The Cat
flash fiction by Sarah P. Blanchard
Sarah P. Blanchard is the author the novel Drawn from Life, the short story collection Playing Chess with Bulls, and the poetry chapbook river, horse, morning. A longer bio appears at the end of this story.
When I get home from work, our housemate Travis sits fidgeting on the porch steps, rotating an empty beer bottle and picking at the label.
“I’m clearing out,” he tells me. He stands, sets the bottle on the porch railing, and stares into the woods. “He shot your cat.”
Maybe I heard it wrong. “What cat?”
Stupid question. There is only one cat. My cat, Misha, a creamy seal-point Siamese with green eyes and a crooked tail. He appeared on the doorstep one evening a month ago, right after the neighbors moved away. Misha lives with me, my husband, my husband’s buddy Travis, and a mongrel hound they found in the woods. The mutt chases the cat and barks at everyone and digs holes in the yard. The cat scratches and hisses and steals the dog’s food.
Travis looks down and digs a toe into the rotten spot on the porch floor. “Your cat. Your husband shot him.”
I lean my bike against the pin-oak tree, the big one that’s hanging two dead limbs over the roof of our house trailer. The next storm will probably take out the front bedroom or maybe the whole single-wide. Then we’ll have to move, not necessarily a bad thing.
Next to Travis’s feet is a half-collapsed cardboard box that holds all his possessions. It’s exactly the size and same saggy shape of the passenger seat in his beat- up Miata. There’s never been room in that car for anything else, just Travis, his ratty old box of socks and underwear, and a constantly shifting pile of books, mostly math and physics, on the car’s floor. He doesn’t have to say he’s leaving, I see the box.
“Your cat,” he repeats. “Misha.” This sounds like an apology but I’m pretty sure it’s not his fault.
I’m tired and sweaty and my shirt stinks of mint chocolate chip. Friday’s special, two scoops in a waffle cone, half-price. The middle schoolers swarmed for that one. We ran out and I had to grab two new tubs from the supercold freezer. My right arm aches from chopping chunks of rock-hard ice cream that never softened enough to be scoopable. It's still summer but I’m cold and aching everywhere.
I say, “When?” Like that matters.