The Cat's Meow

Amy should have known from the start that Bulldozer wasn’t an ordinary cat.

For one thing, he was Round and Large. The average house cat weighed far less than Bulldozer’s twenty pounds. Hell, most of the cats at the shelter where Amy found Bulldozer were dwarfed by his bulk. She knew it wasn’t healthy for him to be so large, but his Roundness multiplied the usual cuteness that came with “cat” by about a hundred, in her estimation.

Yes, Bulldozer was adorable. And so chill, despite his name! He waddled through the shelter after Amy, ignoring the other cats, never making a sound. When she stopped to talk with a shelter volunteer, Bulldozer just flopped next to the giant communal food bowl and took a few bites. Another cat swatted at him and he just ignored it. Maybe it was just because the food was more interesting for him (clearly, it was one of his chief interests) and he couldn’t be bothered by another cat’s sassiness, but Amy didn’t care about the reason. She needed a companion–living alone was getting monotonous–and cats were way less work than dogs while still offering companionship. She could see it already–she would exercise Bulldozer and limit his diet, get him back to a healthy weight, and they would spend evenings on the couch together, watching Love Is Blind or some other trash TV.

Amy never suspected that as soon as she got Bulldozer into a carrier and lugged him into her car, he would start screaming. Well, meowing, but Loudly. Roughly every five seconds. And in between he would try to burrow out of the carrier. Of course, this effort was in vain, but that didn’t stop him from scrabbling at the plastic and yelling “MIAO!” at the top of his little kitty lungs for the entire drive across town to Amy’s one-bedroom apartment.

“It’s okay, honey. We’re almost there,” Amy tried to soothe him, but Bulldozer refused to be soothed. He Miaoed some more as she parked the car and hefted his carrier up two flights of stairs to the third floor and then let them into her apartment. He continued to scream as he explored the new space, yelling into every corner of the room. Once she had his litterbox set up, he took a dump in it while making direct eye contact with Amy and Miaoing at the top of his lungs.

“Maybe I’ve made a mistake,” Amy muttered to herself. She put on some soothing classical music through a bluetooth speaker in the corner and then went to draw herself a hot bath. Listening to Bulldozer yell was stressing her out.

She must have left the door ajar, because just as she was undressing in the bathroom, Bulldozer plowed it open and glared at her imperiously.

“No wonder they gave you that name,” she remarked.

“MIAO!” Bulldozer replied.

Amy shooed him out of the bathroom and made sure the door latched this time, then put in her concert earplugs and lit a lavender-scented candle. Whether Bulldozer liked it or not, she was going to relax. Maybe by the time she finished her bath, he would be done screaming and be ready to settle in.

***~O~***

Bulldozer did, in fact, stop screaming and start acting like a more normal cat by the time Amy finished her bath. Over the next few days, they settled into a routine. Amy had an automatic feeder set up to give him kibble in the morning for breakfast, and she gave him some wet food every night while she had her own dinner. She made sure that he had plenty of toys plus a cat tree and a kitty treadmill to entertain himself while she was at work every day, although she suspected that he spent most of his time napping in sunbeams around the apartment. Bulldozer always greeted her at the door when she got home, kind of like a dog, except once he saw her he’d turn around and stalk away like he wasn’t actually happy to see her. But once they’d had dinner and she settled on the couch, Bulldozer would always join her. At first he sat at the other end of the couch; after a few days, he’d claimed the spot next to hers; and after a week and a half, Bulldozer climbed onto Amy’s lap for the first time. She pet him tentatively, hoping not to ruin it, and was rewarded when he relaxed and started purring like a furry chainsaw. Amy grinned to herself. This was exactly what she’d wanted when she decided to adopt a cat.

What she hadn’t wanted, or expected, or even thought was a possibility, was what happened the very next day.

Amy came home from work early, eager to order some Chinese takeout and read her new book in her cozy egg chair on the balcony.

“Bulldozer, I’m home!” she called as she pushed the apartment door open, and then she screamed.

An incredibly handsome man–chiseled jaw, strong features, dark eyes, slightly mussed dark brown hair–in an immaculately tailored blue suit sat at her kitchen table as though he belonged there, working on a sleek black laptop.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?!” Amy demanded, fumbling in her purse for her pepper spray.

The man looked up from his laptop with an imperious glare that reminded her of Bulldozer.

“I swear to God, if you’ve hurt my cat–”

“Amy, please calm down,” the man entreated her.

“How the fuck do you know my name?! How did you get in here?!”

Being asked or told to calm down rarely, if ever, resulted in Amy actually calming down. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I live here,” the man replied, rising from the table with feline grace.

“I beg your pardon–”

“Perhaps it will be easier if I just show you,” he sighed, and then he fell forward and suddenly wasn’t a man anymore but Bulldozer, waddling towards her with a MIAO that sounded almost like “See?”

Amy barely made it into the apartment and closed the door before she passed out from shock.

***~O~***

When she came to, Amy was lying on her bed. The handsome man in the suit was sitting next to her bed in one of her kitchen chairs, watching her with concern.

“Oh good. You’re awake,” he said in a voice like velvet. Warmth unspooled in Amy’s midsection, but she ignored it and pushed herself up to a sitting position.

“What… How…?” she asked, unable to put her hundreds of questions into better words.

“How am I also your cat?”

She nodded.

“It’s kind of a long story. We’ll call it a family curse. We’re all incredibly good-looking, talented at business, and cursed to spend 22 hours a day as house cats.”

“And incredibly humble,” Amy added under her breath.

“We get to pick which 2 hours per day we get to be human,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “My time for today is almost up. So whatever questions you have–”

“What should I call you?”

He stopped and a flicker of surprise crossed his face before morphing into a smile.

“I kind of like Bulldozer, honestly. The shelter could have picked a worse name. But my real name is Dominic.”

“Dominic,” Amy repeated, looking him over again. The name suited him, she decided.

And then she remembered that he’d seen her naked as a cat, that he’d barged in on her in the bathroom at least half a dozen times, and her face heated with embarrassment and rage.

“Do you…keep human awareness…as a house cat?”

“Would it bother you if I did?” A hint of a smirk played about his lips and a twinkle of mischief sparkled in his dark brown eyes.

Amy’s blush deepened. “We’re going to have to set some ground rules, then. About the bathroom. And privacy in general.”

“I disagree.”

Amy wanted to argue with him, but there was an intensity in his expression that kept her tongue-tied.

“There’s another thing about the curse,” he continued, his eyes never leaving hers. The constant eye contact was unnerving, but Amy was powerless to look away. “We each have a fated mate somewhere in the world, one person we’re destined to be with. And you–”

“Don’t say it,” Amy interrupted. Her heart pounded like it was trying to escape her ribcage. This can’t be real, she told herself. This sort of thing only happens in trashy romance novels. I must be dreaming–

“Whether I say it or not, it’s still true.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but a funny look came across his face and then he turned into Bulldozer again, sitting on the chair with his tail wrapped around his feet, looking at Amy expectantly.

“Miao?” he said and then batted at her smart watch. Amy glanced at it: 6:27pm.

“I suppose I am late to feed you,” she muttered. Her head was pounding. Nothing made sense anymore. But Bulldozer–Dominic?–hopped off the chair and took a few steps toward the kitchen, then turned and Miaoed at her again, insistent.

If he turned into a human in front of her again, she’d have to ask some of the thousands of questions she still had, like whether cat food tasted good to him in this form and how the fuck she was supposed to be in a relationship with a guy who spent most of his time as a house cat, napping and licking his own butthole. For now, though, her options were to continue like nothing had changed or to check herself into an insane asylum.

With a sigh, Amy got up from the bed and followed Bulldozer into the kitchen, dragging the chair behind her.