Me, You and the Cats

“Come in David.” I had to repeat for the third time, willing my dormant vocal cords to jump into action.

“You…,” he hesitated, “you know my name?”

“I know a lot of things!” I said, opening the door just a crack. Opening the door during the day was an adventure in its own right. I only opened it at night to bring in packages or take out trash.

David tried to wedge himself in, inadvertently pushing the door inward with his little belly and I found myself simultaneously letting him and pushing him out. Nobody had been inside my house since 2003. But I could not watch David wander the streets with tears in his famished eyes one more day.

“WOOOOW!” the boy’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets as soon as he stepped into the hallway. That was the exact reason why I did not let anyone step into my house.

“This is AMAZING!” he gasped again.

“It’s just stuff…” I was eager not to talk about all of my precious things. My sister Linda, who must be dead now, warned that I was going to suffocate and die under “the mounds of chaos”. But I loved, nay needed, each one of them. And when she finally called me a hoarder I quietly asked her to leave and we never spoke again. That was in 1999. I am no hoarder. Hoarders are dirty and collect junk. Empty plastic bags, empty bean cans and pizza boxes. I took my trash out every night and my toilets and floors were spotless, despite everything I own. And the cats.

My last two friends said something along the same lines after that and the last I have seen of them was in 2023. Maria is certainly dead. She hated cats, but Diane should still be alive. She loved cats.

“Is that a real peacock feather?”

“Yes, David. Are you hungry?”

He looked at me with his big brown eyes. What a stupid question that was! Of course he was hungry. After eight days of being alone at home, he must have eaten whatever was left in the fridge and the pantry.

“You still have food?” He asked, not quite believing I could.

“Yes, I do. Follow me. Be careful not to knock anything over!”

He stood in front of the Darabuka and the Oud perched on top of it. “These are musical instruments, right?”

“Yes. Are you hungry or what?” I was hoping he would eat whatever it was he wanted and leave. I wanted to go back to my cats, my book and my cup of tea which was no doubt getting cold.

“Are these jewels in that guitar thingy?” he chirped.

“It’s called mother-of-pearl,” dear mother of God! “And that ‘guitar thingy’ is called an ‘Oud’. It’s what they play music on in Damascus. My husband and I bought it in 1981.”

“It’s so shiny and pretty!” his tummy grumbled audibly, but he did not move.

“So, are you no longer hungry?” I was nearing the end of my tether.

“Yes, yes!” He tore his eyes away from the instrument corner and followed me to the kitchen.

Jellybean followed us in and circled his leg. She is my most trusting cat. The others were more like me.

“Wooooow!” The kitchen got the same reaction out of David. It struck me as funny how I had gotten so used to all of my things that I stopped noticing them or the sheer space they occupied.

“When was the last time you ate?” I tried to distract him from asking me about the cast iron mangle clothes wringer or the Rayburn solid fuel stove.

“Two days ago,” he said sheepishly, “I found the last can of beans. I hate beans, but I was so hungry.”

“That was all you ate all day?” My heart felt a pang of guilt. I had wanted to call him in for three days now, but I could not bring myself to talk to anyone, let alone let them in.

Dustball sauntered in, yawning and stretching. She saw David and turned back out as if she had just forgotten something in the living room.

“Yeah, my mom didn’t have much in the pantry…”

To that I said nothing. I had always wondered if that woman ever cooked or had something decent to feed that poor kid other than peanut butter and jelly on crackers and toast. I could see right into their kitchen if I stood in my upstairs bathroom. In a way, it was not such a bad loss that she vanished.

I reached into the cupboard and got some pasta and put it in a pot on the stove to boil. The electricity had been back since Tuesday and that was such a relief. My Rayburn stove was just something I kept from my grandmother’s house. It wasn’t working of course and for the first few days after the Vanishing, I too survived on beans and hummus with olive oil and dry toast. The shops would take a while to open again.

“Have you been watching the news on the television?” I said while the water started to warm up.

“Where? Are the televisions working again?” his brown eyes twinkled.

“Don’t get too excited,” I had to smile at the simple joys of ten-year-old boys. “It’s mostly news coverage and political debates about what to do next.”

“Will my mother come back?” He asked, his lip trembling.

Oh dear. The kid had no idea.

“Not unless she was cuddling with a cat!”

“What?” his eyes narrowed. “What have cats got to do with this?”

I took a deep breath. That was NOT how I had planned on spending my evening. I thought I was going to offer him something to eat and he would be on his merry way. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess! I braced myself for tears and screams. I am so bad at this. Ted had been my social crutch, as he kept reminding me.

“Look David. You're old enough, so I’m going to come right out with it! Your mother, along with most of humanity, is… gone. Poof!”

It was like his eyes just were waiting for that poof to let the floodgates open. Hearty Heather–I had changed her name to that from Kitty because she always knew when someone needed comforting–rushed from under the kitchen table and perched on his feet, looking up at him with misty eyes, as if completely understanding his first wave of grieving realization.

“Cats…?” He mumbled with a mouth full of sad saliva, “What…?”

“Oh, today they said on the news that it seems that cats have a special enzyme or something like that, which prevented whoever was in contact with them from disappearing.”

Eyes still red and mouth still open, David stopped crying for a few beats.

“Whahh?” he mumbled.

“Yep. It’s the strangest thing!” Not that I cared or it made any difference to me. The whole world had been practically dead to me since Ted died. If anything, I had to worry about fewer people knocking on my door or trying to sell me something over the phone.

David sat on the kitchen tiles and buried his face between his knees, and Hearty Heather found a way to squeeze herself into the triangle behind his calves. I pulled a stool from under the table, careful not to knock any of the sets of china over, and looked down at his brown hair, his small body convulsing softly. My eyes welled. How did I expose my heart like this after all these years?

So far, watching the news and hearing about all the people who disappeared all over the world had meant nothing more than the Covid or Gaza death count. Now, however, thinking of little David and all the other little boys and girls and all the women who lost their Teds, my heart ached like someone had clamped an iron fist around it.

The pasta was boiling and I didn’t want to risk my non-perishables going to waste. Sharing them with a boy now alone in the world was one thing, but letting them go to waste was another.

“Get up David,” I whispered, “we will figure it out! Who knows? There might even be a way for those who disappeared to come back!”

He looked up at me and so did Hearty Heather, as if she too had been infected with that tiny fib of hope.

I hated lying to the poor soul, but in a way, it was my fault I told him everything so bluntly.

I got up to drain the pasta and asked him over my shoulder, “What were you doing when… it happened?”

“When the whole world stopped, you mean?” He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his striped shirt.

“Yes, when the whole world stopped,” I was happy he introduced the euphemism. CNN people were calling it “The Great Vanish”, but people on Reddit were calling it the Catnish. Someone on the “Meow Subreddit” jokingly called it the Great Catsby, but I found that crude and stupid. I’m not going to lie; knowing that every single person on the planet today was a cat person brought me great comfort. I was no longer THE cat lady, but the idea that from every household only one or few (depending on the amount of cats they owned) survived was a major shock. The world as we knew it was over and nobody grasped just what the future could look like yet.

“I was playing with your cat on the street,” he replied, “that one!” He pointed at my Persian cat, Minka. I was surprised because she was the most snobbish of them all. She doesn’t even cuddle with me or let me pet her. I had to order the most expensive cat food for her and she barely acknowledged my existence.

I eyed him suspiciously and he flinched.

“Playing with her?” I pressed, putting the tomato sauce jar on the counter.

“I swear I didn’t hurt her!” he stuttered, “look at her!”

She continued purring in her sleep.

“Well, her name is Minka. Minka saved your life, just so you know,” I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell I was glad she did.

“I know.” He said quietly.

We took our steaming plates to the living room. I had to move some Venetian masks and music s from the other side of the couch so the sweet child didn’t have to sit on the floor. We sat down and nestled our plates on our laps while I turned on the TV. A news presenter who looked more like me than Erin Burnett came on and recounted all the disastrous repercussions of The Great Vanish. How the fire department was down to one per cent of its original size across the nation and dogs stuck indoors had to be rescued by cat owning civilians, and how the electricity grid wasn’t going to be operating for much longer because not enough employees were there to make that happen and how some supermarkets were begging people to come and save their perishable foodstuffs before they all went bad.

The last item of the news was the most depressing, however. Scientists said that Mother Nature might have devised all of this so she could breathe and recover. The saving cat enzyme might have just been a temporary glitch which might be corrected soon. The middle-aged cat-lady-turned-news-anchor started sniffling as she added, “So if you have surviving neighbors or you know someone nearby, hold them tight and wait.”

David grabbed the remote control and immediately turned off the TV.

He turned to me and asked, “Is your bed big enough for me and Minka?”

I sighed and whispered, “And all the rest of them.”

And then we ate.