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

Before my trip to Earth, I’d memorized a variety of human expressions and felt prepared to whip them out at a moment’s notice. Don’t cry over spilt milk. I have bigger fish to fry. Curiosity killed the cat. Now the last one took on new meaning.

It felt like a warning.

In this body, on this planet, I was just as vulnerable as anyone else.

Are you still listening? Can you hear me?

I hope so. The next part is very important.

I couldn’t eat the crackers. We were in the staff lounge, crowded around the table with a package of saltines—which were salty, as their name suggested—and I couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t eat them because I was a cat, and if I did, the salt would crystallize in my bladder, forming a harsh chemical block, and I would be unable to urinate for many days. Apparently this was extremely painful. All of this was told to me by Q, who sat munching the saltines, his arms slung over the back of his chair.

I’d forgotten about the computer and was trying to focus on small things. How the staff lounge smelled: soggy, musty. Noises in the background: tanks sloshing, Olive pressing the buttons of a vending machine. But realization kept pounding me like winds in a storm. I wasn’t sure that I could feel my whiskers; everything seemed suddenly blurry.

Mortal. I was mortal. I could die on this planet—die at any moment, from anything.

“Did you know your cat’s kind of cross-eyed?” Q said to Olive, mouth half full. “It’s like he’s thinking real hard and his eyes have just—boop!—gone inward.”

“I wonder what he thinks about,” Olive said, plopping down with a can of lemonade.

“Oh, I know. How strange humans are. That’s what they’re all thinking,” Q said, gesturing behind him to the fish. “You ever wonder why we skateboard? Have pie-eating contests? My cousin Bernie, he just bought his kid one of those whatchamacallits? Those stuffed animal horses on a stick. Calls it Mr. Stickhorse. Has a theme song for it and everything: Come on, Mr. Stickhorse, give me a smile! Song needs a little work, if you ask me.”

Olive took a sip of lemonade. “Rubber ducks. That’s another thing.”

“See!” Q said, slapping the table. “Proving my point. Humanity is a strange, strange beast, my friend.”

Wrapping my tail tightly around my body, I was listening but not listening—seeing but not seeing. I could feel the bones inside me. I could feel myself growing older, second by earthly second.

Norma trudged into the room at that moment, telling us that she’d updated the records and prepped food for the African penguins. “I thought we had a bunch of flooding in the sea lion center,” she said, “but it could’ve been a lot worse.”

Could it? I wasn’t sure.

You might say that I was half in denial as we swept out of the aquarium and into Q’s car; it was bright red with silver wingtips that sparkled in the sun and looked very much like a spaceship, if you believe any of the movies. “It’s a classic,” Q said. “And by classic, I mean it’s old, but tell me, tell me honestly, if you’ve ever seen a car this cool.”

I had barely seen any vehicles at all.

The interior was rather impressive: soft leather and windows that, when cracked, let in a briny breeze. We cruised down crowded streets as Olive tucked me to her chest, and I tried to narrow my gaze—focusing on her daisy barrettes, on flowers, on good things in the world. Norma suggested that we should purchase a cat carrier (if “traveling with Leonard” was going to be a daily activity), but my heart was beating too fast to fully process this.

I just wanted to stay alive.

“Hey,” Olive said, rubbing her dry nose against my wet one, “it’s okay. It’s only a car. We’ll be there soon.”

For a brief flash, I desperately wanted to believe that I was just a regular cat—afraid of cars or the breeze or travel—and I could be comforted by my human’s nose, by a soothing whisper in my ear. But my universe was imploding, and Olive didn’t even know it. I had no way to tell her, no way to make her understand.

“His heart’s beating really fast,” Olive said.

“’Course it is,” Norma said. “Cats hate riding in the car. He should be—”

“No, I mean really fast,” she said. “And he’s drooling a lot.”

Norma swung around in the front seat just as my eyes began to roll into the back of my head. Eighteen hours after learning to breathe, I was hyperventilating, my chest rising and falling in rapid bursts. It did occur to me, as Q pressed the gas pedal, as Olive’s heartbeat sped to match my own, that I was in trouble. Earthly trouble. Here was another downside of having a body: sometimes you lose control.

Dolphins should be running the world. As much as I appreciate humanity, it’s obvious that dolphins are the most intelligent creatures on Earth. (Can you imagine humans thriving so well under the sea, using echolocation and swallowing fish whole?) Given this, I’ve come to believe that veterinarians exist for two purposes: first, to treat the sick and the injured, and second, so that humans can keep a watchful eye on every species, so none—such as the hyper-intelligent dolphin—can rise above them.

No one seems particularly worried about a cat takeover. I am unsurprised. Arriving at Turtle Beach Veterinary Clinic, my bib was slick with drool, and I looked very much the alien I was: spiky, wide-eyed, and shivering. Quiet mews vibrated my rib cage. Q wrapped me in a bright green beach towel.

“He was fine,” Olive whispered. “He was fine and then . . .”

And then everything was startlingly black. Piecing it together after the fact, I understand that my eyes closed in Olive’s arms, that my body went limp, and for a few moments, I wasn’t anything. I did not exist.

Johnny Cash woke