1 .

The cat’s neck is longer. The cat’s eyes are larger. I didn’t find it so disturbing at first. Because I wasn’t really even sure of what I was seeing at first. If I was even seeing it. I thought maybe I was wrong. I can be wrong. We both know that. 

But then I began to suspect it was true. I haven’t touched the cat in ages, for obvious reasons. Even the feeding of the cat involves a somewhat laborious process whereby I lure the cat into Room A and then shut the door so that I might access the larder without the feelings of ill will the cat invariably shows when its food and I are in the same room. So I get the food from Room B which is in front of Room A (I don’t call the rooms these things, it’s just to explain the process to you) and then I must return to Room C to prepare the food and place it on the floor. Then I go back into Room B and open the door to Room A and hide behind that door. When the cat sees the food in C, it makes a dash, and I slam Door B shut behind it. I usually calm down for a while in Room A (because this process is very stressful) and that gives the cat time to disappear, which is what it always does after its gory eating.

2 .

I mean I know I’m not wrong. About the cat’s neck. Its eyes. And now what’s happening with its fur…the thing the fur is changing into. Listen, I went out on the street and picked out an impartial stranger to test this hypothesis. I mean he looked like an impartial stranger to me. So I asked him to look at the cat, particularly its neck and its eyes (I didn’t mention the fur, but I figured I would see what he would say) and it took a great deal of convincing to get him to enter the house. But enter he eventually did. And then I couldn’t find the cat and I could tell he thought the cat was invented, a pretext, and I was going to murder him. But then the cat appeared just in the nick of time. And he stared at it. He stared at it and his face changed.

He tried to scream. But he couldn’t. The cat started making for him and he was out the door. I’m worried about what he might say to the neighbors but the way I see it I am innocent. I didn’t do anything to that cat. It’s just changing. The cat can’t help it. I’m not going to subject the cat to a veterinarian. We both know what he or she would say. I couldn’t face the moral quandary. I’d sooner just let it go in the woods and that’s really harsh. Well, I’d drive South all night before I let it go. There might be alligators but it would be warmer and to be honest, I’m not sure the alligators wouldn’t run for the water if they saw it.

3 .

The question that you have, the one that’s uppermost in your mind, besides the rude things that are always floating through your mind, is, do I love the cat? It certainly doesn’t look that way, does it? But from another angle, I think it does. Just because I say “it.” Please. The cat can disappear. Just completely. So it has my respect for that. 

Today, when I caught a glimpse of the cat going under a dead sofa I keep in the house out of nostalgia, I noticed the neck was just ridiculously longer. The eyes have begun to give me nightmares. I sleep with my door locked but that’s what I have always done since the time I was five. The cat’s appetite has begun to alter. It’s now eating things I consider vastly inedible. We actually made long eye contact for the first time in ages as it delectfully chewed up sofa stuffing it had ripped out of the guts of the poor piece of furniture given me by my surveyor. Later that same night, I saw the cat slipping out of a window that someone had opened in the night at the back of my house. This is an indoor cat. But I realize it’s getting so bored with the house. The house is shrinking to that cat. Maybe it’s been getting out of the house and getting into something for some time, some sort of toxic chemical, some waste dump site. It must come home before daylight. I hear its rasping breathing under things.

I noticed it trying to talk one night. This disturbed me no end. It used to be the usual caterwauls but the sounds were being battered into human shapes. I think I heard words. Or my name. Maybe I heard it tryng to say my name. I don’t know how much longer I can…

4.

Someone came about the cat. Some do-gooder had apparently cast the first stone and turned me in for alleged cruelty. Well, I invited that woman with the clipboard in. I pointed in the direction I had last seen the cat and away she went.

I heard the screams and didn’t even bother to go help her. 

I let her crawl right out the front door.

I’m not even returning her clipboard. I’m keeping it. It’s a bloody mess anyway. I’m sure she doesn’t want it back.

5. 

I owed it the freedom. So I got rid of the thing. I drove South all night. I hated putting it in the trunk. Especially because it can use actual words now. I hated hearing the things it was saying about my childhood before I slammed the trunk shut.

But that’s that.

When I let it go it was in a sort of Everglades. Or Everglade. Is there a singular and plural? I think it was that. It wasn’t Florida though. I couldn’t drive that far with my back. 

I hate to admit that I cried on the drive home.

But there were some really sad songs on the radio. The ones they play at 3 a.m. unless you want to listen to brimstone preachers talking about the Clintons in UFOS and microchips in government cheese. 

6. 

I should have saved soime photos of the cat. Because the stories people are telling about me now are just horrible. Horrendous.

But you know the lady from the Judgment Club never pressed charges. How could she? Against my cat? I didn’t get involved at all. I just stood by the front door the entire time. She wanted to go snooping. Well, how did that work out for her? 

When they came for the cat, I told them it ran away.

I wish I had just a few photos.

For science’s sake. And because it’s not like there’s no good memories.

I leave the window at the rear of the house open late nights.

But that’s just wishful thinking. 

That cat’s probably in a bar by now. Fitting right in. It is the South, after all. 

That cat’s probably married and shit-talking stories about me.

I don’t care what it does with its nine lives.

I should have charged it rent.