Muse: A Cat's Story Read online

  Chapter 3

  Muse woke up, blinded by darkness, until her eyes adjusted so she could see. She was dry, curled up in a box in the alley, and she could hear rain pouring down on the streets and on roofs. With a sudden thought she wondered why she wasn't getting soaked, but when she looked up she realized that the eaves of the two buildings forming the alley overlapped each other, providing enough of a roof to keep the rain off. No wonder the boxes were so dry, she thought, and no wonder Contempt must come here to sleep. She looked around until she saw Contempt's mangy body flopped, asleep, on top of another box.

  It must be an hour or two until dawn, Muse thought, because those are the darkest hours. She laid her head down, listening to the drumming rain, contented by the stillness of everything, all rustlings that might have been heard drowned in the heaviness of rain.

  But as Muse lay quietly she realized, with growing uneasiness, that something was indeed moving; a barely perceptible padded step, a displaced shuffle of dust, a shadow slipping past her. Her muscles tensed, immediately alert, and her ears stood up high to catch any hint of sound.

  There it was again, a whisper of movement, and her ears flicked towards the sound. Still her body did not move. Softly came the pacing sound of something treading past her, turning around and pacing back, over and over again. Muse very slowly lifted her head, her entire body ready to spring, and looked into dark grey eyes that offered no reflection.

  It was another cat. His entire body was as gray and lusterless as his eyes, which eerily lacked any shine. He paused as his eyes met Muse's, and then continued pacing.

  What are you doing?

  The cat didn't break his steady stride but he inclined his head towards Muse. "Watching… you," he said in a low hollow voice.

  Watching me?

  He swiveled his head away from her with an odd, painful grimace before he answered. "Not so loud," he said, his quiet voice so hollow it seemed to echo. "I can hear you… for miles."

  You can hear me? Why are you watching me?

  The cat swung his stride away from Muse and gave her a wider berth as he paced back, holding his head away from her. "Quietly," he said, sounding exhausted, and nearly begging. "Quietly."

  Muse watched him walk until he had drawn closer again. She might have never known he was there, so quietly did he move in the darkness, so slowly did his feet seem to sink into the ground as he paced. She watched his soft padding in the blackness of the pre-dawn alley and tried to keep her thoughts soft.

  Why were you watching me? She formed the thought in her head as gently and quietly as she could, feeling a rush of sadness for this haunted, pained creature who seemed drawn to her, but whose mind was so vulnerable to her thoughts. She wondered if he could hear everyone's thoughts, even though no other creature, that she knew of, could communicate with their thoughts like she could. How horribly loud her thoughts must be to him, she thought, if he is this sensitive inside his own mind. How loud, and how constant, the world must be to him, if he is eternally barraged by every passing thought of every passing creature. How exhausted he must be.

  The cat closed his eyes for a moment and rolled his head again, towards her this time. "So… peaceful," he said.

  Peaceful?

  "Peaceful." His hollow voice slipped lower. "What I'd give for peacefulness, and the deep sleep of a kitten… like that."

  Muse wondered if she was right. His mind seemed so sensitive. Why else would he yearn for peace?

  Contempt stirred on her box and cracked her eyes open. She stretched stiffly. "I see you've met my brother," her voice creaked, rusty with sleep and overuse from her outraged yowling from earlier in the night. She yawned. "That's Watch," she said carelessly, through her yawn. Her eyes closed again.

  Watch leapt lightly and soundlessly to the top of a stack of crates and sat, his tail twitching rhythmically back and forth; twitching with a perfect, nervous rhythm, like the second hand of a clock, as constant and as ceaseless. Muse felt hypnotized, for a moment, watching the regular twitch of his tail, waiting for his tail to break the rhythm, or merely skip a beat, and realizing it would not.

  "Don't be so somber, Watch," said Contempt without opening her eyes. "You'll scare the young thing half to death." She rolled over to her other side and reluctantly peered at Muse, more awake now. "He's my brother, younger by several litters. I doubt we have the same father. In fact, I doubt his father was even born by the time mine was dead. My mother was quite an old cat, who took a liking to the handsome tomcats no matter how many years separated them. I suspect," she added, with something almost approaching humor, "that I am quite a bit like her." Contempt sat up and suddenly hissed with disgust. Her fur had dried in sticky spikes and the light-colored fur around her throat had hardened against her pearls, leaving them matted against her skin. She shook herself violently but the pearls did not hang free. They were all but glued to the sensitive skin and fragile dried fur around her neck. "Damnation," she hissed.

  I can probably chew through that string, offered Muse, so they won't be stuck to you.

  "But then I'll lose them," said Contempt.

  It's just a collar though, and since you obviously don't like being someone's pet, why do you keep it on?

  "Collar? This is no collar. This is my necklace," said Contempt angrily, "though I don't expect you to understand the concept of decoration. I am no one's pet." She spat the word.

  Well…. Muse got up and circled near Contempt, examining her necklace. I could lick it free, maybe.

  Contempt snorted. "I wouldn't wish a mouthful of that wine stuff on my worst enemy."

  I already told you I don't mind the taste.

  Contempt watched Muse suspiciously, but said nothing. Muse took her silence as acquiescence and approached the older cat, letting her tiny rough tongue dart over the sticky pearls, tasting the familiar wine but avoiding Contempt's more questionable fur. Muse was a very short-haired cat and her fine-boned, neatly groomed mouth found the pearls and rooted them out from Contempt's nest of matted and snaggly fur. As the pearls loosened, one by one, the necklace began to drape a bit more naturally and Contempt sat up a bit straighter as she felt it fall into place.

  Muse had paused and was examining the tougher, clear thread that had been used to repair the necklace in places where the string was worn through. She'd originally thought it was fishing line, which was easy enough to come by at the harbor, but now with a wave of nausea, she took a step backwards in surprise.

  Those are… What did you use to knot this necklace?

  Contempt smiled mysteriously. "Why, my brother's whiskers, of course."

  Muse gasped, whirled and looked at Watch, who had not moved from his crate. She uses your whiskers? Muse directed at him softly. He nodded, barely. But why?

  "Why not?" he echoed, his voice strained. "It caused no greater pain than what life is already."

  Muse shook her head in disbelief. She understood, then, that she was right; Watch's mind was invaded by everyone's thoughts, and her unique ones were especially probing. He had no escape, ever, from the constant motion of life. And it had worn him down. He recognized what she was thinking, even though she hadn't formed the words, and he nodded slightly at her.

  Contempt chuckled. "He's a morbid one," she said, "and I sometimes wonder what's going on in that head of his. But come!" she commanded. "There are a few pearls still stuck to my left shoulder. I'll tell you a story while you finish." Muse turned back to her task and the story Contempt told was this:

  It seemed that many years ago, when Contempt was a proud young lady cat and Watch was just a kitten, they were both owned by an eccentric old man who lived in an upstairs apartment of his house, but who spent most of his time working in the basement, where he kept his business. His was an odd business; there were many cats in his house, and most of them family, but none ventured to the descending steps beyond the basement door. "It smells like death," Contempt's mother would hiss, the fur on her back standing up and her eyes narrowed to slit
s, and the rest of the cats needed no further prodding to keep their distance.

  The cats heard odd sounds late at night, while the man was working; the clink of small metal instruments, or the hefting of something large and soft. The old man would work for hours, sometimes, before he'd emerge from the basement and drop into a deep sleep upstairs in his bedroom. His bedroom was furnished sparely, with merely a polished brass bedstead with a worn but clean blanket, long heavy curtains that caught the dust with a faded pattern of cabbage roses, and a claw-foot oaken dresser. The man had few possessions, and seemed to find contentment in his minimal simplicity.

  His threadbare rug next to his bed had as many thin patches as did his grey hair, but it covered the floor boards well enough and was comfortable for the cats to keep him company while he slept. He always had a smile for them and a kind word, and pretended not to notice as their numbers grew, one litter at a time. He swept and kept his home clean, freshened the litter box daily and the open windows caught the fresh air. His home was peaceful, and quiet, and the cats respected him; perhaps some of them loved him.

  Sometimes, as the night deepened, he never emerged from the basement at all, and the cats knew he had fallen asleep over whatever his project was. He used the back door, downstairs off the basement, to conduct his business, so the cats never saw the odd, long bundles being dropped off by the morgue truck, nor the grieving families that drove up a day later in long dark cars, pausing outside the door to weep, and momentarily huddle with each other, and pick up long, heavy, shiny lacquered boxes to load into the trunks of the long, dark cars.

  Those were the coffins, of course. And the quiet, stiff bodies inside were clean and dressed and ready for their final resting place, on their ways to their own funerals. The man was a mortician, but the cats didn't understand such things.

  But Watch, the quiet kitten, would slip into the basement and keep a vigil over the man's projects when the man was working. The man worked in solitude, since death offered no companionship, and neither did Watch's aloof and haunted presence on the highest shelf he could find. The mild ammonia smell from the fumes of the embalming fluid made the old man's eyes water, their cloudy grey color growing more liquid and transparent. As the old man continued to age, he worked more slowly; he often slept in his chair next to a rigid, vacant body that was laid out on the work table, his tired eyes closed and his head drooped to his narrow chest. The instruments he used for the careful arrangements of the dead faces, making sure the shriveling lips or the eyelids would not part during their funerals, slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor, but neither he nor Watch started at the sound. And certainly, neither did the serene body.

  Watch's tail, which usually twitched nervously like the rapid second hand of a tightly-wound clock, would loosen and slow, dropping lower, uncoiling and relaxing under its own weight, and sway heavily and slowly like a pendulum. Watch sat on a high shelf and watched the stillness, heavy-lidded and peaceful. There was such quiet in the tranquil bodies, inside of whom all energy had faded away to somewhere else. And there was a peace inside the old man as well, especially when he slept. A mortician cannot help but identify with the utter stillness and silence of a body whose soul has gone.

  Watch was irresistibly attracted to the hush and noiselessness of a body laying out, waiting for its final dress, waiting for its hair to be brushed for the last time. It was waiting for its encore, where it would be viewed by the people who had loved the person inside, before it would be laid to rest for all time.

  Watch gradually spent all his time in the basement, growing quieter and more watchful, absorbing the untroubled peace from the stillness he constantly observed, and finding respite from the unvarying and uninterrupted flow of the crowded thoughts from the cats upstairs, and from the steady traffic of people passing by the house, people whose thoughts were too busy and emphatic for him to bear. But one day the old man died, and the house was cleaned out and the cats were scattered. Contempt forcibly led Watch away from the house. He was suffering unbearably under the constant activity and vehement thoughts of the people who cleaned out the house to ready it for new owners, but he was afraid to leave, since such relentlessness and potency and constancy of other people's thoughts was all he was going to find anywhere else, too.

  Contempt, however, finally felt free, as she had always yearned for the life of a wild stray city cat at heart. But Watch had lost his peace. He roamed the city streets with her at night, but his mind and his heart were elsewhere, she knew. He was unable to sleep, his mind wound too tightly, battered by the frenetic pace of life that he worked so hard to avoid. He paced through all the nights, as the years passed and pressed upon him, pacing and staring and searching for any peace, his ears flicking towards the momentary sound of any quiet, growing more and more exhausted.