Moment

A first draft of a cat nap.

Word Count: 522

A cat named Janey walked by the studio entrance door of Jay Rider at 20 to 9 on a Monday morning. Short, frill, sassy. Its puffed-up tail slowly descended the staircase to arrive at a windowless studio entrance. While familiar with its entrance for the past 10 years, it had not once entered the cave.

It scrabbled at the door, increasingly more anxious. Inquisitive, eager, curious, to recognize that the door was cracked open. Janey entered slowly, meowing and sniffing at the atmosphere. Week old potatoes stained the floor, mashed-white strained starch. Its golden aura eyes stared into the terminal abyss of lined linoleum, cracked tiles everywhere except the corners.

A man sat in a wooden chair on one of the uncracked tiles, tapping his foot at one beat per minute. A silent meditation seemed to ensue, and Janey walked away to a Tetley tea bag planted in a precarious dangling dash off the garbage lid. Licking furtively, Janey gagged. There were still herbal reminisces there, but the effect was cold, damp, bitter.

The chair of the leg cracked, a whisp of a wooden bone. It creaked and snapped at its bottom inch, not enough to startle its guest. Sniffing, she recognized the sour inhale of a milk carton, dripping the last remnants of days old protein shakes. Meow, she said, approaching the chair ever so slightly, the gas stove click, click, clicking.

The pale-yellow paper of the four walls stared endlessly at its two occupants, almost sighing out at the narrow textures of crusty skin. Flaking.
The door slammed shut, and Janey started to pace the one and only exit. There were no windows; the studio apartment had been delicately inserted into the corner of a basement off the side street of a city four sizes too small and 20 times too populated. Often times it was the rats chasing the cats on those streets.

Janey had sought refuge there previously in the laundry room and had been sure there was a human presence. She hadn’t been bothered to explore this twilight zone before, but now she was its established resident. Approaching the chair, she meowed again, hoping to interrupt a seemingly endless meditation. Did it matter? Sliding its belly along the floor, she embraced the doziness of her mind.

The bed mattress in the corner contained a half-drunk Grey Goose and four burned out buds. Janey would not make the drink, despite every instinct telling her to correct her parched throat and relieve the ensuing headache arriving at her temples. Her meow became a near whisper as she turned to face her last friend.

She saw where the only white in the room remained: in the face of a lurked down head. An endless stare confirmed her suspicion: the race to end a failed journey in a space that had never entertained joy. Her paws clamped up and soon the comfort of fatigue grew into a lethargy of meaninglessness.

Coo-coo, coo-coo. The most human element in the room was crying for an awakening at midnight. She couldn’t move. Her eyes shut. Maybe the bird would scare off the incoming rats.