Love Saves the Day

My eyes adjust to all the new light, and now I see Josh leave this strange object so he can walk over to the Sarah-boxes. He starts moving them around and pushing them into arrangements different from the one they’re supposed to have—the arrangement I’ve spent days memorizing. I rush out from the closet to leap onto the boxes, thinking that maybe the extra weight of my body will make them too heavy for him to move. But I don’t slow him down at all. He just says, “Come on, Prudence, out of the way,” in what he probably thinks is a friendly voice, nudging me gently on my backside with his foot until I’m forced to jump out of one box after the other.

Once the boxes have been lined up in two rows on either side of the floor next to the rug, Josh goes back to the strange thing standing in the doorway. He kicks its base and a white light comes on. Then it begins to scream!

It screams and screams without stopping even to catch its breath. It doesn’t scream like something in pain, but like something that’s vicious and wants to hurt somebody. Maybe even a cat! It’s a monster—just like the monsters I’ve heard about in TV movies that everybody says aren’t real. Except this one is! It roars in anger because Josh holds tight to its neck and won’t let it get free, even though it gnashes and pushes itself back and forth trying to break away from him—glaring fiercely right at me from its one awful eye that lights up near its mouth. It gobbles up all the spilled litter from my litterbox and the little bits of my fur that have rubbed off over the last few weeks. It has to move over the litter a few times before it gets it all, but it sucks my fur right up. It’s trying to find me! It’s not satisfied with just the scraps of my fur—now it wants to eat a whole cat!

I knew Laura didn’t like having all the Sarah-boxes up here, but I never thought she’d send Josh to kill them—and me at the same time. I try bravely to defend at least one row of Sarah-boxes from this terrible monster. I puff up all my fur, to make myself look much bigger than I really am, and I hiss at it and rake its smooth head with my claws as a warning. Humans are usually intimidated by this, but The Monster is obviously much stronger than any human—except Josh. He just says, “Shoo!,” waving his hand in my direction as if I were a dog he was chasing away. That he can control this horrible beast with only one hand must mean he’s the strongest human in the entire world. Finally I give up and run to hide deep in the closet, my heart racing. I can hear The Monster roaring near the closet door, but it doesn’t come in after me. Probably it can’t see very well because it only has the one eye. Still, I don’t know how well it can hear, and my heart is beating so loud! I concentrate on trying to quiet my heartbeat, and soon I hear The Monster’s roar get fainter and fainter, until I know it’s gone to look for cats in another room.

I wait until I can’t hear it at all anymore before I dare to creep out of the closet again. None of the Sarah-boxes seems to be hurt, although everything’s in the wrong place.

I crouch in my upstairs room for a long time, so long that the sun is coming in low through the windows the way it does when it will be dark soon. The aroma of meat cooking in the oven is what finally draws me down the stairs again.

I walk cautiously through the living room and dining room. The meat-smell in the kitchen is so powerful that I hardly know what to do with myself.

I’m usually in perfect control of everything I do, but today the meat’s will is stronger than my own. It uses its scent to pull me to the spot right in front of the oven and hold me there, with so much power that I couldn’t resist it even if I wanted to.

So this is where I curl up and fall into only a half sleep. I want to stay at least a little alert, because as soon as that meat comes out of the oven, I’m going to demand that Laura or Josh feed some of it to me. Otherwise I won’t get any, just like with the eggs.

I had thought that I’d be able to circle around the food until it was ready, the way all my instincts are telling me to do. But it turns out that I won’t get to. That’s because the moment Josh’s family finally gets here, I’m forced—most rudely—out of the kitchen.

Josh’s family are his mother and father. They’re older than any humans I’ve seen in real life (other than on TV, I mean). They drove a car here from a place called New Jersey. Josh’s sister also comes and brings her litter with her, a small girl and an even smaller boy. They’re the youngest humans I’ve ever seen up close and not on TV. They took a train here from Washington Heights. I know this because when Josh opens the front door, everybody says how funny it is that they all got here at the same time, even though they came from different places.

“Chag Pesach,” Josh says as he kisses them all on their cheeks. Then he says to the little girl and boy, “That means Happy Pass Over in Hebrew.”