors give off a chemical odor, the lights flicker and hum, the only window overlooks a brick patio several stories down, making it useless for entry or escape. This place isn't fit for a cat. Nick yawns to display his disinterest and his teeth.

The boss is offended. The boss, in fact, says fuck you. Nick regards him, then casually reaches across the desk and scratches the boss' cheek. The boss upsets his high-backed leather chair and Carmen runs in. She looks at him on the floor, doesn't help him up. Nick smooths his hair, picks a nit from his tie, and leaves. In his coat pocket is the dead baby owl. On the way out, he slips it into one of Carmen's gym shoes.

~

Saturday morning, there's a knock at the door. 

“Did you put a dead bird in my shoe?”

“A baby owl.”

“That's worse.” Nick returns to the sofa, rolls onto his back in the last passing sun patch and stares at Carmen upside down. It seems like her hair should be hanging towards the ceiling. “Why, Nick?”

“I wanted to give you a present.”

The sun starts its passage toward the bedroom window. If Nick doesn't hurry, Reggie will claim the good pillow, but he has to wait for Carmen to leave so he can lock the door. 

Carmen, instead of leaving, stares. Nick bristles. “Are you seeing someone?” she asks.

“No, I'm single.”

“I meant a therapist.”

“Sorta. It's almost time for our afternoon session.”

Carmen takes the hint, and Nick locks the door, but by the time he gets to bed, Reginald has already stolen his spot.

~

Sunday, Carmen brings a lasagna. She's convinced the boss to give Nick his job back. Isn't that spectacular? Thanks, Nick says, but no thanks. He'd probably just piss on the carpet.

“Have you ever tried yoga, Nick?” 

Nick says he's learning to bathe himself with his tongue, which is similar. 

“Are you in a cult or what?” 

“No. Though I got a personal trainer, Reggie. He's my cat.” Nick nods at the basket on the fridge.

“You're training with a cat?”

“Training to be a cat.”

“Is that the nasty ham basket?”

“It's the basket you gave me.”

Carmen responds with a sniff, and Reggie looks up from his basket. “Does Reginald talk to you?” she asks. Reggie lies back down. This doesn’t concern him. 

“The cat makes himself understood on critical issues,” Nick says. “His catness is not a barrier to communication.” Nick understands Reginald better, for example, than he understands Telemundo.

“Okay, Nick,” Carmen says. “So, take care?” After she leaves, the lingering scent of her perfume makes Reginald jittery.

~

Imbalanced by thoughts of Carmen, Nick orders night vision goggles and successfully hunts voles and possums. His tree climbing has improved, though not yet to Reggie's standards. Nick is wiry and loose, falls freely from high limbs, and traps nutritious prey. 

The night he scampers up a telephone pole to catch his first owl, Nick feels he has arrived. From the top, he can see the town, the graveyard cornfields, the stripped forest in white light. He smells the promise of snow, hears the stream tinkling under a scrim of ice while he plucks feathers from the owl, which he stows in his coat to microwave for dinner.

~

One humid, drowsy night tipping trash cans, Reginald and Nick see the ex-boss scuttling across High Street. Ex-boss has spotted Carmen. She's been out for drinks with friends, and he's making his approach. Nick turns his attention back to the trash can but hears Ex-boss calling Carmen's name. In the trash can is a chunk of cheeseburger wrapped in wax paper and two tin cans with tuna stuck to the sides. Nick scorns the soggy french fries, but finds a bag of oranges with only a little mold on the peels. He'll have to hide the oranges, pick them up on the way home, because it's early and Reginald has a new girlfriend near the park.

Having stashed the oranges, Nick and Reggie are on their way to the park when they pass Ex-boss and Carmen. They raise their tails and chins to salute her, totally ignoring Ex-boss. Ex-boss takes offense and declares himself ready to fight. Nick pauses from curiosity. He'd rather not dally with Ex-boss now, but Ex-boss is righteous with drink. Maybe he thinks Carmen is in heat. That doesn't concern Nick, but when Ex-boss lunges, Nick is willing to jab him in the eye with a sharpened nail, then bite off a bit of his ear. It's an ignominious victory, the boss weeping as he flees.

Carmen regards him from a distance. “Still not seeing that therapist?”

“What for?”

“You have blood on your chin.”

Nick licks and wipes, licks and wipes. “Gone?”

“You seem to be. Nick, I have food at home. Do you want something to eat?” Actually, he and Reggie have other commitments. “What commitments?”  They’re going to get into a fight, then hopefully impregnate Reggie's girlfriend.

~

In the fall, Nick and Reggie are evicted. Neither of them, it turns out, has been paying rent. Reginald is understandably annoyed, as this was Nick's only real talent. Nick explains automated payment plans, annual rent hikes. “The money ran out,” he says. Reginald yowls. “Reggie,” he says later, during their evening stroll, “It's time to face facts. You're going to have to get a job.” 

Reginald has a more cunning proposition. They will simply enter their apartment through the bedroom window. The furniture is all there. The electricity is out, but they don't care. Reggie can see in the dark, and Nick has night vision goggles.

This works for a month before tragedy strikes. Returning from a morning's amble, the pair find a moving truck in their territory. Peering in through a window, they see a young couple with a mastiff puppy, all slavering, heedless malevolence. The woman sees them lurking. She shrieks and points and the friends, conquered and homeless, retreat in shame.

While the weather holds there are countless nooks in the woods where a cat and his man can mark their territory and make a home. Food abounds: hedgehogs and squirrels, a dozen species of bird, mice and rats, bats, fish, frogs, worms and snails. Nick has caught three rabbits barehanded, his greatest triumph to date, though he plans to take down a hawk, which Reginald himself fears to do.

~

Life is good, until another chance encounter with Carmen ends with her opening a full can of tuna for Reginald. After that, their daily routine is irreparably altered. Every expedition begins by begging at Carmen's window. Reginald grows fat on her charity. As reality encroaches with the winter, he becomes vociferous on the issue. Reggie is going to live at Carmen's; Nick can do what he likes.

Nick hasn't spent this year in training just to become somebody's pet. He wants to hunt and fight, to come home covered in scratches and pheromones, to sleep all day and never again call anyone boss. Reginald bristles at this. Nick calls him a fickle, shallow, indoor cat. Reggie flattens his ears and spits. Nick hisses right back. Reginald scratches Nick's chin. Nick seizes him by the scruff and yanks his whiskers. This is a gross indignity. Reggie flees in rage.

After he cools off, Nick goes to Carmen's house to collect his cat. 

“What happened to your face?” she asks.

“We had a fight.”

“Reggie did that?”

“He got lucky.”

“What was the fight about?”

“Reggie being a traitor.”

“You have leaves in your hair.”

Nick explains about the eviction, the mastiff, their campsite by the stream. Carmen is horrified by this vision of total freedom. 

“So Reginald left you. For me. Nick, the cat has better sense than you. Your best friend is going to leave you. I'll encourage him, as well, because he's a good cat, but he might not be after spending a winter outdoors. Look, I have a guest room. I'll invite you to be my guests, with conditions. First, a bath. A flea and tick bath.” Nick opens his mouth to complain. “Do you see that circle on your arm, Nick? That is ringworm. Stop scratching. You'll make it angry.”

“Are you going to take us to the vet?”

“No. You are going to take Reginald to the vet and make a doctor's appointment for yourself.” Nick looks to Reggie for backup, but Reginald is asleep on the radiator. “Also, I'm not going to keep feeding your cat tuna fish. It's too expensive. You can break that news to Reggie. It's cat food from now on.”

This sacrifice will entail doubt, lamentation, moments of profound regret, the odd existential crisis. Springtime will be a recurring temptation, eternal in its repercussions. Kibble is no substitute for blood.

David Serafino holds an MFA from the University of Virginia and has fiction appearing in the Los Angeles Review, Dulcet, Radon, Page Gallery, and Fiction on the Web, and stories forthcoming in AGNI, Oyster River Pages, and Chaotic Merge. He has been nominated for the O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, as well as the WSFA Small Press Award, and has been shortlisted for the Zoetrope AllStory Prize, the Big Moose Prize, the Henfield Prize and the Master's Review Novel Excerpt contest.