Felines

Seventeen cats lived in Larry’s basement. Scraggled, abused, bones jutting out like skeletal limbs from a grave. The stench was incredible. Stale urine, oozing wounds and uncontrollable defecations splattered across a raggedy carpet. Larry was obsessed with these gangly misfits. Hs wife however, was not.

Cecile stretched each long, pale arm for fifteen seconds, brushed out of bed, plodded exactly ten steps to the washroom and selected the pink toothbrush, bristles pointy and clean. She ran the tap for three seconds, extracted one centimeter of toothpaste from a Crest’s Extra Whitening Strength tube and brushed. Two circular motions for each tooth, clockwise, then counterclockwise, flicked away from the gum surface, her teeth bleached pearls, the product of tri-daily washes. Nails filed, hair combed, face exfoliated, cleansed and moisturized, eyebrows plucked and forty-five minutes later Cecile emerged. Larry’s congested snores and the steady tick, tick, tick of the alarm filled the spacious and bare bedroom. Cecile had suffered from a frenzy the previous night so Larry’s shirts were again starched and creased, the carpet vacuumed in horizontal and vertical lines and drawers dusted so not one particle stuck to their surface. The previous evening, Larry had not returned at his usual time, although recently Cecile struggled with what his “normal” time was. It used to be eight, but by September the second hand had often crept to nine, November had been the jump to ten, December slipped to eleven. January had been a steady twelve o’clock until last night’s three in the morning entrance. She swore it was purposeful, he knew her agony in variation, in waiting, in change. The cats were a battle enough; could he not spare her this one anxiety?

He rolled over, hair as disheveled as his stray’s matted fur. “Jesus Cecile, what are you doing? It’s not nice to wake up to your wife carving craters into your face. Why are you staring at me like that?”

Cecile shifted from her serious stance and retreated, “I’m so sorry, I…I was just worried about you… last night. You know, it was late for you.”

“God dammit Cecile, I am not your child, I’m your husband. I don’t need a f*ing curfew. I didn’t want to wake up to this,” he moaned. “Ughh Cecile why do you always blow things so out of proportion?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was just worried… that’s all. I’m so sorry you have to work so much. It must be terribly distressing. I will go make you breakfast.”

“Don’t. I have the cats to deal with. Brought in a new one last night, which, if you must know, was why I was late. Her name is Annie, beautiful little creature. Wait, please tell me you didn’t stay up till three waiting for me?”

“ No of course not.” Cecile replied too quickly. They both knew it was a lie. Too agitated to talk with Cecile, Larry slugged out of bed and shuffled to the washroom, firmly closing the door behind him.

This Saturday carried on in the painfully routine way of all the Saturdays before it. Cecile prepared two eggs, a slice of toast with one tablespoon of peanut butter, three crispy pieces of bacon, a cup of black coffee and a glass of organic orange juice. Larry appeared, still unshaven with an unfortunate cap of bed head. Cecile smiled weakly; Larry reciprocated with an annoyed huff, “Why is it so goddamn cold in the kitchen?”

“You told me you like the window open in the morning. It helps you wake up.”

“Well I don’t want to sit in the Arctic either! Goodness woman, does moderation totally evade you? Why must everything be so extreme?”

“I really didn’t mean to make it extreme; I was just doing what you asked” Cecile whispered.

“Whatever, this breakfast is cold. I’m done, going to work in the basement. Don’t bother me until supper.”

Larry pushed out from the chair, leaving his picked over plate on the table, and strode down to the basement. “ Ahh my kittens. Come now who’s hungry, you gorgeous little things? What is this here…. Ohh fish stew! You’re beautiful, all so beautiful.” Larry fawned over the cats; pampered them with lavish soaps and aromatic lotions; he took Annie up in his arms to examine the sore patch on her tiny head. Red bumps boiled behind her ears and pale skin was exposed through patchy fur. Larry prepared the antibiotic needle and submerged its tip into the soft spot at the nape of Annie’s neck. He then grabbed one of the many tubes of medicated cat lotions and gingerly massaged Annie’s peeling ears. He spent thirty minutes on each of his precious kittens: Jessica, Hannah, Amy, Tess, Alexa, Karen, Sierra, Bridgette, Chelsea, Abby, Kristen, Meredith, Ashley, Kate, Michelle and Chloe all followed; bathed, pampered and treated for their varying ailments.


Larry, at first glance, was entrepreneurial, running his multi-purpose cat lab and healing center. Monday through Sunday he roamed the polluted back alley of Yonge and Wellesley, a parking lot of littered garbage bins. It was among this meagre enclosure Larry found his patients. Speckled felines, stripped of bodily insulation, limping, biting, emaciated. After his morning with the kittens, less enjoyable due to the tense hush of Cecile, Larry strolled into the city’s mud-caked winter.

“So goddamn cold,” he muttered aloud. Larry slumped through the backstreets near Wellesley, the alleged stray neighbourhood and headed to the back lot of Martin’s Drugmart. Furtively, he peeked a shady eye from behind his hood to admire Amarya’s, a seemingly innocuous bar. Tan limbs, soft black hair, gleaming skin; images flashed through Larry’s late afternoon daydream. He slowed his pace and gave a gruff knock to the supply door at the back of the bar. A tall women, blonde with a figure so slim she looked as fragile as air blown glass, came to answer. Bundled for the winter, a scarf hung from her neck, ragged and tattered; jacket covered in balls of lint and her face as forlorn as the apparel she wore.

“Larry,” the girl moaned in a painful whisper.
“You’re an awfully chipper one.”
“It’s supposed to be my day off.”
“Well you’re in for a treat.”
“Hah. Not with you, creepy cat man. Just because you knock on the back door, you think you’re fooling everyone.”
“Well, are you going to take me to the motel or what?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Ahah, I love you girls, just dripping with humour.”
The blonde brushed past him, shuttering from the frigid wind that whipped her bare legs. She tilted her head back to Larry, “ Hurry up, I’m f*ing freezing.”
“Just admiring you from the back is all.”
“Disgusting creep.”

Larry slid his cold cracked hand around her waist, his skin like an extinct beast, scaly and purple. He hissed into her hair, his tongue glazing the lobe of her ear, “I know you don’t mean it, sweetheart. You love me. They all do.” He held his grip steady on her hip as they climbed the rusted stairs to the third floor of the motel. She reflected his repulsiveness in a menacing stare. Authoritative, slimy, disturbed man.

An hour later the duo reappeared. Larry reeked with body odour, damp sideburns moist with sweat. The blonde girl’s mascara drew squiggly lines down from her lower eyelashes. She refused to walk with Larry and strode four steps in front of him back across the grungy lot. She flung upon the supply door, threw off her scarf and tried to shake away the internal dirt she felt crawling through her system. “Garret,” she barked, and then stomped down dark steps.

A middle-aged man, cigarette in mouth and sporting the same bed head as Larry, rushed to the door. “Jesus Larry, you look like you tore the poor girl apart.”
“Hey I’m the one doing you the favour. The cat exchange was your idea.”
“Okay well I have a special case today. She’s an adorable one, so you better not screw her up.”
From the adjoining room Garret scooped up a squirming matt. “There’s something wrong with her. She’s losing fur and not eating anything. You fix her, and I’ll get you a real good one for next time.“
“Deal.” Larry cradled the furry ball and disappeared, once again, across the lot.

Cecile watched from the kitchen window, waiting for her husband to return. She paced the tiled floor, one step in each box, ten steps across, pivot, ten steps back. She racked her brain. What is it? I’m doing everything right. I give him space, I do his laundry, his cooking, his cleaning. Even fill the those wretched feeding bowls for his miserable kittens. Why do I get nothing back? He discards me like a wet towel, left in his messy way on the bathroom floor. He knows I struggle with cleanliness, but is that such a horrible downfall, does it warrant such dismissal?

Paranoid to a new degree, Cecile stepped out of her pacing routine and rummaged through the front desk. Searching, for what? Cecile didn’t quite know herself. Just searching. A number, card, receipt, pen, any detail to explain her husband’s complete detachment. She was fuelled by an uncontrollable urge, her typical OCD habits exploding. Every surface of the house was scathed: the front hall closet, Larry’s sock drawer, the linen cupboard, laundry room, storage attic…. nothing. Not a scrap out of place. But Cecile knew the search was more a method of procrastination. She cringed, now confronted with the reality she didn’t want to face. The answer lay in the basement.

Cecile had never entered the deep hole in the entirety of time she had lived at 47 Clifton. It was a germ invested dungeon, seeping in bacteria and filth, Cecile’s deepest terror tangible beneath her feet. She trembled. Hairs rose on her arm like charged spikes atop an electric fence. Sweat pooled at the bottom of her neck, trickling a hot icy drop down her tensed back. She loomed at the top of the stairs, low purrs flowing up like deranged calls of the tortured.

“Now or never.” Cecile plunged down the stairs, terror pumped adrenaline through her small frame. The cats were piled on top of each other in the far right corner, abused raggedy annes in a haphazard heap. Larry’s desk was stationed against the left wall, perched next to an open steel cabinet filled with needles, ointment and pills. Cecile had fallen, once again, into her frenzied state. She felt the room pulse, her own horrified heart beat engulfing every particle of space. She raced through the piles of folders and papers atop the desk: medical notes, treatment plans, hypothesized diagnoses, drug administration records, feeding schedules and an anatomical drawing of the female cat’s digestive system. She threw open the left hand drawer: a filing cabinet, each section labelled with a name, Annie, Jessica, Hannah, seventeen distinct envelopes. She pulled out Chelsea’s folder and tore open the cover.

A deafening shriek exploded from the depths of 47 Clifton. Cecile had fallen onto the floor. Strewn across the carpet lay over a hundred photos. A women, thick black hair, long browned limbs, exposed, a horrid vulnerability seeping from every molecule of her body. Green eyes flashed, nearly blinding Cecile with their pain. In a trance, Cecile pulled file after file out of her husband’s left hand drawer. Seventeen different women. Seventeen hundred pictures. Seventeen miserable cats.