Monsters

Stephanie rubbed her eyes as her cat meowed next to her ear. She rolled over with a grunt, but eventually allowed Dusty to compel her out of bed and into her apartment’s small kitchen.

Dusty twined around her legs as she walked, but he’d done this more times than she could count, so she no longer stumbled over him. She smoothed a hand over his grey coat as she reached into the cabinet to pull out a can of his wet food.

As Dusty ate the food she placed in front of him, Stephanie couldn’t help but recall when she brought him home and got to feed him for the first time. She’d found him on the streets—specifically, trapped in a box left in the alleyway next to her apartment building. The box had been sealed shut, and the only thing that alerted her that there might be something inside was the erratic jerking of the cardboard.

When she tore open the box, it was to the sight of the most emaciated cat she’d ever seen with scrapes littered across his tiny frame. It broke her heart seeing such kind eyes on a creature so horribly mistreated. She held her fingers out for him to sniff, and his wet nose tickled the tips as he meowed morosely.

Cats were never Stephanie’s favorite animal, but for some reason, she felt compelled to take him into her apartment and buy every kind of cat food she could afford on her meagre budget instead of taking him to the shelter. The older cats were always the last to leave the shelter, if they ever did, and she could tell by looking at him that Dusty was an older cat. An older cat that was missing a leg at that. Stephanie knew what it felt like to be the older kid waiting to be adopted but knowing it would never happen.

So, that first day, she sat down on the floor with Dusty and ate a plate of burnt scrambled eggs as he devoured the kitty kibble she placed in front of him. He sniffed at her eggs, too, but Stephanie had no idea if cats could eat eggs, so she pulled the plate away. Better safe than sorry.

Now, after three years of living with Dusty, she knew which food was better for him and could cook a plate of scrambled eggs without scorching them to the pan. It became her morning routine: bring out Dusty’s food, cook herself some eggs, and sit crosslegged on the floor as they ate together in the peaceful silence of the morning.

Occasionally, the upstairs neighbors would decide to get up early and thump around like there was no one else in the building. She and Dusty would turn their heads to the ceiling, then look at each other, sharing a secret disdain for the loud stomping even though they were already awake.

After she finished her eggs and washed up her cutlery, Stephanie made her way to the couch and let Dusty burrow into her side as she watched TV and worked from home on her laptop. Often, Dusty would walk across her keyboard, bringing forth an amalgamation of letters onto her screen. Every time, she would sigh, but scratch behind his torn ear indulgingly. It was never truly a bother.

“Aren’t you a naughty little kitty,” she cooed, and he meowed with a smug look on his face.

Dusty had the biggest personality she’d ever seen. He demanded cuddles, but got up and ran around the apartment seconds later as fast as he could on three legs. Sometimes, he would stumble and pout at the spot where his fourth leg used to be like it was the cause of every problem in his life. Whoever told her cats were cold, indifferent creatures was a liar. Stephanie thinks it might have been the headmistress of her orphanage.

It was cold and rainy one night when one of the other orphans snuck a kitten in. The boy was only seven—most of the children who lived there were under ten, all except for Stephanie. The kitten was soaked to the bone, shivering, and hissed at anyone who got close to it. Obviously, every child in the orphanage was enamoured by it, and crowded around it like it was a carnival attraction. Stephanie hadn’t cared at the time, too caught up in her own misery at wondering what she was going to do for the rest of her life when she aged out of the place.

The kitten was found not long after it was brought in, when it scratched a girl and she ran off crying to tell an adult. The headmistress scolded the boy, telling him that wild animals were dangerous and not to be brought into a civilised place like the orphanage. She threw the kitten out into the night, slammed the door, and didn’t look back.

Stephanie still wondered what happened to that cat sometimes. It probably got eaten by something bigger than it. Or, maybe it defied the odds and survived. Sometimes, Stephanie didn’t know which option was crueller. Survival might have meant fighting for food or being kicked by humans as they passed. Or it might have meant stumbling across a loving family who nurtured and loved it like one of their own until it passed.

Dusty had the misfortune of being picked up by a cruel household before Stephanie. No kind person would have left a starving cat covered in harsh scrapes and bruises trapped in a box. In her mind, those people were faceless creatures molded from shadows with sharp claws. Like the monsters that children imagine under their beds. Sometimes, they took the form of Stephanie’s old headmistress. They were evil shaped in a way that she could understand even if she didn’t know who they were.

Finding Dusty that way was an awful way to meet her best friend, but the past wasn’t something to dwell on no matter how much time Stephanie spent dwelling on it regardless. They were together now—two perfectly matched peas in an oddly shaped pod.