Today's Reading
THE CAT, PART ONE
(the present)
The cat that followed them home had a bald patch on its left hind leg and one ear missing. It was orange, a distasteful, dirty shade of it, one that reminded Aisha of fish curry gone bad.
"Shoo," Aisha told it. The cat ignored her.
"Don't be mean," Walter said. He leaned down and flashed his crooked canines at it, bent his dark head to look properly. "Kitty, are you lost?"
"Mew," said the cat impatiently, which to Aisha sounded like it meant 'Obviously not, I'm following you to my new home'.
When Walter got up and they rounded the corner to Aisha's street, the cat followed steadily, like it was inherently familiar with the place.
"Oh, it probably has fleas," she protested, making a more vigorous shooing motion.
"I don't think it matters," said Walter in a reckless sort of way that was charming and galling all at once. He meant, 'since we're all going to die anyway'. "I don't want it to be alone when ... well. When."
Still, Aisha would rather die with her scalp not itching, thank you very much. She opened their lime-green front door and said, "Hi, Mak."
"Hi, 'sayang'," said her mother, looking up from the lined exercise book she used for recipes. The sun struggled through the grimy windowpane, on its last legs. Everything was on its last legs these days, it seemed. "Hi, Walter. Hi, stray cat I don't want in my kitchen."
Aisha looked at Walter and shrugged, not very regretfully. "You heard her. Her kitchen, her rules."
But Walter looked at her mother, and Aisha knew it was a lost cause already. They exchanged a glance in which Walter communicated to Esah plaintive sentences about not wanting the cat to be alone at the End, his gaze beseeching, and Aisha could see the moment when her mother's eyes softened. A beat later Esah asked, "So what's his name?"
"It's a he?"
Esah gestured toward where the cat was sitting on the doormat, licking clear evidence of he-dom.
"Hmm," said Walter. "What's his name, Sha?"
"Fleabag," said Aisha.
Walter flicked her earlobe gently, thumb and index finger. Something in Aisha thrilled to the light, brief contact, even as she felt exasperated at the situation. "Don't be so mean."
"You know, I think it'll stick," Aisha's mother said. She smiled absently in the direction of Fleabag, who made a huge show of a ragged lick to his nether regions, as if to illustrate the point.
"Fleabag," Walter said, crouching over him and scritching at his chin. "Don't worry about her. Think of it as a fond nickname."
Aisha was watching her mother, who was still looking vaguely at the cat. She wondered what Esah was thinking about. June had told her once that strays used to follow her father home as well, close at his heels, rubbing their heads against his ankles. Perhaps Esah was remembering them in Fleabag's furry face.
THE CAT, PART TWO
(the present)
Perhaps the problem was that they might have gotten married if the world wasn't ending. Aisha could see it sometimes, arrayed in front of her, the progression of their decades: the engagement, the house, the dog; the first kid's wide grin, the second's chubby fists. Lazy mornings, a good bowl of 'laksa' brought to her in bed, packing their lunches for work, Sunday evenings at the neighborhood park.
She would have been happy too. They would have been delirious with it, that uncomplicated happiness. Now they were fighting more than ever, eight months before the world ended. But Aisha would have named her first child Amin after a beloved uncle who had taken her to the swings every Friday. She would have gone to school and become a doctor. Walter would have meandered from career to career, indecisive and passionate about everything. They would have had several cats because Walter wouldn't have been able to say no to strays who followed them home.
Walter cooed silly things at Fleabag, now sitting at her mother's kitchen table, and Aisha loved him, loved him desperately, loved him more than anything. She touched her earlobe.
"You know," Esah said, her low voice cutting smoothly into Aisha's thoughts, "I've been thinking about June." She said it very carefully, trying to make it seem like it was just another thing on the grocery list she wanted Aisha to get. Both Aisha's and Walter's heads snapped up. Fleabag, who clearly couldn't stand the attention not being on him for a second, jumped gracefully onto the floor and padded away.
...
