Everything had been so much simpler before the cats learned to talk.
My phone buzzed on the end table, probably a morning text from Jeremy. He liked to send a smiling selfie as he lay in bed, hair still mussed from sleep. Could I grab the phone without the cats noticing I was awake? I slid my hand to the side…
“I'm king of the hill!” Ripley settled on my hip, the highest point on the bed. Slowly extending his nails, he pierced my sweatpants to prick the skin beneath. “Are you awake? I'm hungry. It's time to get up. Can we have canned food today?”
Danby, the Savannah cat, shifted his head from the other pillow to mine. “I could have ripped out your throat and feasted on the flesh of my enemy last night,” he growled into my ear. My eyes opened. We were definitely not watching that HBO series anymore. Danby purred.
“I have... feet!” George stood up from his usual spot at the end of the bed, stretched, slipped on the blanket, and slid to the floor with a grunt. “Feet!”
Last week, it had been his tail. The week before, his ears. To be fair, I'd known George was a bit of an idiot even before the cats started talking.
I considered trying for a few more minutes of sleep, but Spot had jumped down and was standing in the hallway singing the song of her people. In this case, that meant “The Internationale” at volumes high enough to get my neighbor complaining again. “Stand up, damned of the Earth...”
Christ. “I'm up, I'm up.” I stumbled behind the cats into the kitchen, Ripley a black shadow weaving back and forth in front of me the entire way. “Rip, if you're not careful, I'm going to step on you.”
George stopped in front of his bowl, orange to match his fur. “You have feet!”
“Yes, George, I have feet.” I edged around him to get to the kibble bucket. “Danby, if you jump on me from the top of the refrigerator, you won't get fed this morning. Be nice.” Two years of misjudged leaps from the twenty-five pound Savannah cat had left more than a few scars. I considered myself lucky I hadn't fallen and broken my neck.
Four scoops for Danby, two for Ripley, one for Spot — a dainty six-pound socialist under all her fur — and finally, one scoop for George, who needed to stay lean so he didn't hurt his joints with his uncoordinated leaps. Only then was it safe to turn my attention toward coffee.
While dressing for work, I turned on the news. Park rangers were hunting a mountain lion that had killed a jogger the evening before. Though the danger of a second attack was low, the city had issued a wildlife advisory. Hikers were warned to avoid the area.
“I'm a mountain lion.” Danby's growl turned into a yawn as he stretched out on top of the bookshelf.
“You're an F1 hybrid with delusions of grandeur.” I ran a lint roller over my jacket. “And if you don't quit dragging my clothes off the hangers, I'm going to shave off all your fur.”
Ripley dashed into the room. “I got it! I got it! I got the radioactive spider!” He stopped and puked up a pile of food with a flaccid daddy longlegs mixed in. “I ate it.”
Deep breath. “Rip, we've talked about this before, remember?” I cleaned up the mess on the floor with a handful of paper towels. “Radioactive spiders are what made Spiderman. You're not Spiderman. This was just an ordinary spider. If you stop eating them, you won't feel sick like that.”
He bounded off, and I knew I hadn't made a dent.
Ripley's real origin story involved a neurology lab, a professor who was killed by a drunk driver, and a temp hired to help shut down his experiments. I'd fallen in love with all four kittens before I'd read the study protocol. They looked healthy. One large handbag and a few forged signatures later, I had four tiny roommates. When I'd stolen the cats, I'd accepted their lifespans might be shortened by whatever had been done to them. I hadn't expected… this.
Before I left the apartment, I tuned the TV to the nature channel and took the batteries out of the remote. Daytime television was a cesspit. I still wasn't sure how Spot had learned all the songs of socialism, but I wasn't about to risk a repeat of the week Danby and Ripley had chased each other around every night yelling, “You're the father!”
“Bye, guys. Be good. Twenty minutes of laser pointer tonight, but only if I don't get any complaints from the neighbors.”
Danby stopped grooming. “Are you going to smell like him tonight?”
From the kitchen, Spot howled, “Rise up against the oppressor!”
Ripley squeezed out from the space behind the sofa. “He smells like kryptonite.”
Shaking my head, I went out the door. Their antipathy toward Jeremy didn't seem to be going away. Having a boyfriend the cats didn't like was bad enough when the worst they could do was pee on his things.
The cats hadn't even met Jeremy yet — I'd been waiting until I was absolutely sure, since George's random obsessions meant he forgot he wasn't supposed to talk. But I'd shown them videos and pictures and, for some reason, they had all decided they didn't like him. Somehow, I had to change their minds.
#
The private detective showed up at work right before lunch, flashing a picture of Jeremy and asking if I knew him. “He cleaned out his last girlfriend's bank accounts right before he left New York,” the balding man who smelled of cigarettes and coffee said. “It's only a matter of time before I find the assets he's got hidden, but if I were you, I'd change my passwords.”
“His ex is crazy.” I had seen the texts to prove it. “She probably hid her own money just to get back at him.”
The detective sighed, as if he'd seen this movie before, and handed me his card. “When you're ready to talk, call me.”
After he left, I called Jeremy. "Your ex is trying to track you down again."
I told him about the detective, and he groaned. “Sorry, babe. Every time I think she's done causing trouble, something new happens. Let me take you out to dinner tonight to make up for it. Slow Fish? Around seven?”
We ended the call with our usual banter, but the detective's words nagged at me all afternoon. Which is why, after getting to the restaurant fifteen minutes early and learning we didn't have a reservation, I left and sped home.
#
The absence of cats running to greet me was the first clue something was wrong. Spot should have been there to grill me about my latest working conditions. So I wasn't too surprised to see my laptop screen glowing with my bank's login page.
Jeremy walked out of my bedroom a moment later, cat carrier in hand, and stopped. “Why aren't you at the restaurant?” He looked different, more businesslike, as if I were a casual acquaintance he'd hoped to avoid than the woman he'd been dating for the past two months.
“I'd ask why you aren't either, but it's pretty clear.” I nodded to the computer. “Did you think I wouldn't log out?”
He shrugged. “Look, it's just what I do. I had to try, you know. But you can keep it." He lifted the carrier. "This thing is going to make me millions when I find the right buyer. This cat fucking talks. I mean, it's all this stupid shit about feet, but it talks.”
George looked between the slats, and my heart sank. Any of the others would keep quiet, but George...
“My feet are flying,” he said, pushing his nose through the grate. “I don't like my feet flying.”
I stood with my back against the door. “You're not leaving here with George.”
Jeremy's lip curled, the same way it had all those times he'd talked about his ex. “You can't stop me. Now get out of the way before you get hurt.”
And that was when Danby leapt. His jaws weren't large enough to break his prey's neck, but the coffee table Jeremy's head hit on the way down did the job just fine.
#
On Saturday morning, I lounged on the couch watching the news. The killer mountain lion had been trapped and euthanized, but not before a second jogger had fallen prey.
“I'm a mountain lion,” Danby purred as I scratched his cheek.
"You certainly are." Kissing his forehead, I dug the remote from between the cushions. I didn't want to look at photos of a smiling, handsome Jeremy as they eulogized the victims. On the next channel, four cartoon turtles posed dramatically around a manhole cover.
Ripley sat up. “Cowabunga!”
On the back of the sofa, Spot sang softly, “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong...”
George crooned at the ceiling as he lay on his back between my ankles. “I have... four feet! Four!”
Sure, everything had been simpler before the cats learned to talk. But maybe this was better.