The Cat Inside

By Kevin Dole 2

My cat writes my science fiction for me. At least he used to. His original stuff was quite good, but he's been getting pretty ludicrous as of late. Obscure, cryptic sentences. Convoluted wordplays and inexplicable metaphors...

He's also begun to lapse into autobiography. His narrators are now all insomniac cat writers who are addicted to the nip and hate their owners. When it isn't derivative, it's autodidactic allegory. His latest unpublishable pile of masterpiece is a forty page rant called "Human(e) Traps." It starts off as a near-future scenario in which cats have become a serious threat to the "dominant humanarchy", but the prevailing philosophy, something called "Rational Animism", forbids their slaughter. So to neutralize the feline revolt, the "benign anthropoid despots" deploy the elaborate and titular traps: good homes with warm saucers of milk on the porch, open back doors with light outpouring and high voices saying "Here kitty kitty kitty, heeeeere kitty kitty." Then it dissolves into a heavy handed explanation in which the narrator directly and angrily addresses the reader. You see, cats are slaves to humans who cruelly profit off their labor. What labor do cats even produce?

So yeah, you get the picture. Kind of interesting but totally unmarketable. I don't know what's gotten in to him. Maybe it's because the house is under those power lines...

It was an accident. At least that's how it looked. I was having a period of writer's block, up until three A.M. with no luck. I fell asleep with a blank document on the monitor and woke to find a sentence, hungover, on my screen. I didn't remember typing it, and it was riddled with typos, the kind you make by pressing too many keys at once, and it didn't even make any goddamn sense: "Hjow i havve weondred howq tghe glodfish feel;s imnside thje bow3l." I don't even have any goldfish. Well, I had been drinking, drunk...

I stayed sober through the next night and had better luck, but got stuck with about half a page to go. I had work in the morning and it was all I could do to stagger to bed. I left the PC on, woke up late and had to run out the door without bothering to turn it off. When I got back, the story was finished. It was really good too, in spite of the typos. Went in a different direction than I would have taken, but was actually better for it.

But I didn't write it. I live alone, except for the cat. He was curled up in the office chair. I looked at him, he stretched and yawned, then he winked at me. He dropped a single eyelid, you know how they do. Maybe he did it but didn't mean to. Pure probability--one of those infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters things. Whoever wrote it, it had my name on it. So I cleaned it up and sent it off to Omnilog. It sold, 5 cents a word. So I started leaving the PC on during the day while I was away. I got a lot more sleep and sold a lot better. I didn't really question things. This house is pretty old. Maybe it's because of all the paint chips lying around...

There were signs. He was always pretty precocious. No sooner had I let him in then he was strutting around like he owned the place. Digging up my plants, knocking my pipes off the dresser. I wouldn't have put up with it, but this house is so lonely out in the boonies. It gets to you...

I was starting to develop a following when he wrote this think-piece about the co-evolution of humanity and dogs, extrapolated into the future. I had to change to the title--"Doggy Dystopia" wouldn't impress anyone. It sold, but I was starting to get worried. I wanted to move into better paying, more prestigious markets anyway. To do that I figured I would need to broaden his literary horizons, so I started getting audio books from the library. I'd leave them playing and the PC off while I was at work. He was pretty upset, understandably. I'd come home to find claw marks on the bed and fresh scent-markings at the base of the stereo cabinet and he'd be pretending to sleep over the heating vent. But I could see through him: whoever was reading Steinbeck would get to the part where Lenny kills the puppy and his ears would perk up involuntarily like someone had said his name. So even though he wasn't paying attention and it could have absolutely no effect on him, his style and subjects began to change. He developed a pretty unique voice: short stylish sentences, often single details, layered like impressionistic brush strokes to form a larger image. Van Gogh by way of Hemingway. He started to write realistic fiction, and I started selling to places like The Tapwater Review and got shortlisted for the Klopper Prize. Once he'd established himself, the journals began accepting some of his more experimental stuff, allowing him to work in a lot of the speculative elements he'd been forced to abandon. He wrote a novel, The Cat Inside. It read like a pastiche of Borges, Burroughs, and Vonnegut, but it sold well.

Still, it bugged me--How'd he get like that? Maybe it's because we live in the fallout shadow of the nuclear plant...

I was able to quit my job. All I had to do was smoke a bowl and let the checks roll in. Well, not exactly. I still had to go out everyday so he could have some time and space in which to work. This place only has two real rooms. And of course he wanted to see his share of the money. So I bought him his own computer, with an over-sized keyboard that was designed for people with impaired motor skills, and a bigger monitor. I also got him a trackball--he found the mouse too distracting.

He eventually got used to my being around. So long as I was quiet he could still work. I became like his assistant, bringing him fresh water, changing the litter box, taking care of all the little distractions so he could keep his concentration. He's a deliberator, staring at the screen for fifteen minutes before slowly typing out a sentence. As methodical as that sounds, he still had such imagination. I'd watch him and wonder where it came from. Maybe he got into my stash...

Then he started to fall apart. Maybe it was, I don't know, the pressures of success. He got writer's block. Couldn't get more than a sentence out before he lost it. When he tired of staring morosely at the monitor he'd pace around the kitchen or go work over the scratching post. When it didn't let up he became a total nip-head. I told him it just made things worse, but he didn't need me. He was an artiste--he didn't need anyone. Except when he was writhing on his back on the floor, his itches in need of scratching. When he really got fixing he'd start running around the room like a total spaz. Sure I'd go score for him from at PetLand. Or he'd go on meowing jags. For a while I was snagging him tail from the Humane Society, but they started asking questions after I kept bringing the pussy back after one night.

Finally I had to check him into a vet clinic. They only kept him over night, but when he came back it just wasn't the same. He started to write again, but it was the type of stuff I already told you about, "Human(e) Traps" indeed. I guess I've been complaining too much, because he's stopped. Not block again, he refuses just to write. It's been three months now.

I think it might be over, but it's too late. He's already under contract for a second novel, and I've got to write it for him.

I just can't do it. I can't sit in front of that ridiculously huge keyboard without being paralyzed with the prospect of even attempting to approach his work. I lack it, whatever it is, that special something that makes the impossible work. I wonder, how'd he get it, how'd he lose it? How did he even learn to read?

Maybe it's something in the water. We are on septic out here--but then how come I'm not getting all weird?

Maybe it was that expired tuna I bought on discount.

Maybe it was that nasty shock he took when he chewed through the lamp cord.

Maybe he's just a better writer than me.