Writing Cat [PG-13]

[Godelsensei]

When I was six years old, my family moved into a house in the city. The house wasn?t much to speak of, was just a normal house, with three bedrooms (one for me, one for my brother, and one for our parents), two bathrooms, and a nicely sized kitchen.
It had a backyard and a front yard, both of which were rather lacking in the way of grass, something that wasn?t helped by family?s always being busy. Sure, dad cut the lawn ever week or so (or told Tom?that?s my brother?s name?to, promising to pay him a few dollars for it, which he rarely did), but it was still forever scraggly, giving the impression that the occupants of the house were particularly well-off college students.
There were never any toys on the lawn or driveway, and my parents never really had much appreciation for sidewalk chalk drawings. We didn?t have many friends in the neighborhood, and had no dogs, so no one really seemed to know my brother and I (especially me?I wasn?t allowed outside by myself in the city) even existed.
I spent most of my time drawing pictures in chunky marker, then sticking them to the fridge, wondering if any one would grant them approval. They were either taken down in a matter of days or simply ignored.
Then, one day, some one had left the garage door open. I had snuck out of the house for a few minutes (with no intentions of leaving the property, mind you; I just felt like stepping out) and noticed this. Having been in the garage only a handful of times, and having never actually looked through the things that were in there, I decided it would be worth a look.
I dug through old badminton rackets and some stools and boxes full of old books and magazines. I found some bags full of clothes that might have been intended for the Salvation Army at some point in time and didn?t notice when I somehow sustained several splotches of bicycle grease, not only on my arms and hands, but on my face. Eventually, I found him.
He wasn?t a big man?was smaller than the six-year-old me, in fact?and didn?t really look like a man at all when you really looked at him. He had a pug nose and spindly arms and legs and was an unusual green colour. When I asked him what he was doing hiding behind my father?s tools, he stared up at me with large, unblinking yellow eyes, and then said, ?What are you doing here??
I told him this was my garage and not his and that it wasn?t his business.
?But it isn?t your garage?I haven?t seen you here before.?
?It?s my garage.? I pointed to the array of screwdrivers and saws and other things I had little understanding of how to use and when and pointed out that they were my father?s.
?So it is your father?s garage.?
?Yes. You?re not allowed to be here. If Mommy sees you here, she?ll be mad.? He seemed to consider this, and then asked if I would tell her he was there. It was my turn to consider, and then I responded with a simple, ?No. I like you. My brother said there were monsters and that they?d eat pull open my stomach and eat my bowels but I think you?re a very nice monster.?
He did something with his facial features that must have somehow constituted a smile, and said he thought he was a very nice monster, too, and that I was a very nice little girl.
?I?m not little. Mister Monster, what?s a bowel? I asked my Mommy and she said to tell my brother not to say bad things like that about them getting eaten.?
He seemed to ponder this for a while, and then said, ?I don?t know what a bowel is. I?m sorry. I?ve been sitting in this garage for such a long time, I don?t know what many things are any more.?
?Were you born here?? I was squatting now, so as to be at eye-level with him.
?I don?t know. I?m very old. How old are you??
?I?m six. My birthday is in three months.?
?Ahh? Yes, I think I might be six, too. Is six very old??
?My brother?s older. He?s twelve.? It never occurred to me to consider the age of my parents. Regardless, the little man seemed shocked by this and said that my brother must be very wise and asked if I would tell him a story.
?I don?t know many stories, Mister Monster.?
?I do.?
?Really?? He nodded and I, now utterly and irrevocably intrigued with him, sat down cross-legged in the dust and dirt.
?I know one story. About a cat.?
?A cat??
?Yes. Do you like cats?? I nodded and he said that he did, too. ?Well, this wasn?t an ordinary cat?what?s your name??
?Dolly.?
?Very pretty. Well, Dolly, you see, this cat could do things that no other cats could do.? I leaned forward, my eyes wide, anticipating his next words, unable to hide my curiosity as to just what was so special about this cat he seemed to know so much about. ?This cat could fly, Dolly.?
?I don?t believe that.? I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms. ?No cat can fly. It isn?t possible.?
?This cat could.?
?How??
?Why not??
?Because?because gravity.?
?What??
?Gravity. It?s this sticky stuff that the Earth is covered in and it keeps us from flying up into space.? He looked at me and said, in all seriousness, ?If gravity was real, Dolly, how could there be birds?? I stared at him for a few seconds, thinking about this. Birds could fly. That was what made them birds. If gravity kept everything stuck to the Earth, how could there be birds? The little man?s logic was impossible to counter, so I said nothing, just nodded my head obediently. ?Anyway, this cat. She could fly. She flew everywhere, and she saved babies who were in the top level of burning buildings, and she caught people?s umbrellas that flew away and gave them back, and she could do anything. She was like a super hero, just with whiskers.? Then, a sad expression came over the little man?s face. ?But she disappeared a long time ago, Dolly.?
?What happened to her??
?I don?t know.? We sat there, together, in the garage, among my father?s old tools and my mother?s old magazines, thinking about the cat. I imagined she had to be orange and very big. She would have long, proud whiskers and when she purred you could hear it ten kilometers away. Maybe farther.
Eventually, my mother came looking for me because it was time for dinner. I said good-bye to the little man and told him I would come back to see him tomorrow. My mother did not introduce herself to him, though he made an effort to be polite and to explain his being in the garage.
She didn?t notice, and instead told me not to get my new clothes dirty and that she wasn?t hand-washing my ruined shirt.
Dinner was spaghetti with meat sauce and it was very good, and my father said this to my mother, who said ?Hm.? No one said anything else for the rest of the meal, aside from my brother excusing himself on the premise that he had to finish his homework.
I didn?t believe he was actually going to do his homework, but I didn?t say anything.
That night, I asked my mother if cats could fly. She said no and asked who had told me they could. I said it was a little green man in our garage with big eyes who wasn?t a bad monster and who said he wouldn?t eat my bowels even though he didn?t really know what they were and then she told me not to make things up.
?Sure cats can fly.? My brother was standing in my doorway, but not for long, because my mother was telling him to go to bed and that she didn?t care if it was too early, he was still a growing boy who needed his sleep. He said he never got it anyway, but she didn?t listen.
The next morning, I asked him if it was true and if cats really could fly or if it was just the one cat. ?What are you talking about?? He looked at me with blue-black bags under his eyes that said he didn?t want to be awake right now and that his cereal didn?t taste all that good, and I didn?t ask him again.
But I still wondered. I wondered and wondered and wondered. Until my birthday, I wondered, and I would have asked the little man if he knew anything else about cats or any more stories but he never came back and then dad cleared out the garage and then he cleared out his dresser and his closet and took the car and my mother never really told me where he was going when I asked.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I saw it, crossing the road, big, orange, and thick-furred. Her eyes were green and she yawned before crossing the road, and I was suddenly reminded of the cat that had saved umbrellas. I wondered if it was true and if any cat could really fly and if this was the cat, since she did look just like her, and I stood up. I was about to run towards the cat and pat it on the head or rub its tummy when the car came by too fast.
It shouldn?t have been going that fast on a street where people lived; that much, I knew. The cat began to cross the street. The car didn?t slow down.
The cat flew through the air, a shrieking streak of orange and red, and all of a sudden there were more cats lying at the side of the road than had been hit by the car in the first place and I thought maybe I should get my mother, and so I did.
?Oh, the poor thing, and her kittens, too.? My mother looked very sad when she said that, but it turned out that was because the lawyer had just called her about something she and my father had been fighting over (my brother told me all of this), but right then I thought she really was sad because the cat had been hit by the car and she put her arm around me and I asked if she could help the cat.
?I can?t bring back dead things, Dolly.? Then, she got up and went back inside the house and I wondered if she had cared about the cat at all, or if she had just been pretending to make me feel better or if she thought she should feel sorry for the cat and that was why.
I stood outside, at the side of the road, on our scraggly lawn (growing scragglier), staring at the cat and her kittens, wondering if my mother would have let me keep one if they hadn?t been hit by the car, and it was then that I realized that anything could fly if you hit it hard enough and that the little green man with the yellow eyes had never existed in the first place and that my father wasn?t coming back and that magic wasn?t real and that the world was an unfair place.
Then, I turned around and went back inside, and I did not think of the flying cat again.
[COLOR=Gray]
[FONT=Courier New]I got the idea for this story after reading one of Sarah's posts in the Roadkill thread.

As for the little green man...I have no idea, aside from the fact that he's somewhat based on Skellig (however one might spell it).[/FONT][/COLOR]

[KarmaOfChaos]

[color=deeppink][size=1]That was very good, Godel! You did a nice job of foreshadowing throughout the entire story with a kind of dark 'something bad is going to happen' tone, although you never came out and said it until the very end.

For some reason, I'm intrigued by the brother. You'd don't see much of him, but you get the indication that he understands what's going on, and that's he's suffering a lot more because of it.

The only thing that seemed a little off was the ending. I like it as a short, poingnant part of the story, but it's so short that it comes off as rushed. As if you just wanted to finish the story at that point. But that's my only criticism.

Good stuff!

-Karma[/size][/color]

[MissWem]

[QUOTE=Godelsensei]
I stood outside, at the side of the road, on our scraggly lawn (growing scragglier), staring at the cat and her kittens, wondering if my mother would have let me keep one if they hadn?t been hit by the car, and it was then that I realized that anything could fly if you hit it hard enough and that the little green man with the yellow eyes had never existed in the first place and that my father wasn?t coming back and that magic wasn?t real and that the world was an unfair place.
Then, I turned around and went back inside, and I did not think of the flying cat again.[/QUOTE]
[COLOR=DarkRed]It's really good, I definitely like the low-key suspense. Although one thing my teacher had been anxious to point out to me when I do some creative writing was to use as few 'and' and 'that' in my writing. She says it weighs down the quality of the writing, dragging it down somewhat. I think in this case it's true.

Er..I dunno, I guess it's just that the ending feels suddenly abruptly tied up. You just closed every issue quite ultimately then there's not a lot left for the reader to consider. Maybe the 6yr old persona just seemed to lose authenticity. Aside from that the brother, he was an intriguing character..mucho agreement with KarmaofChaos ^__^[/COLOR]

[lea]

I think it is very good, cept the ending, because it was rushed, like already pointed out.

It was nice because it sounded like it was told from a little kids point of view, which made it more...believable. =P