Paws and Effect Pt. 1

Tai found the cat behind the art building at dusk, wedged between the dumpster and the crumbling brick wall where the art kids left broken canvases. It was late October and the wind was already mean. The cat was white, or it was supposed to be white, but its fur was matted grey with alley dust, a few dead leaves stuck to its tail, and one ear had a little notch in it like someone had tried to clip it and missed. It was small. Starved small. Big yellow eyes too big for its head, bones under fur, tail puffed to three times its size. Tai crouched. She was wearing her big patched coat that had paint on the cuffs and her hair was coming out of its bun, her pointy elf-like ears red from cold. "Oh," she whispered. "Hi. You are having a very, very bad day." The cat hissed. It was a serious hiss, feral and sharp, the kind that says I will fight you and I will lose but I will still try. Tai took this as an invitation to have a conversation. "I get it," she said, settling her knees into the wet leaves. She didn't reach out. She knew better than to reach. "Everything out here is loud and cold and people are mean. I have a seminar room like that. Do you want to come home with me? It's warm. We have a heater that makes a weird noise but it's warm. And we have blankets that smell like acrylic and a roommate who pretends she doesn't like things but actually does." The cat pressed flatter against the wall. Tai opened her tote bag. Inside was a smashed granola bar, charcoal pencils, a half finished sketchbook, and a pair of gloves with the fingers cut off. She broke the granola bar into crumbs and tossed them gently, not too close. "I will just sit here," she said. "You can eat if you want. No pressure. Big life decisions shouldn't be rushed. Vix says I rush all my big life decisions and she's right but this is different. This is important." It took twenty seven minutes by Tai's phone clock. The cat crept forward, one paw, then another, sniffed the crumbs, ate them like it hadn't eaten in days, then retreated. Tai broke the rest of the bar and did it again. On the third time, the cat sniffed the edge of her tote bag. Tai held her breath. Then, with the kind of slow, careful movement she used when moving a wet watercolor, she scooped the bag, cat and crumbs and all, up onto her lap. The cat froze, then hissed, then went completely still, as if stillness would make it invisible. Tai walked home like that, tote bag clutched to her chest, talking softly the whole way. "I think I'll call you Raven," she told the bag. "Because you are dark and mysterious and you have seen things. Even though you are white. It's ironic. Vix loves irony. She is going to pretend to be mad but she is secretly going to love you. She loves angry things." The apartment was empty when she got there. Vix was at her seminar on moral luck. Tai set the tote bag down in the bathroom, closed the door, and started improvising with the confidence of someone who had never owned a cat. She had no litter box. She had a Nike shoebox from last month. She had no cat litter. She had sand from the courtyard of the art building, because the sculpture kids used it. She dumped half the sandbox into the shoebox and put it in the corner, proud of her ingenuity. She had no cat bowls. She had Vix's bowls. The two good ones. Deep black ceramic bowls Vix had made in her pottery elective, glazed so glossy you could see your reflection, the ones Vix used for ramen and guarded like treasure and told Tai never to put in the dishwasher. Tai filled one with the cheapest kibble from the corner store and one with water. She put them on the bathmat. She opened the tote bag and tipped it gently. Raven shot out, white blur, straight behind the toilet, tail thumping against the pipe. Vix got home at six. She noticed things in the order that made her most annoyed. First, the smell. Wet sand and faint pee and cheap kibble and fear. Second, the bathroom door closed. Tai never closed the bathroom door unless she was dyeing her hair again. Third, a sound. A tiny, furious, feral mrrow from behind that door, and then Tai's voice, high and fake casual: "Welcome home! How was class! Did you learn about morality!" Vix put her bag down. She walked to the bathroom and opened the door. There was the shoebox, full of damp sand, already with one tiny paw print in it. There were her two best bowls, black and gleaming, full of kibble and water with a single white hair floating on top. Behind the toilet, two yellow eyes glared like headlights. Vix stared. "Tai," she said, in her quiet, dangerous, pre-lecture voice. Tai popped up from behind the door where she had been hiding. Leaf still in her messy red hair, ears pink. "Okay, before you get mad, can you get mad but also happy? Because we have a cat now." "Tai, what is in our bathroom." "That's Raven. She's white. She's feral. She's very brave. She was cold, Vix. Really, really cold. Like shivering cold." "Tai, that is a feral cat in a tote bag in our bathroom in a shoebox full of sand eating out of my good bowls." "I didn't have any other bowls," Tai said, ears drooping. "And I didn't have a litter box. And it was shivering. Like actual shivering. Look at her little face." She pointed. Raven was shivering. Small, filthy, furious, shivering, but also somehow still dignified. Vix looked at the cat. The cat looked at Vix. Vix sighed. It was the long sigh of someone who was angry about life in general but not about this specific thing. "You are getting her a real litter box tomorrow," Vix said. "Real bowls. And a vet. Today we had no plan, tomorrow we have a plan. And you are washing my bowls three times and then never touching them again." Tai lit up, canines showing, 5'3" of pure triumph. "So we can keep her?" "I didn't say that," Vix said. "I said real litter box. And take that leaf out of your hair." Raven hissed at both of them, impartial, still behind the toilet, but she had stopped shivering a little, warmed by the bathroom heater

Read in the app, leave a resonance, discover more stories.