The Vegetarian Cat
an excerpt

Chapter One

vieni fare un giro dentro di me
(Afterhours – Vedova Bianca)

‘Fuck it; the fuckin’ cat’s been sick again.’ He knelt down to survey the mess on the kitchen floor. Spoiled laminate. There was no sign of the vomiting feline.

No. That’s not where it starts.

It starts in the Old Furniture Store. The only way anyone could tell it was an Old Furniture Store, rather than any other kind of store, was the chipped and faded sign in the window. In large, old-world style letters that formed a dramatic curve across the window, it clearly said ‘Old Furniture Store.’ How ambigious you might think. Is this a store for old furniture, or just a store that is itself well past its sell by date as we enter the new millenium? In fact it was neither of those things, anymore. Perhaps, at one time it had been both. But not any longer. The letters were edged in black. They had once been gold.

In the window of the Old Furniture Store, there was nothing but a sheet of crimson satin. If this sounds pleasant, then it wasn’t. It was old and faded. Someone had draped it rather carelessly across the window, so that it hung down in folds. You still couldn’t see past this curtain to what was inside. The folds gathered dust. The overall impression was one of faded glamour and no small amount of mystery.

What had happened to the previous owner of the Old Furniture Store? Who had carelessly draped the crimson satin and left it there to fill with dust? Did both owner and shop just fall prey to the modern world? Or, was it something else? And, where you might well ask, does the vomiting feline fit in to its story?

One day someone found the old, abandoned furniture store. He tried the door. It wasn’t that easy; it was of course locked for these places are a magnet for squatters, vandals and people who just want to hide. He put his shoulder to the door, several times truth be told, but despite his shoulder being fairly sizable and the weight he was able to put behind the shoulder being even more sizable, it didn’t budge. Maybe the owner of the Old Furniture Store had found his time so monotonous, in the absence of any custom, that he had soundly hinged a sturdy door to the entrance of his abode. Maybe he had a premonition of the invasion that would come. Maybe he just liked strong doors. Anyway, to cut a long story short, following his spirited attempts to break into the shop, the man wiped the sweat from his brow, straightened the collar of the black shirt he wore above his black jeans and squatted down on the pavement to rifle through a large, brown sack he was carrying. From within its depths he at last withdrew his arm. In his left hand he held a small, insignificant-looking metal object. He shoved it in the lock which presently gave a satisfying click. The door swung open on perfectly oiled hinges. He was inside.

Inside there appeared to be nothing. The man cursed as he felt blindly for the light. He reached with his left hand. He felt cobwebs brush his face. He felt the flapping of moths as he disturbed them from the places of their long slumber. He seemed to be walking for a fucking long time, or at least much longer than he expected. Where was the goddam light switch?

And, he could have stayed there, fumbling around in the dark for a much longer had he not applied logic to the situation. He groped once again in the dark canvas sack. This time he fished out a candle and a matchbox. In a trice, he had lit ten candles which, having placed them around him in as near a semi-circle as he could muster, he used to light the place up a little.

He surveyed his kingdom. His new found land. The cavernous back room of the Old Furniture Store was largely, and rather disappointingly empty. There were a couple of rickety wooden chairs with tools and varnish. No doubt these objects pertained to the very last rennovation projects of the Old Furniture Seller as he struggled, and eventually failed, to make a living; before he gave up the ghost. Unfortunately for the new visitor, he had left these chairs in an unfinished state. But the man sat down on one anyway. As a big man, his backside spilled rather over the edges of the seat and, as you might imagine, the wood protested and creaked under his weight, however, it was better than sitting on the cold, flagstone floor. The Old Furniture Seller, presumably in a last ditch effort to make enough money to support his wife and children, as well as providing for the veterinary care of a rather demanding and digestively challenged pet, had sold everything that he could and, thus, had removed everything from the store. Or nearly everything. From one of the dark corners came the shrill highnote of a kettle reaching the boil.

There was the sound of the stirring of a cup somewhere in the grim shadows. Then came the muffled thump of a dead tea-bag down onto the aforementioned cold, grey, flagstone floor. Then, from out of the very depths of the darkness came a dreadlocked young man.
‘Ah, Johnson. How long have you waited?’
‘It’s you that was waiting for me, remember.’
‘Is one of those mine? Let’s have it.’
Johnson handed him a chipped mug that had once been white. Down the side, where tea had sloshed in the past, there were brown, dried rivulets. The tea was just below steaming hot. This was because Johnson had a habit of topping up the freshly made drink with cold water out of the tap so he could drink it straight away. His companion found the habit a great source of frustration. He liked his first sip of tea to just slightly burn his mouth.
‘You have no fucking patience, J. And your tea is a load of shite.’
‘That’s why I’ve got coffee, you mug.’
Johnson took a seat on the wooden chair next to his friend, and he took his coffee as black as the shadows from whence he had come.

From within the depths of his sack, the fat man pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes. He leaned over the candles and lit one, carefully avoiding wetting the end of his smoke on the dripping wax. He inhaled deeply on the cigarette as though trying to draw as much toxic dirt and rubbish into his lungs with one drag as he possibly could. He paused and passed the lit cigarette to Johnson, before lighting another for himself.
‘These Marlboro Red will kill us, you know,’ he laughed.

Johnson brooded over his cigarette. When it was finished, he asked for and received another, lighting a new one from the dying tip of the last. Occasionally, he took a deep swig from his coffee. ‘So what the fuck are you doing here, Doolie?’ he asked, finally.

Both men had forgotten the street outside. They had forgotten that, due to some idiot’s notion of daylight saving time, it was actually one hour later than it really was. They were, therefore, unaware, as they sat in the cavernous depths of the room at the back of the Old Furniture Store, that the street lamps were lining the air above the pavement outside with a muzzled orange glow. They didn’t think about the fact that the road was choked with cars which were choked with people, all eager to return home after a crap day at work. They didn’t see the lights. They couldn’t hear the engines over the noise of their own dark thoughts and they sure as dammit didn’t give a monkey’s about Mr Harrison returning in his beaten up Vauxhall Astra, clutching a cigarette between his dry lips and humming tunelessly to whatever crap was playing on the drivetime radio. The two men, without speaking, were forming an illustrious plan. Why should they give a shit that you plastered a wall today, Mr Harrison? They had bigger fish to fry.

At long last, Johnson broke the silence. ‘Giss’us your mug then,’ he mumbled. Having swiftly taken up the receptacle, which by then was as cold as any of the stones on the flagstone floor and as empty as the silent room and still covered in dried tea, he slunk off into the dark shadows. For a while, Doolie, stared into the candlelight. He may even have smoked another cigarette. Then he slept.

Chapter Two

The Universe is shaped exactly like the Earth
If you go straight along enough
You’ll end up where you were
(Modest Mouse - )

After a night spent lying in his clothes, on a sack containing his other belongings, and inhaling dust from the floor along with the ash that had fallen from the many cigarettes smoked by himself and his companion, Doolie awoke feeling far from shit-hot. In fact, the floor was covered in cigarette butts. How had they smoked so much? And, more to the point, why was J not around to clear up? He heaved himself from the floor and felt an ache, among other places, in his left shoulder. Next time, he promised himself, he would save the heroics and just use the key.

All the street lamps were back out again as he hit the streets. First, he found breakfast, and thankfully the caff down the road was able to provide him with a suitably warm cup of tea and a satisfying plate of fried meat and carbohydrate. He savoured a floppy bacon sandwich, greasy sausages and dunked his bread in the fast-congealing orange globe of an egg. After gobbling that lot down, he almost felt like himself again to be honest. Next, he headed for the public conveniences nearby to scrub up. He was in a good mood; he might even change his clothes. As he headed for the cublicle, a wizened old man entered the bathroom. For a second, their eyes met. Doolie changed his mind; his change of clothes could wait until later. Even though he suspected that Johson would not be around until evening fell, even though it was dark, musty and uncomfortable and even though, goddammit, he would have to use the key instead of battering down the door in fine dramatic style, he would head back to the Furniture Store. He needed to think.

And, so the days passed. One after the other. That’s the thing about time; it’s a continuous process of loss with each hour, each instant, each final note of each and every vivid melody being swallowed up in the next. The clock eats itself as it ticks. Or something. One day, though, Doolie was sure he would see the whole symphony. Or rather, he would spread time out underneath him like a rug, admire its texture and its colours and sink, down and down - luxuriating - into its deadly folds. Moment on top of moment. Moments squishing deadly around him, like a comforting monster. The fibres of moments clinging to his form, molding against him, slipping their fingers into one another until they were no longer separate. How can you tell the past from the future in moments like those?

And, so on.

He pondered.

Chapter Three

Non c’è torto ragione
è la naturale processo d’eliminazione
(Afterhours - )

Doolie is lying spreadeaged on the floor in an attitude of one who was once desperate and has now given up entirely. His arms are thrown carelessly and his wrists, bare undearneath the rolled sleeves of the same black shirt, beat a sluggish pulse against the cold flagstones. He lies with one leg twisted underneath him. The other sticks out to one side as though he had lurched, toppled and finally and fallen in on himself. In his lips, his trademark cigarette still dangles, though the lips are cold and blue, though there is little left of the cigarette except a column of ash. It has burnt itself out.

If Doolie had been conscious at this point, which he clearly wasn’t, he would have been exceeedingly uncomfortable and possibly even worried for his dignity. He face was tearstained. He lay with his left arm outstretched. Almost touching his fingers but just out of reach, was a mug. Stained and chipped, it contained half a cup of cold, black coffee.

From out of the shadows to the extreme left of the cavernous room at the back of the Old Furniture Store came two beings. One, Jesus-like with his dreadlocked hair caught up in a loose ponytail, wore a strange and unintelligable expression; his lips curled back from his teeth, his shoulders were tensed and hunched, his fists clenched. Whether this person was displaying malignity or dread cannot, truth be told, be established. He walked slowly to the centre of the room, surveyed the scene and peered at the man who lay, dying, on the floor. Curling in and out of the shadows and dust, like an aeroplane diving sleekly between thunderous clouds, and displaying surprising agility for such a large animal, was a plush and frankly enormous cat. It was a pure, brilliant white with just a hint of tortoiseshell grey around the belly and paws. Its fur was temptingly morbid.

Upon reaching the centre of the room, Johnson immediately bent down as though to establish whether the pulse of his most unfortunate companion still beat in his frozen arm. Momentarily, he noticed the blue lips, the stillness. Perhaps he thought he could hear a final breath or sense the slight warmth of carbon dioxide against the stone floor and amongst the dry, stinking ash. Perhaps not. Johson’s arm reached out automatically. He collected his mug. And he left once again for the shadows.

Chapter Four

But the cat stayed longer. It pawed delicately around the prone figure. Getting braver, it approached and sniffed at the face. It lapped at a tear. It appeared to listen for sounds of breathing. For a second, the cat rested its gentle cheek against the cheek, frozen yet still plump, of the victim. Could it reach, even into deep unconsiousness – even to consciousness ebbing away by the very second – and sense a final thought? Anyone watching the cat at this particular moment would have agreed that it could. What a strange animal. And its eating habits have not yet been fully divulged to the patient reader. But, everything in its time. Maybe that was the problem with Doolie at this very second – he wasn’t exactly in his time, or any time at all for that matter. But, we digress.

The cat pawed the victim. Furry warmth oozed from its very core as is the case with most cats. It seemed to sense the most infinitesimally small fleeting sensation of a thought. Perhaps it could really sense that there was a neuron firing away somewhere in Doolie’s brain, despite the impression of absolute lifelessness that his outstretched form presented. Being a cat, with a combination of proud distain and haughtiness and stubborn application to purpose, the animal then nosed through the brown sack that lay abandoned on the floor. Finding it void of all contents apart from a crushed and empty packet that had once contained Doolie’s Malboro Red, some stunted candle ends and a black book with yellowed pages filled with arcane scribbles and, of course, the key to the Old Furniture Store, (for which the cat clearly had no use since he always entered through a small window to the rear which was left permanently ajar for its convenience), he presently realised that his search for sustenance was going to be in vain.

At this point, with more of the proud distainfullness it had displayed earlier, the cat deigned to curl its generous form on top of the sack, above the stone and the ash, and close its eyelids over one green eye and one black. As the cat slept; as Doolie lay on the floor as if dead, Johnson clashed his mug against the cold tap, causing yet another chip to break the surface. He cursed through the darkness, distrubing neither Doolie or Cat.

Chapter Five

Lamp lined air.
(Orange glow).
Passing vehicles.
(With choking fumes).
Mr Harrison hums along to radio drivetime.
He has recently dented his Vauxhall again, but doesn’t care ‘cos he’s gonna scrap the ugly motherfucker anyway and he’ll get his Porsche one day.
Dead of night. When not much of anything happens.
Except a cat’s eyelid twitches
Above a green iris.
Stealthy dawn.
Day.
Again.

Chapter Six

And again.

Chapter Seven

And …

Well, you get the picture.

Until.

From behind the curtain that draped across the dusty window containing faded once-gold letters that once declared, and now plaintively wimpered ‘Old Furniture Store’ came new, confident rays of electric light which occasionally flickered and then regained their former brightness. Ever practical, Johnson had rewired the place passably well. He was pleased with his efforts. But the electric light had brought a few things to his notice. Such as the stained mugs; they had been properly cleaned for once in their lives in the cold water tap above the porcelain sink at the very fartherst point of the cavernous room at the back of the Old Store. Such as the cobwebs, which had been fastidiously and rather aggressively removed from the places where they had formerly clung. The moths, too, had been forced out, for Johnson was not particularly happy for one iota of the Store’s former mystery and faded grandeur to remain. Not that he had the choice. And, even if he had, surely there was sone sense of romance, however faded and remorseful, left rotting at the back of his modern and desensitised soul?

Noticing the general filth of the cave-like interior of the Old Furniture Store, he had even taken to sweeping up lately. Even though he tended just to sweep the accumulated dust and ash into corners of the vast room, (which remained permanently in a prenumbral state despite the aforementioned attempts at re-wiring and the new electric light,) his efforts to achieve cleanliness were generally to his own satisfaction. Moreover, they were immensely appreciated by those who newly freuqented the interior of the Old Store. And, of these individuals, more and right now.

They crouched in a circle, centrestage, closely contemplating something on the flagstones before them. It was an unsusual assemblage to say the least, since male, female, young and very old were represented in their number, which was at least five. Nobody knew where they had come from, or could say exactly at what moment they had arrived. They crouched on their haunches as though ready to pounce. Heads were turned in and down. One arm supported the weight of one form. All faces, though extremely different, wore the same wrinkled-nosed expression of disgust. The fucking mongrel blighter of a stinking cat had been sick. Again.

As per usual, there was no sign of the vomiting feline. It had, very wisely, done a runner.

‘Now for my favourite job,’ declared Johnson as he wielded mop and bucket with a florish and headed for the scene of the crime.

At this point, some discourse on the subject of the unusual and obviously rather unsanitary, dietry requirements and digestion (or fairly frequently lack of digestion) of the large white cat, which has recently been introduced to the story something in the manner of a furry, white angel of death will perhaps be meaningful, if not entirely welcome. There can’t be that many cats who don’t eat meat. In fact, you can probably take account of their number of the fingers of a single hand. It can’t have been very pleasant for the animal involved, particularly at times when meat substitutes, (you know the type, the quorn sausages, quorn hamburgers – and, failing that, tofu) weren’t coming its way. The cat was, it may be presumed, sneaking its way through Doolie’s sack, while the latter ebbed, failed and possibly even exhaled his last whispering breath, in order to procure something along these lines.

When it couldn’t get fake meat, the cat contented itself with all manner of other things. It ate biscuits, (it was particularly fond of chocolate, though this tended to leave, lion-like, a frightful gooey mess around its slavering chops). It was also fond of any fruit or vegetable that was suitably fleshy, with tomatoes and mushrooms being among its favourites. It was even partial to the odd aubergine every once in a while. The cat ate fairtrade bananas from the Windward Isles, while imagining with very little accuracy what the Windward Isles were actually like. When Johnson was in a good mood, he gave the cat porridge, which it gobbled and lapped with fearful appreciation and with an attitude of a supplicant, which was rather irregular in a member of the feline species, especially one so sizable. The animal was no vegan; it had as little compunction about drinking milk in the wintertime as it showed towards water in the summer. And, truth be told, and rather more often that you might imagine from the title of this sombre tale, it tucked into both tuna and cod. That is to say, it tucked into them, (and with relish – for no creature is perfect no matter how well-intentioned) whenever they were available and whenever the need for survival overcame its other, ethical, considerations.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter.

The cat was shortly to become homeless for Johnson, never a patient man at the best of times and increasingly intolerant of his adopted pet’s tendency to puke all over his clean, cold flagstones, had reached the end of his tether. To quote, ‘I’ve had enough of the stupid fucker. He can fuck off.’ Upon which utterance, both foul-mouthed and heartfelt, a small figure immediately rose from the flagstones.
‘Let me look after him,’ Maria implored.
‘You’ll have to find the stupid fuckwit first,’ Johnson growled in reply.

Chapter Eight

Whether Maria employed tuna, cod or other foodstuffs in her attempt to locate her new adopted pet is not entirely known but may perhaps be conjectured. What is certain is that, a short time afterward, Cat was discovered lounging on Doolie’s sack in an obscure nook to the extreme rear left-hand side of the Old Furniture Store. Lounging is, indeed, a correct description. For the cat wore an expression of having been there many times before, comforting itself among the candle ends and arcane scribblings. It was also waiting for her for, as we have already discovered, this was an animal possessed of a most prescient intelligence. No sign of its former illness was visible, for Cat had taught itself to recover from each new digestive malady with the greatest alacrity. The cat had preened itself most thoughtfully, preparing itself for a new owner. No traces of vomit remained on its whiskers. It’s fur was as white as the very driven snow apart, as will be remembered, from the mottled and rather fetching grey of its paws and stomach area. Maria picked up Cat with the gesture of one used to picking up animals of various sorts. Cat responded by mewing encouragingly and fixing two striking eyes, one green and one black, upon her. Between its two front paws, Maria was surprised to discover it held a small, silver key.

Neither Doolie or Johnson could be said to have owned Cat and, very possibly, both can be imagined to have been glad to see the back of the animal in their different ways. Neither were even present to see Maria carry both Cat and silver key over the threshold of the Old Furniture Store, through its firm door, hanging soundly on strong hinges, into what lay beyond. Johnson, sick to death of this nonsense, had thrust a cigarette between his cruelly shaped lips and stormed from the building. His heavy army boots had crunched and scraped along the floor. He wore them undone over his black trousers. The laces had flailed like snakes. Anger rather suited his gaunt frame and pale face, truth be told. Doolie, after lying spreadeagled in the attitude of a murdered corpse for quite some time (for no-one was entirely sure what to do with him,) had simply vanished one night. That is to say, he must have vanished overnight because he simply wasn’t there in the morning. Many searches had been made, into the very depths and bowels of the Old Store. But he was nowhere to be found and had never tended to frequent the shadows and outer reaches anyway for these were Johnson’s domain. He left his sack behind, of which the cat, as has already been explained, had lately begun to make use. In short, whether, as had been his most fervently held desire previous to his sudden demise, he had slipped through time’s fabric or no, Doolie had gone. It was as though he had just vanished into thin air.

Chapter Nine

Once the door had clicked shut behind her, Maria blinked twice, because it was high noon outside, (the lamplight was, naturally, shut off). Cars sluggishly chugged down the road. Pedestrians walked with varying speeds and degrees of purpose. Somewhere in the background, Maria felt she could hear the sea lapping against the shore, the way a cat eagerly laps at a new bowl of milk. It was an energetic and fairly optimistic scene, she thought. Perhaps they had both been shut away out of the light for too long, she also thought. She stepped outside firmly, the cat held securely in the nook of one elbow, the key held tight in her other palm. Though, naturally, she was not aware of the fact, Mr Harrison was at a garage five minutes away to the north, being talked to rather a lot by a pushy used-car salesman. It was his own fault; he had crashed his Vauxhall while attempting a rather daring overtaking manoever around a sharp bend whilst on his way home from work on one of those evenings where everything was happening one hour later than it should have. A motorcyclist who, (minding his own buisness and piloting his vehicle with the utmost degree of competence) was coming the other way, had been forced to swerve with such a sudden degree of sharpness that the wheels of his rather fabulous 750cc Honda VFR had flown out from beneath him. He had definitely come out the worst in the incident; both bike and rider had crashed, seemingly in slow motion, down and down onto the cold, unwelcoming tarmac. There they had rested for quite some time until the emergency services could be summoned. Mr Harrison sincerely hoped he would be okay, and that the doctors would soon see fit to rouse him from the medically induced coma in which he currently lay. Mr Harrison glanced down at the rusted bonnet of an old, blue Peugeot and, with utter remorse, thought of the crumped front end, snapped chassis and shattered windscreen of his own car, from which he had miraculously managed to escape unhurt and beside which he had been forced to wait for a full hour, whilst it was dragged from the ditch in which it had eventually come to rest, by a team of very stern firemen. It had been an insurance write-off. He had to buy a car and probably, due to the limitations of his personal finances and general lack of credit-worthiness, he would have to buy one of the near-wrecks this utter twat was peddling on his forecourt. This really was the very limit.

In fact, though there is no way on earth that they could possibly have recognised each other, Maria, after passing by the caff, the row of shops and a most unappealing block of public conveniences that someone had, in their infinite wisdom seen fit to erect right outside the Post Office, in due course both reached and walked past the garage forecourt. She saw a pale young man deep in conversation with a used-car salesman, or was that the other way around? The cars looked alright she thought; she would perhaps see about getting her driver’s license one of these days. She cast a disdainful glance at the dented blue Pergeout; perhaps a classic car would be more up her street. ‘Fucking hippy,’ thought Mr Harrison as she wandered blithely past, full of the glorious imaginings of her own vibrant potential future which still, at this point, would have included a large, white feline the very colour of the driven snow, (apart from its belly and paws that is) companion on the passenger seat of said vintage ride, looking ahead with one black eye and one green. ‘Jesus, look at the size of that cat,’ was the next idea which Mr Harrison was fully conscious of having formulated. His attention wandered from the salesman’s empty patter.

Maria lived on the seventeenth story of a council block, which had been built from concrete in the nineteen-sixties. It was flat-roofed, flat-fronted and each apartment within its huge rectangular bulk formed a perfect rectangle, itself comprised of further perfect rectangles. Maria rented four such rectanglar rooms from the council. Though she lived in this mothership of all dwelling places with countless others, she seldom spoke to anyone and, truth be told, failed to recognise all but her most immediate neighbours. She knew no names. The stairwells and hallways were huge arenas of gloom and foul smells often emanated from their depths. Maria patiently climbed the stairs with Cat walking behind her, for he had become too heavy to carry any futher. In the prenumbral shadowiness, the creature’s fur seemed to glow with an eerie white. Maria still clutched the key, which pressed into her palm. She climbed higher, higher and higher still. At the moment she emerged out onto the shared balcony that ran the entire width of the seventeenth floor, the building, as it very often did, seemed to be tipping over slightly as though craning to see something down very far below on the pavement. The effect was of a slightly slanted perspective and no small sensation of vertigo. Maria felt as though she should cling to a rail or hug the wall as she walked along. In fact, she felt as though a black cloud was descending and the air was being crushed out of her very lungs as she endeavoured to reach her doorway. The giant building leaned and loomed. Maria sought to convince herself that this was just a trick of the light.

There were bars in front of the window of her apartment and a gate across the door. She fumbled for her key and the gate swung open, creaking on dry hinges. Cat entered the room with a circumspect air; he was giving nothing away. Maria put down both the key to her apartment and the key to the Old Furnture Store on the table in front of the window. She switched on a light, for the section of the block in which she housed faced away from the sun throughout the day and, consequently, required electric lighting at all times. The corners and the edges of the rooms remained in shadow. They seemed to be further away than usual. Maria made herself a cup of tea. She preferred herbal tea, which she drank with the tea-bag still in the mug. She liked it when fibres of the herbs from which her tea was brewed escaped the confines of the bag and ended up in the boiled water. She drank the potion down, savouring the loose pieces. She smoked a cigarette; this would have been a cigarette from some cheap brand – whichever was the cheapest on sale at her local newsagent. He looked at her funny, the newsagent – she felt he could sense that she was hiding something and that she was not quite what she appeared to be. Or at least that is what Maria thought that this individual, one of many strangers, thought about her.

The cat immediately curled on the warmest part of the carpet in the lounge in front of a radiator. Maria liked her radiators to hurl and beat out heat because, she had some undiagnosed and possibly not yet discovered syndrome which meant that she could not regulate her body temperature properly. This suited Cat down to the ground, for he would much rather be warm and living in carpeted comfort than fed lukewarm porridge by a madman and sleep on a sack filled with the rubbish of a dead man on the cold, flagstone floor of a decrepit Old Furniture Store. Later, he hoped, Maria would provide him with some of the foods he liked best. He wouldn’t hope for cod for that, most likely, had been speared helplessly on a line while its gills flapped madly in the air or, worse still, had been raked from the ocean in a dragnet and cast into the ravenous belly of a ship while its gills flapped madly, just as before, in a desperate and futile attempt to suck in the air through the water which was no longer there. It had come as a surprise to Cat just how long a fish could survive out of water; he had never forgotten this information once learned.

But let it be known that Maria did provide Cat with food that evening, though she would not let him venture outside beyond the confines of the building-wide, gapingly dark balcony that ran all the way along the seventeenth floor of the ugly, rectangular ninteen-sixties built concrete block in which she, and Cat and the key to the Old Store, all now resided. Moreover, Maria chewed noisily on her own food, which was cous cous and mashed vegetables of various sorts and spices. She sucked more noisily still on yet another cheap cigarette and the smoke and carcinogens filled the room once more, adding to the deepening shadows. She slurped noisily on a drink. At just before seven, she started on the white wine and by nine, truth to be told, she was reeling around and totally out of it. All this Cat had seen many times before. In his final moments as a Seller, his master, the owner of the Old Furniture Store had often reeled in suchlike manner. It was a futile attempt to escape his problems and made it seem as though he was warding off impending financial ruin, if only for a few raucous minutes. Maria spun and slurped and sung to herself. She thought of going around to next door to see if there was any friend who would like to come out and play with her. She even thought of going past the creaking, rusting gate that barred the entrance to her property and standing, cold and alone on the gaping dark and wide balcony. She could have seen any number of constellations from such a height had it been a clear evening without clouds, shadows of clouds and pollution.

From within the small lounge room of her small apartment, Maria still felt the floor slip out from underneath her as the building pitched forward. All the stars were out and in their assigned places. The building leant over towards the ground and hung somewhere between the pavement and the sky, though it still suffered itself to be bound by that most mysterious and invisible force known as gravity. No-one, least of all the buildings occupants, could be sure whether the edifice would eventually crumble downward or no. In reality, they must have been sure that it would eventually tumble and fall and collapse to the ground; they just didn’t want to think about it, particuarly as it would make them realise that they would all be long dead and most probably have entirely rotted, each in their own individual and unremembered, untended graves, by the time this happened. To ward of any such notions, Maria lit yet another cigarette, refilled her glass of white wine from a fourth bottle that evening and switched on a small black and white television set.

Chapter 10

Crouching down to eat underneath a rather precarious-looking breakfast bar and among the detrius of a kitchen that had not been cleaned in quite some time, Cat first sniffed at – with the air of haughty distain that he had displayed earlier – and then began – with the air of stolid dedication to purpose also mentioned earlier – his evening repast of left-over cous cous, tomatoes and red peppers. The stars chiseled out the sky above the building inside of which they’d all forgotten they were living out the moment.

Cat found Maria rather strange to say the least. He found particularly odd the way she stared into the snowstorm being displayed on the screen of the small black and white television set. He thought it highly unlikely that she could possibly discern the programme content from the sound, buzzing and distorted, that came through the speakers. ‘Why watch the fucking thing at all, when there’s no picture?’ he pondered, (for, having spent a period of time in the company of Johnston, he was at such moments inclined to express himself in a manner not unlike his previous adopted owner, no matter how crazed and downright belligerent the aforesaid individual may have been. Finding the cous cous not very much to his liking, (and possibly largely indigestable in the final instance,) Cat made his way into the living room in the hope of discovering some answers.

There he found a young woman who might almost be described as a girl. She certainly wasn’t tall, nor was she plump. There were bits of metal in her face. Most of the pink dye had washed out from her hair. She wore black clothes that were a snug fit on her tiny, almost fragile frame, and there was more metal clinging to her earlobes, fingers and around her neck. Somewhere in the room, incense burned. The radiator continued to blast out heat from every angle. The snowstorm continued and the blaring from the television in the corner of the room. Cat was beginning to feel lightheaded. Maria took another swig from the wine bottle and looked up.

Let’s recap.

Mr Harrison, while in the process of attempting a dare-devil overtaking manoever around a sharp bend, crashed his car and hospitalised a motorcyclist.
The fucking cat had been sick again.
Johnston cleaned the flagstones.
The cat did a runner.
No, the cat did a runner before he cleaned them.
Doolie lay unconscious on the floor.
Which was, of course, before he disappeared.
As if into thin air.
No one knew what had happened to Doolie.
Which was what they were all wondering before the cat had vomited.
Except for Doolie and Cat because they, of course, both knew.
It’s just that no-one would find out, yet.
Maira didn’t really didn’t care about any of this.
Which was a sentiment that had existed even before Mr Harrison had crunched down a gear and swung his car into the lane reserved for the oncoming traffic and, in which, he had no right to so suddenly and recklessly place his own vehicle, not matter how ugly and detested said vehicle might be. A moment before doing so, he had not thought about the consequences. At all.
He caused to swerve sharply
The motorcyclist, who is still unconsious.
And became unconsious right from the moment when …
But Maria’s sentiment existed before all such moments.
When Maria was younger, she loved staring into the stars. They chiseled out the sky so brightly. They were all in their proper places, which were the same places, pretty much, as they appeared to be in on the night when she gave cous cous and vegetables to a large, white and grey cat. These foods, though not his favourite, he was grateful enough to have a go at eating, comforting himself with the thought that there had been no wildly flapping gills or other cruelty involved in their production. Then, Cat had curled on the carpeted floor of her overheated and fume-filled living room with his tail tucked neatly around his sleek and corpulent form and stared at Maria.

We all know, don’t we, that some of the stars that appear in our skies at night have long since died. It’s just that, because their light comes from such a distance, taking eons to reach us and travelling through regions which may have been charted but have not yet been explored, we cannot always be sure which ones are gone.

Chapter 11

The next morning. Simultaneously.
Maria awoke with a pounding headache and a determination never to drink so much wine again in a single sitting. And, even if she happened to again drink so much wine in a single sitting, she promised herself that she would at least drink some water before going to bed, and that she would also remove her caked black eyeliner and layers of foundation and change into her nightclothes before lying down to sleep.
Johnston awoke on the cold, flagstone floor of the Old Furniture Store wondering how he had come to be lying there so cold with one leg crumpled underneath him like a despairing murder victim or a person who had once been desperate and had now given up entirely.
He spat. His mouth tasted of ash.
Maria ran to the bathroom and vomited.
Afterward, they both lit a cigarette in the same instant.
Maria puffed greedly on a ciagarette of the cheapest brand available at her local newsagent who, as we remember, distrusted and suspected her of being an imposter or some kind of person in a theatrical constume. She wasn’t quite sure what character she was playing.
Johnston luxuriated in the foul scent of one of the last remaining Malboro Red that he had stolen from Doolie’s sack. The theft had gone entirely unnoticed by Doolie and taken place just a few days before he had been discovered, spreadeagled on the floor of the Old Furniture Store as if dying and desperate in pretty much the same manner, in fact, that Johnstone had found himself that very morning.
Johnstone poured himself a cup of coffee which was as black and strong as the shadows which still clung to the sides of the cavernous, cold room.
Maria violently dunked a herbal tea-bag in a filthy, chipped mug that had once been white and hoped that a few fibrous tendrils would find their way into the boiled water. She topped the mug with cold water so that she could drink it straight away.
He topped the mug with cold water so that he could drink it straight away.
They both topped their mugs with cold.
From somewhere in the distance, came the plaintive, hungered mewing which was unmistakably that of a member of the feline species.
Johnston looked around him and noticed a small unimpressive looking key lying by the side of his sink. He could have sworn it wasn’t there before.
From out of the shadows that still clung to the edges of the room, padded an enormous white cat.