Frab cats hung all around the room. They were a disturbing addition to the decor, but Michael tolerated them. After all they were the only thing which kept the wheeze birds from flying through the windows. He felt grateful for the frab cats. His mother had bought them for him, the last thing she did before leaving on that trip to Europe, several years long that trip was now. At the time he had objected, had not wanted the room done over in frab cats. Their furry bodies shut out the light and their constant meowing was a distraction. But that was when he was resigned to the wheeze birds, and their wheezing, and the mess they made of the floor, leaving tin cans, and empty sacs of bird food lying all over. Still, he rather missed the dirty rose wallpaper, with the William Morris pattern. It was austere, and fit his mood, the set of his mind. It was good to contemplate when he was tired of writing. Now the heavy cloth curtains with their burden of frab cats left him with little idea of what the room was once like, even what he himself looked like, since with all of these cats there was little place for a mirror. All that was left in the room was a bookcase, a computer, and a mattress. The rest was given over to the hanging, constantly meowing cats.
Michael looked from wall to wall, from cat to cat. An idea struck him. He left the room for a moment in order to go to the kitchen, a place he visited as little as possible because of the mound of dishes eternally standing in the sink. Once he had tried to wash these, but washing only seemed to produce a stack of clean dishes, and the sink was no less empty. It seemed bottomless. Nonetheless, there was over this sink a cupboard, and it was in this cupboard the cat food was kept. He took down a can from the cupboard, fished under the stack of dishes for a can opener, and when he had found one, applied the sticky, slimy can opener to the cat food container.
The sound of the can opening immediately brought a flood of tubby, fat little bodies issuing from his room. The purring and meowing sounds were deafening, and he found himself confronted by a hundred lifted tails. Before Michael could be mobbed, he snapped the lid off the can, and with a sickening "goosh" slid a viscous brown cylinder of frab cat food into the cat trough. The hungry hoard descended on this, and Michael was lucky to be able to jump away and out of the kitchen to safety. In his room, vacant of cats now, he first closed the door. Soon the scratching would come, and more meowing outside, but not now. With a feeling of tense expectancy, and an almost awestruck care, he drew aside the curtains. Light fell on his face, and for the first time in years, he knew what it felt like to experience day. Then twelve thousand wheeze birds streamed in and flew up his nose.
(c) Jack Ruttan, 1998