Here Kitty Kitty...

1

She sat on the floor of the bathroom stall brooding over her pitiful existence.  Thoughts flooded her mind so steadily that they began to jumble together and she almost fell over from the nausea.  It was a full ten minutes before she realized what a disgusting place she was in and had completely convinced herself that the school janitors were on strike, or they just gave up, one of the two. 2

Her surroundings were dismal.  The thick plastic walls that enclosed her were a rather repulsive color, which she decided to call ‘puke-green’, but one could hardly see them due to the hundreds of sharpie marks that read “I was here in 02!” or “878-2411 << call for a good time.”  At first she refused to look upon the floor for pure fear of what she might be sitting in, but after a time she gathered up her courage and observed a tile floor that might have been thought to be white at one time or another, now it was more of a yellowish color with brown tints here and there.  3

The bell rang.  She gathered her stomach and ventured out of her putrid cell, and soon found herself fighting through the ignorant masses toward the parking lot.  She figured, what was the point of skipping class if she was going to stay at school?  She was smarter than that; she might as well go home.  Her spirits weren’t up to the task of pretending that everything was okay.  She’d rather just curl up in a chair next to Patricia and take a nap.  4

Patricia was the only one who knew what was going on in her head.  She wouldn’t tell anybody else.  Even the therapists couldn’t get anything out of her, but she couldn’t keep anything from Patricia.  Maybe it was because Patricia didn’t criticize her for being the way she was.  She would whisper everything to Patricia and she could just feel the love and trust that they shared.  It was good for her.  5

“I missed you today,” she said as she walked into her room, “and how is Rufus doing?”  She threw her things down on the floor in the corner, sank down in her red beanbag chair, and stared into the fish tank.  She slid back the cover and dumped the freshly defrosted brine shrimp to their doom, and after every last one was devoured, she started talking.  6

She began with her usual bored rambling, then worked her way up the before mentioned nausea in the bathroom stall.  She described the revolving walls and the spinning floor, the glares and the whispers, who she would like to obliterate, etc.  All the while, Patricia listened intently, passively swimming back and forth to show interest.  7

Patricia’s tank was large and exquisite.  There was no expense spared on even the tinniest detail.  Blue and orange pebbles covered the bottom while bright, vivid green plants sprouted from them.  Shrimp and Turbo Snails were seen all about the rather large Live Rock that decorated the entire background of the beautiful saltwater tank.  Patricia was very comfortable there with her husband Rufus and their many, many children.  Patricia was a proud mother of twenty.   8

After a long session, the cat entered the room, either out of hatefulness or because he was oblivious to the fact that there was an important discussion going on that required deep concentration.  He was her mother’s cat and she hated him so much that she refused to call him by his name.  When she was forced to acknowledge his existence she simply called him “cat.”  She had stated many times before that she would rather have him hung by his ears from the neighbor’s fence.  9

He was a stray that her mother picked up as a kitten from the animal shelter many years ago.  He was orange with very distinct black swirls that came to a deep, dark point on the tips of his ears, making him rather ugly and strange to look at.  Her mother had insisted upon a rather large pink collar equipped with a very small silver bell that was unwilling to ring.  He wasn’t a very large cat, but in his own mind he was Billy Bad Ass.  It was his conceited view of himself that made her hate him, but she couldn’t do anything about it because of her mother.  Her mother loved that unsightly feline more than her, and had told her so on many occasions.  She resolved long ago that this cat was the cause of her tormented dreams and visions that only Patricia knew of, for no other reason but that he was hideous.  10

“MOM, the cat is in my room!”  She rolled off the great red blob of a chair and proceeded to kick and yell at him.  He glared at her with his unusually large, amber eyes with a look at almost told her to go fuck herself.  She quickly realized that she was not getting anywhere, so she stormed out of her room with thunderous ferocity to call upon her mother to claim him.  All this time, it had slipped her mind to slide the roof of the tank closed.  11

The small carnivorous mammal leaped upon the table that supported Patricia’s home and onto the top of the tank.  He then plunged his right paw into the cool water, and with one of his favorite claws, he impaled Rufus.  Patricia and her children were swimming amongst the plants, ignorant of the fact that Rufus was being raised out of the water and batted onto the floor.  The cat enjoyed him for a while, receiving sick pleasure from tormenting the still hopeful Rufus, who was attempting to jump back into this water sanctuary.  The cat would allow him within two inches of the tank, and then he would pitch him back across the room with monstrous force until Rufus was no more.  12

Meanwhile, her mother refused to aid her, stating that the feline wouldn’t hurt anything by lying on the floor in her room.  She sulked back down the lonely hallway and into her room, where she looked at the cat for a brief moment of disgust, and then sank back into her chair to continue with her conversation.  13

“I don’t think that I remember the first time I started to see the shadows move…wait…where is Rufus?”  At this the cat raised himself and less-than-eloquently strutted through the door, down the hallway, and jumped hastily into her mother’s lap.  It was then that she began to realize exactly what had happened.  She noticed the lid was opened and everything sank in.  She was overcome with grief for her lost friend.  She hated the cat more than ever now and she vowed revenge.  If not for herself, than for Patricia, who had lost a devoted husband and father.  That monstrosity of a cat hurt her only friend.  He had to pay.  She made up her mind what to do and discussed it with Patricia, and afterwards convinced herself that Patricia was enthusiastic and just as eager for revenge as she was. 14

“Here kitty kitty,” she called.  “Here kitty kitty…” 15

The cat approached cautiously, for he was not stupid.  He recognized that she was acting peculiar, and he didn’t like it, not at all.  But nevertheless, when she revealed the opened can of tuna fish, he could not resist the urge to gorge himself, and thus she grasped him by the back of the neck and carried him off to the darkness of her room as a butcher knife emerged from behind her back.  16

“Have you seen my cat,” her mother asked, “ I haven’t seen him all day and I’m beginning to worry.”  She apathetically shook her head in denial and her mother departed.  When she and Patricia were alone once again, a deviant smile spread across her lips as she thought of her mother’s cat.  17

If one would have bothered to take in a small observation of the fish tank he/she would have noticed a small bit of cat hair floating aimlessly through the water, and a rather large pink collar equipped with a very small silver bell that was unwilling to ring that was carefully placed on top of the Live Rock as a sort of trophy for the overfed fish named Patricia and her twenty corpulent children.  18

And they all lived happily ever after19

Except the cat, of course…20