I am

Cute and Fluffy

Cute and Fluffy!

See?

And such a Good Boy

Yep

That's me

Good Boy

Do you see?

How good I am being right now?

Here, look.

Look!

Look at me!

Yep - me!

Your Cute and Fluffy Good Boy!

Who is absolutely being good!

So good!

I am sitting

I am focused

I am behaving

...

OMG IT MOVED IT MOVED IT MOVED WHERE'D IT GO WHERE'D IT GO I GOTTA FOLLOW IT!! COME BACK COME BACK I JUST WANNA SNIFF YOU ALL OVER!!!! PLEASE!!!!

---

What?

No!

I'm a Good Boy!

Really!

Cute and Fluffy!

Cute and Fluffy!

I totally am NOT thinking about that cat that just ran past.

Nope.

Totally not.

I am sitting

I am focused

I am behaving

...

OMG THERE IT GOES AGAIN! I GOTTA GET IT! COME BACK COME BACK COME BACK!!

Mummy had one rule when I was a child.

It was this: never think about cats.

I never questioned it. The fact that it was a ridiculous command never crossed my mind until I was years older.

But there was one simple problem with this rule that I did notice even as a young boy. It was that anytime she told me this, it made me think of cats.

The harder I tried to stop thinking of cats, the more I thought of them. Their adorable fluffy faces and those precious little feet.

But of course I never told Mummy that when she reminded me not to think about cats it made me think of them more. So I just beat myself up, constantly chanting to myself not to think of cats and, consequently, thinking about cats.

By the time I realized that this rule made no sense and stopped obeying it, I was obsessed with the creatures, and as soon as I moved out, bought three.

Now I live a life full of cats and I can think of them whenever I want.

Just recently, I found out through a family friend that my dear Mummy had once been attacked by a clowder of alley cats and had been traumatized. This was probably the reason for her one rule when I was growing up.

Poor Mummy must have had a hard time constantly telling herself and me not to think of cats, which of course would have caused her to think about just that.

Cats.

I had always complained to my mom about monsters under the bed. She’d always tell me they weren’t there. Now that I’m older this makes me more suspicious of her, because they’re still here. Every night that I forget to close the closet, I see one of four faces. One seems to be terrified and trying to ask me for help. The other ones I see are evil. They smile, those creepy smiles, those toothy grins.. I don’t like to think about them. I remember a certain one.. it seems so real. It looks fluffy. Sometimes, when there’s enough light, I see a small heart-shaped nose like a cat’s. And the ones under my bed, they just laugh and scream all night.. I never see faces when I look down there. It’s just blood.

It reminds me when my dad went missing after we adopted a cat. Every time we get a cat we find it dead in the road the next day. It’s a chilling sight to see. But when we got our first, dad disappeared in the middle of the night. All the doors were locked from the inside, but a window- facing the road each cat would die on- was broken.

I’ve been waking up to bloody handprints on my body, sometimes wounds that couldn’t be made my weapons or humans. Trails of blood come from under the bed. Cops have even been called on our house and our home has been investigated by them because neighbord claim to hear screaming and stabbing.

It gives me shivers, this happens when I think about cats. Please, don’t think about cats, new homeowners.

my brother and i used to play a game

he'd tell me "don't think of pink elephants"

and see how long i could go.

until one day,

a pink elephant showed up in my basement,

summoned by my thoughts.

we had lots of fun with my pink elephant.

i named her pastel.

so my brother tried something new.

he said, "don't think about alligators."

and one day,

an alligator showed up in my basement.

we had fun with him.

he was a nice alligator.

until one day, just like pastel before him,

he faded,

and my brother and i tried again.

"don't think about butterflies."

i thought about butterflies.

i couldn't help it,

it was a reflex.

and together, me and my brother

we danced in fields of monarchs.

as i got older, my brother

stopped making requests.

there was less of a need for animals

and more of a need for shelter.

my dad went on a business trip

and mommy got mad at him

and now daddy's not around anymore,

and mommy doesn't have time to take care of us.

she doesn't make pancakes like she used to.

and my brother spends all his time at school.

even though he buries himself in his studies,

he always gets bad grades,

and once something called a truancy officer came.

he doesn't have time to

imagine animals with me.

i'm lonely.

i'm almost in middle school,

but nobody talks to me.

i tried to tell them about my animals,

but everyone laughed at me.

so i go through school with my head held down.

mommy used to talk to daddy about how i was

on the spectrum.

i don't know what that means,

but i feel like i should.

i feel like i should know a lot of things,

but i don't know them.

so i sat on the edge of the bridge

and looked at the sun.

it burned my eyes.

"don't think about cats,"

i whispered into the wind.

for a moment i wondered

if a cat would show up at all.

maybe i lost my animals

just like i lost my daddy and mommy

and even my big brother.

but there, behind me,

was a cat.

he was big and fluffy,

and he looked at me with sleepy eyes.

i hugged my new cat,

and from deep in its throat,

a hum emerged.

it was like music.

the cat was happy,

happy in its simple life full of love.

i wish i could be like this cat.

i hugged the cat close,

and i was very glad

that i thought about cats.

I died five days ago. Unfortunately for me, I'm still stuck here, watching the stairwell out of very dry eyes, feeling like I ought to take a nice deep breath, only my windpipe got cut off from that fall down the stairs so I guess that's out of the question. And once in a while, I feel odd sensations. Th complete freezing cold as my body lost heat. The rigor mortus rippling through my arms and legs.

And of course, Mimsie's teeth. Eating my cheek.

I don't think she wanted to do it. Mimsie has been my best and only friend since I was a kid. She was the sweetest little kitty from the time she was a baby, and I spent an hour after work daily rubbing her and giving her food from a can. She was my only companion through changing boyfriends and useless layoffs. She was always very neat and stuck to her own food, and the occasional table scraps from me.

When I first passed away she cried for days. Two days, to be exact, if the sun rising and falling through the window was any indication. She bumped up against my legs, as if begging me to wake up. She sat near me almost as if she was mourning, right above me between my outstretched legs on the stairs. Ah, you're such a good girl, I thought, staring lifelessly up at her. Surely you'll watch over me like a good little angel.

But, unfortunately, Mimsie is a creature of instinct. And to her, dead means dead, especially if the dead creature's meat is tender and starting to smell quite appetizing after four days of having licked one's last bowl clean. So she started off on me-- first just nibbling at my fingers, then taking big chunks off of my cheeks, thighs and back. I don't feel much more than the little pinpricks, but it still feels like such an insult. I gave you everything, I thought venomously at her yesterday as she was yanking my left big toe off, and now you decide to just pick me clean for every last scrap. Lovely creature.

But I can't close my eyes. I can't even move my head to get a better view. All I can do is stare the same fixed stare I always did, thinking about how stupid it was that I was walking around in one high heel down stairs, hearing the stupid phone ring over and over again with spam calls I can't cancel. Wondering if the date I was going to meet really was the love of my life. He had such nice eyes, I remember. I wonder if he'll think how strange it was that I ghosted him after I seemed so excited to meet him. If only I could ghost him, at least I could let him know that I was inconvenienced.

But I don't take it personally. Someday soon my mom's going to think, "my, Charlene isn't returning my calls, maybe I should check on her", and she'll finally come here to look for me, and she'll see what that little twit did to me. Then they'll bury me nice and cozy in some big oak box and I can go into that long sleep I've been promised. And I can get out of this terrible rotting body, and the smells and the aches and cramps and horrible stickiness in my wrinkled gelatin eyes.

Until then, there's only one thing I can do.

Try to ignore my cat's godawful sharp teeth.