Puss upon Puss

I do fancy thinking ( yes, I'm using a bitch of a word like ‘fancy’), - before entering this world fresh and awfully griefing from being evicted from the womb, I was,  perhaps, a beautiful black cat. Marvelous and clean, light and smooth like suburban grass, and every now and then have mud and dust all over my paws after a good day of playing within the backyards of dogs, or cats.

A few days from writing this we had cats named Ivy and Nyla; peculiar sisters they were, always finding them in their bed  near the front door together, only napping to then later crave the litter box and their food bowl - which sat in the sun on the porch, two floors up in the condo we live at, for now. Their scratching at the glass window always opened a nerve; to the point I nearly threw their food bowl down like how a parent throws down their newspaper or phone. By this Friday we intend packing most of our belongings and successfully moving to The Towers near El Dorado High School. Thus, sadly, we had to get rid of the sisters in order to prevent paying a pet fee, when my mother can barely afford the application and…other adult things. Honestly! I should definitely be taking notes when the time arrives for me to pay for my own shelter.

However, when I first took a look at them while visiting my grandma's house - I believe middle school, barely 15 - they are unlikely to ever be my favorite pet, I thought proudly.

They, small kittens - only peeked at through the cage they sat in, gate open or not - were preserving what later became their dual personalities. In fact, they were the property of my sister who lives in Phoenix, who blended nicely within the warm weather.

Ivy, older sister, had started taking the role as master of Nyla, and she was a strong-headed cat. Only recently, the last time she ever wanted to be back in the cage when my mom, under emotional stress from the landlord, had to drive towards Gallup to drop them off at her mother's - she, most terrified of all, ran around the living room running under tables, squeezing between furniture, and, when she came to a stop in front of my bedroom door, as if realizing the inevitable, I had gathered her and her sister Nyla and shove them carefully into the cage. Sadly though, this cage was the same when my mother bought them as kittens ( I still hold bits of grudge for my mother buying them to appease my sister in Phoenix), so, you could imagine the poor two roaches having to make do with what space they had.

Nyla, the pathetic sister; she barely achieved getting her way, perhaps liked being able to blend effortlessly away from people - mainly me and my mother really. She was a decent cat. Always carried by her own duties of just staying out of the way. But, one day, and this was quite eventful…

This was when we lived in Cordova, in a nice old house near Hoffman Park. On a standard school day, my mother was home trying to prepare herself and the house under good condition as much as she could dwell. I was, maybe, barely getting out of class - remembering how dreaded it came from ending the day so fruitlessly - my mother, meanwhile, was done vacuuming and cleaning the dishes in hopes of starting dinner soon. She went into her room to then start the next chore. Going with whatever her mind drifts to next, she gathered her dirty clothes, and maybe mine, and made her way to the back of the house where, passing through the kitchen, our laundry room was located, and where our two tween kittens had their bed, food, and litter box.

At this time, Nyla - cute and awfully staring Nyla, again, younger than Ivy - was making a count on whether to stay in the laundry room or go into the living room to nap, as my mom stuffed the clothes in the washer and made her way, maybe her mind then terrifyingly reminding her of another chore she needed to do, out and back to her room. Nyla then chose to stay in the laundry room, too scared to leave.

Make note, reader: to enter the backyard was by an old backdoor, and this backdoor was the entrance to the laundry room.

Now, me and my mother would mostly leave this door open for the two kittens to play around (at this point they reached an age where they can run fast enough from predators or bigger cats). But also, shocker, we had another cat named Rio: he was male; maybe 35 or 40 years old in cat years. The buyer: my mischievous sister Ashley, bought him from some dude, who randomly drove in front of the driveway as I watched from the window my sister walk down and grab from the driver, Rio, the pedophile cat.

After a few minutes rummaging through clothes, my mother made her way towards the laundry room, suddenly cautious now since me and dad can be back any moment. Through the kitchen, noticing she doesn't know what to cook for me or my father, she opened the door and walked inside. What she saw - who she saw - Rio was on top of Nyla having intercourse, and my mom, with a fanatic outburst, yelled, “Get out, Rio! Get the hell out!” Rio dashed through my moms legs and made his way out the door. She closes it, locks it, until later when Ivy comes back for food. She turned around and saw Nyla hyperventilating and frightened out of her mind; and I'm sure my mom can reminous about her own panic through memory lane, describing to me when I came through the front door, seeing her still in the kitchen daydreaming. “Guess what Rio did to Nyla?” And then she played the story from the moment she put away her laundry, to coming back in; I remembered her describing how she can see Nyla in that moment becoming her, in cat form. Her breathing was what struck my mother deeply, as she said, “Oh Tristan, I can…Oh! I can just exactly know what that feeling is when after, you're just gone forever.”

Thus, when my sister wanted to stay with us to get her truck driving license here, she brought along her male cat, Duma, and right away Nyla wanted to kill him. Ivy too, but she mainly was curious and became fascinated by Duma - even nearly sparking a relationship, which I'm sure she knew bothered her little sister Nyla.

Rio on the other hand, naturally ran off when we moved to our condo; somewhere probably resting on grass, or chasing the neighborhood dogs. And if I'm being totally frank, we never couldn't take care of him properly because, really, he had his own way of life, almost never coming home on some days. And at some point, we figured he was being fed somewhere else.

I once saw him resting on dry grass in front of an empty house, and looked quite fat, and filled. I didn't want to wake him up so I left him be. My mother, to some of you this may sound strange, actually tried to get Rio in her car so she could maybe rekindle Rio’s living of life.

So What? - there cats - they barely know the idea of consent, sex, and death; we could only assume Rio was an unconscious pedophile, and actually only gathered he was in fact a lost soul who enjoyed the life handed to him, to the lowest bottom of the barrel of survival and intuition.

Interestingly, we have a Polaroid of Rio that we magnetized to the fridge but now laid somewhere in one of the boxes we so far packed.

He used to bite me alot, everytime I came outside to shoot scenes for film class in freshman year of high school. I don’t blame him though, we barely can understand what he wanted, and even from the beginning I could tell he already hated the idea of living with us. He just undermined how impacted he would be by our carelessness. Something, for which me and mom understand, on both sides of fending horrors of our mind and becoming afraid for our misjudged intuitive thoughts about our comfort and depth.

There are days even, when I see a black cat almost silently walking across the path in front, and it stares at me blankly, only to continue down its own way to keep itself on its strict schedule - I do wonder if I was black cat before this - and if I'll ever go back to that.

I, sometimes on days where I'm just having a hard time adjusting myself, would fantasize about my death. And, only a few weeks later, reincarnated as a black cat, I would find my way to my mother and father and somehow communicate that I was their son, Tristan. Once this was established, I would go to each place my high school peers lived and become the known black cat everyone knew was me, as I tried to remain casual among the rest. Even, and please hold yourself, watching some people undress knowing I can't get aroused anymore by humans. And helping them decide certain choices, thinking I had connections to realms that make me psychic. And lightly help them when life got tough; I’d simply lay in their lap, purr, and wait until they felt better. I would be Mr. Golden, The Black Cat From Nowhere. Then later, rebirthed as Nyla… or Rio, The Pedophile Cat of Cordova.