Leonard (My Life as a Cat), Carlie Sorosiak [7 ebook reader .txt] 📗

with a large group of people. There were no dinner forks. No crystal chandeliers. I was an outsider, unable to present a knock-knock joke, striped fur ruffling as humans clutched their chests and snickered. My heart thumped in my rib cage.

“Leonard!” Olive gasped, reaching down to scoop me up. “How’d you even get in here?”

We all lurched forward then, the bus driver slamming on the brakes and yelling from the front seat, “Please tell me that isn’t a cat!”

What other animal could I be? I suppose, if my fur was fluffed enough, I might pass for a bear (a rather small, catlike bear). Perhaps even a young tiger, in the right lighting, from a far distance away. Alas, I could not deny the pads of my paws or the sharp points of my ears, so we were told to leave the bus immediately—Olive, Norma, and I. We watched it spurt and gurgle away, sloshing through storm puddles, everything glistening under a thin haze of dew.

It was Olive who eventually broke the silence, her shoes scuffing the sidewalk. “I don’t understand how he even managed to get in there. It’s amazing.”

Norma appeared both impressed and displeased. “Amazing is one word for it.”

“Do you . . .” Olive said, pausing in the middle. She was still cradling me in her arms. “Do you think that I could maybe keep him? Really keep him? If we put up flyers and no one says he’s theirs?”

Norma scratched the back of her neck, just underneath the bandanna, her vest gleaming in the heat. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, sailor. It’s a big responsibility. Huge. How does Frank feel about cats?”

Olive widened her eyes. “I can’t just turn Leonard over to the shelter. I know what happens to a lot of cats at shelters. Please? I promise that I’ll take care of him all by myself. We won’t bother you at all.”

Norma softened a bit, blowing air from her lips. “I can’t promise anything. But how about we bring Leonard to the vet, get him all checked out? Take things from there.”

The sky was simmering then, a brilliant shade of blue. My shadow interlocked with Olive’s on the sidewalk.

“Okay,” Olive said, satisfied for the moment. “Are we heading back to the house?”

“Heck no,” Norma said. “We’ve got to keep this show on the road. The aquarium’s not too far. You mind walking a bit? I can take Leonard, if he’s weighing you down.”

“No thanks,” Olive said. “I’m good.” She held me closer still, and I found—to my surprise—that I didn’t mind at all.

Perhaps I should explain the consequences of one of my species being discovered by a human. Say you’ve taken on the form of a walrus and are living in a remote pod of mammals in the Arctic. You’ve gotten the hang of your flippers; you are able to expertly wield your tusks, skillfully twitch your whiskers. But suddenly an explorer visits your part of the world and witnesses—through the night vision of his expensive camera—that instead of snoozing with the other walruses, you are waddling to the beach every evening, scrawling complex mathematical equations in the sand.

What, then?

Never trust a human. That’s what my species believes. We are warned very clearly before our departure to Earth about maintaining the secret, about the consequences of saying, I am not like you. I’ve heard this argument so many times before: that revealing ourselves would place our entire planet at risk. Wouldn’t the humans—especially the humans—try to invade us, colonize us, change everything that we are?

By now, you might have figured it out: that I believe in the goodness of people. That I was willing to give up anything and everything to become one, even for a month. Even for a day. Of course, there was a chance that humans would visit us, disrupting our lives of logic and harmony—but I still remember staring at a dark horizon and wishing that humans would come.

Maybe someone, then, would care about my day.

A man named Q met us at the aquarium door, and at first I didn’t identify him as human. He was wearing a foam fish head, an enormous backpack, and a shirt with a variety of palm trees. A Hawaiian shirt, I’ve come to understand—the king of shirts. If I could wear any item of clothing, it would be from Hawaii. For a second I was envious of him: how he so easily extended his hand to Olive, greeting her in way that I never could.

“You must be Olive the granddaughter. I’m an old friend of Norma’s,” Q said, tipping his fish hat, then peering down at me. His skin was white, and his eyes, I would later realize, were the same color as the aquarium tanks. “And who’s this? My new boss?”

Olive giggled—the first time I’d heard a human laugh outside of a television program. The noise unraveled me slightly; I didn’t know anything could sound like that. Like lightness itself.

“This,” Olive said, “is Leonard.”

Q sized me up. “Nice-lookin’ cat,” he finally said, which I knew was factually untrue. Hadn’t he noticed the notch in my ear? The way my tail bent to the side? Thankfully he made no comment about letting a cat into an aquarium. What he did was open the door.

Inside, the walls glittered. A colossal model stingray shimmered from the rafters. I had never pictured an aquarium—had no episode of I Love Lucy to guide me—so each curve of the wall, each bend of the path, felt like landing on an alien planet all over again. Everything was brilliant and quiet and blue, tanks lit up in the near darkness. And so many fish! Gigantic fish! Miniature fish! Fish with golden fins, swishing tails, stripes down their backs. When Olive set me down, I froze on the rubber floor, in the halo of a penguin footprint, absolutely in awe of life on Earth.

Norma volunteered to take Olive to the