Nonfiction: Cat Walk
Title: Cat Walk
Author: Mark Freeman
Word count: 823
Summary: My Advanced Composition course at SMC is essentially a creative writing class. The catch is, the creative writing is all Memoir-esque, meaning non-fiction stories. In this exercise, we were supposed to describe our neighborhood. In my case, I wrote the story from the perspective of a local cat. Read the comments for my professor's notes.



Do you see the orange tabby cat over there? She knows this neighborhood better than I do. Oh she may not look like an adventurer, but that cat is fearless – not even lawnmowers scare her. I’d always wondered what the neighborhood cats do when everyone is away. But during a lazy summer afternoon I saw the cat patrolling this suburban jungle we call Meadow Wood Place. It seems they roam the streets.

From a cat’s eye view, the quiet little cul de sac is more than just a collection of houses – it’s full of dull colors and infinite sounds. First stop on patrol – my lawn. A thousand unmowed grass blades erupt from the recently sprinkled ground, and the cat looks like a shrunken tiger, slinking through the grass. Green, endless green, shuffling slightly with feline movement, an opening in the grass now – is there a watering hole on the horizon? No, just dead soil with some tiny defiant saplings.

Winged creatures peck and prattle on the concrete steps adjacent to the lawn. The cat doesn’t call them birds – that’s a human term – but it does know the hopping little animals need to be hunted. Claws unsheathed now, their love songs filling her ears, her ears madly twitching, eyes focused, whiskers at the ready, she wants no more of it – a flash of orange leaps from the grass! The chirping stops, then resumes, just higher now, out of reach. To my ears their notes are pleasant, almost melodic. To the tabby, the avian call and response is at most, annoying. Her attention shifts.

Asphalt. Hard and grainy, it comes apart as she gingerly steps across it, little bits of tar scattering away from the swish of her paws. She’s focused on the ground, small, delicate nose twitching in the air. What smells! The far off barbecue, brand new tires, freshly watered grass. Another cat. Where? Too far off – she ignores it, but later on the two will do battle in my backyard, hissing and clawing, a scene of arched fur and backs but with no violence, just the new gray tabby slinking off in defeat.

She is indifferent of the conversations about her – the mechanic talking with his client about how to fix his new car, or the man down the street who fixes jukeboxes loudly trying to figure out what went wrong with that circuit, or the Italian father loudly telling his daughter what he thinks of her new boyfriend. The only voice she cares about belongs to the Tall Woman Who Brings Her Food, and that voice has yet to echo across Meadow Wood Place. That would come later, when she returns from her job as a highway patrol woman and waits for her pet to finish its own patrol. The tabby yawns in the middle of the street.

In the distance there’s an oak tree, a tall oak that’s been around for as long as I remember, that sits out by the yield sign at the end of the cul de sac. To a cat it must be like heaven, extending forever into the great dull, blue sky. The tabby stares down the street for a long time, looking off into the unknown. Most likely she’s never been Out There, preferring to stay within the confines of properly marked territory and a comfy home with abundant meals courtesy of the Tall Woman Who Brings Her Food. And yet she is fascinated by what lies beyond the neighborhood, inching ever closer down the road, occasionally curling up by the vehicular monsters that she only enters when she visits the Short Man Who Gives Her Shots. Is it possible there is still a wild animal left in this domesticated bundle of fur?

I wonder if she would dare to join the legion of other cats that run away from their homes, and give into the animal inside of them. They who ignore the attention devoted to them by the Tall Men and Women Who Bring Their Food and become hunters who see the world through a collection of tattered feathers and blood smeared, unbrushed fur. Is this the fate of the orange tabby?

Her attention shifts. The oak tree is no longer important. She slinks away, letting its shadow caress her backside, but her face is turned toward the big house with the long steps, home to the Tall Woman Who Brings Her Food and the nice cozy little bed where she can roll around at night without having to worry about the big vehicular monsters and their enormous headlight eyes, or large black dogs who she only has contempt for. No, she is domesticated and is delighted to be so. Because at the end of the day, there’s no better place to be than curled up around a ball of yarn, not having to worry about what the street will bring next. The queen of the concrete jungle rests easy that night.