‘Kitty’ by Kali Brady

They say you’ll never hear a leopard coming. I don’t.

I am fast asleep. I am unsure how I got home last night.

I only know that there is a leopard in my bed.

Three months ago, the neighbour complained that I was seducing their cat away. They were right, I suppose. The animal had slunk through the scarcely open, cracked bathroom window of my apartment.

It was an effort for an animal to fit through such a small space. It could not go unrewarded. I felt obliged to stock up on cat food.

I was not alone. The cat was a promiscuous beast. Another neighbour two floors down thought the cat was his pet. The old woman across the hall could be heard cooing and clicking in the mornings. Twice I saw him sitting indifferently on a balcony across the road, licking his paws clean after some untold feast. I know nothing of his life in that building. It has a higher rent band. From a distance, though, he basked gloriously.

Downstairs, in our less salubrious block, he was Sailor; upstairs, he was Grimwald.

Finally, the original owner came to plead with every tenant. I heard her stomping and chastising through the thin walls long before I opened the door to a tone that wavered between pathetic and threatening. There were tears in her eyes.

The wandering was not the fault of the cat; the wandering was the fault of society.

People cling to anything and everything after the scarcity.

I could not afford a glazier to fix my window, but I could block the gap favoured by the cat using a draught excluder.

Long ago, when it used to get cold in winter, I stitched old socks together and fastened a red felt tongue and googly eyes purchased from a craft shop. The googly eyes cost more than I expected. I have seldom had cause to use the unconvincing sock snake these past eight years. There are no more breezes.

No one has seen the neighbour’s cat for months. Without multiple humans, he must have lost interest and moved on to, presumably, more polyamorous premises. His owner turned up on my doorstep for a second time, using the same unlikeable modulations.

‘No, I haven’t seen your cat.’

And now, there is a leopard.

I am not completely awake when I become aware of fur and hot damp.

The bed is mottled and geothermal. It is a hot summer. There is no other kind of season left. The sock snake has been tidied away.

The drench rouses me to a distant awareness of bones slotting, as a child’s building puzzle might. We are stacked and constructed vertebrae to vertebrae. We are locked into one another.

My thoughts are clouded. Has the cat returned? My head hurts. I drift.

I’m waiting for my alarm clock to go off when I become aware that the creature beside me is much larger than I am.

He growls softly, formidably, in his sleep.

I open my eyes and, using the least discernible movement, attempt to look behind me. My widened pupils and wrenched neck do all of the work. Our bones remain married, but disturbed.

I see spots and fur matted by swampy heat and gashes. There is a sound. My heart thunders over the whistling metallic panic of my breathing. My shrill lungs cement with fear.

I scramble to remember the difference between a cheetah and a leopard. I scramble through the night before.

The bar at the corner had unexpectedly received a consignment of scrumpy from the countryside. The desolate regulars had queued up hoping that the cider might sing out with sweetness and summers past. There have been no idyllic summers for a long time, but any season in history was calmer than these more various days.

The scarcity has worsened these last six months. Wine has disappeared. Cheese is only available in synthetic form. Lavatory paper has become impossible to find. Lentils and oatmeal vary in bag weight, take it or leave it.

Scrumpy is a rarity, especially at affordable prices. Beer is not always an option. On more than one occasion the bar at the corner has served lemonade mixed with rubbing alcohol and caramel colouring. No one ever complains.

One night three people went blind from a bad batch. The regulars turned up the following evening, undeterred. Where else would they go? One or two asked questions and commiserated with the bar staff. It was bad luck. Rotten luck. The police did not interfere. They have no interest in this bar, in this neighbourhood, in the people from around here.

After three glasses of scrumpy I struggled to rise from my chair. My body is thin and unaccustomed to luxuries. The regulars had shrunk miserably into the grimiest, darkest dimensions of the establishment. This was not a place where people sought companionship. Here camaraderie meant communal loneliness. The sweetness of the drink only reminded them of times lost and past. It is an evil brew.

I returned to the bar, nonetheless, my heels struggling to connect with the floor, to order another. I was shambling into next month’s food budget. If I just use salt instead of stock cubes with the porridge, I can manage. I can make do.

In the morning, before I can open my eyes or want to, I feel the soak under my breasts, the wetlands of the mattress. I am oozing, half-aroused, half-awake, before I come to know there is a leopard in my bed.

He lolls over, dropping a deadened enormous paw across my body. His fur is muddied and slashed. His old scars, infected, a turf of deep Osiris green, are obscured by new, pomegranate wounds. Our backs are finally free of one another.

Won’t all of my discharge make for more pheromones? Won’t the wet hasten my demise? I turn my body, only a little. He is blinking slowly. I blink back.

How can I get away? How do I live beyond this moment?

I shift millimetre by millimetre towards the edge of the bed. It takes forever and longer. I try to hold his gaze through each and every move. To hold him in place. To mesmerize.

His shabby, soiled body makes me too sad. What must he have gone through to get here? His eyes are marvellous and grand, dark snips suspended in low-sun amber.

I dangle one foot off the bed, determined and undetermined as Damocles. I edge it toward the floor, maintaining eye contact, as I move my other leg. The door is on my side of the bedroom. I need to be quick.

I am steadfast. I am sudden. And yet, in a single leap, he has overtaken me. He blocks the exit with inflamed, flared menace. He has one paw over the threshold. There is no escape. I stand, animated by terrified jerks. I may be crying. It is hard to tell with all the confused sensations coursing through my body.

I don’t know how long we remain there. His tail is flicking, banging violently off the corners and walls of the tiny room.

‘It’s okay,’ I say, unthinking.

He doesn’t move.

‘Do you want some water?’

He doesn’t react.

I am thirsty. I expect he is too. I have forgotten that cats are seldom thirsty, that their kidneys are robust enough to survive on seawater and nothing at all. I move one limb with effort, with time, on Mars, choked by gravity and red dust. I pass the end of his nose and walk toward the kitchen. The sweat is pouring down the back of my t-shirt.

I take each step as though it will trigger a thousand atomic bombs. When I get to the kitchen it is a remarkable summit, although nothing about my horrifying situation is remedied.

I walk to the sink and fill a bowl of water. It’s only a fraction of today’s water rations. I take a drink. I can feel the salt in my sweat burning the thin skin around my eyes.

As I place the bowl on the floor, I don’t expect to raise my head again. I don’t expect to have a head.

The leopard looks up and down and up before lapping at the water.

In this moment I am ecstatic. I have pleased him. I have some leverage, and perhaps some time.

Good boy. Such a good boy. So neglected. So alone and fierce.

I reach for the dried cat food in the doorless cupboard above the rusted cooker.

The leopard circles and glares. There is no bowl within my reach, but there is a plate. Why am I being prescriptive? I dump all of the food out and back away. He moves. He sniffs. He eats without unlocking our gaze. I walk towards the front door. I have to get out.

I am dishevelled. I am still wearing the clothes I fell asleep in. I have not bathed. I have no lunch packed. I have no shoes save for the flip-flops at the door. I walk backwards, heel to toe. I am fixated on making the door and yet I am mired by the drool at the sides of my mouth, the wet in my shirt and armpits. I reach for the keys in the fruitless fruit bowl by the door.

The leopard jerks his head as the hinge of the door creaks. Is that a look of betrayal? I know he can catch me in one jump. I know I must escape or he will destroy me.

I have practicalities to consider. I need to work. Even in peril, my sense of servitude shines.

I know that if I don’t leave right now I will miss the last possible train to the paper factory. I also know there are dozens of scabs at the gate waiting to take my place at the paper factory. Scabs linger at all factory gates. They line up against fences. They lurk in underpasses beyond the public surveillance network, beyond care, waiting for a car to pull up from the enclosed city boroughs, waiting to be summoned to a place and task from which they may never return.

In a fudge of movement I can’t register or account for I dash, slam the door behind me and slink, shaking, onto the sticky corridor.

No one has mopped here for a long time.

I can hear the leopard snuffling beneath the door. I can see his pacing shadow.

I need to run. I don’t have any time to waste. I must get to work.

On the underground, people turn to look at the trauma creasing into my face. I look and smell ignoble enough to attract attention. On the street people flinch and swerve. They register my flip-flops.

Yesterday’s clothes, a face imprinted with catastrophe, and flip-flops.

Dashing across the city, I call my younger sister. She will be finished her shift by now.

‘There is a leopard in my apartment. It sounds crazy. I know. But it’s true.’

‘But, how?’

‘I don’t know? Maybe he escaped from a zoo? Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe leopards can live here now.’

‘Have you called animal control?’

‘No. Aren’t they for dogs and cats? And those carriage horses that get whipped in the street?’

My youngest sister is kind-hearted. She is concerned for the animal’s welfare. She wonders about the ethics of keeping a leopard in the city. I resolve to look up no-kill shelters after my shift. I have no time to make enquiries before work.

At the paper factory they don’t care how tousled I look as long as I put in twelve hours. Three hours into my shift, everybody smells as bad as I do. We lift and heave all day.

When I first got a job at the paper factory I used to dream of a position in the deluxe paper grade division. The wages are two percent higher than in the rest of the factory. It seemed impossibly glamorous. My promotion was a cause for celebration. It allowed me to go to the bar at the corner and to sometimes buy apples. It also added two hours to my shift, a circumstance that no one in the deluxe paper grade division is permitted to mention to outsiders. The deluxe paper grade division is an elaborate ruse.

If there were logic or magic in the world, I would fight. I would not settle for a promotion that is not a promotion and employment that demands I measure sleep by the minute. I don’t notice the isolation anymore. My two percent wage increase is spent on however many drinks I can cram into an hour. I use my sole day off each week to shut myself away with old stories delivered on an ancient system that has been repaired many times. I fret the stories will wear thin: I cannot afford the new entertainments.

Years ago, the paper factory would allow employees to take home spoils and imperfect batches. Since the scarcity every scrap must be handed over, as if we were toiling in a diamond mine. On the awful, frequently disrupted underground commute, I used to write poems, between rolling brownouts, on the velvety deluxe-grade paper. Now the entire surplus is pulped and repurposed.

I’m used to it. Yet today, I dream of drawing leopards. All those spots. Snorting. Pouncing. Flashing with superiority.

It is a struggle to get through my shift. I must stay focused. There is no other way to live.

Afterwards, I call my older sister. She is finishing her shift around the same time as I am.

As soon as she answers the phone, I know that my younger sister has already spoken to her.

‘You must call the authorities at once,’ she barks. ‘You must think of your financial situation. You must call the police. He must belong to somebody. You may be in possession of private property.’

My older sister is a fascist. She is still my sister.

She keeps talking. She is off the line for all of eight minutes when my former guardian calls. My older sister has already sent me numbers for the police, for animal control, for refuge, for eating clean, for better living, for decluttering, and for getting sober.

‘Yes. The leopard is real ... No, I haven’t lost my mind ... Yes, I am aware I have had psychological issues, but not this time ... I can take a photograph and send it to you ... So long as he hasn’t left. Of course ... I am going to call someone at once. Why do you keep asking me these questions? Yes ... I’m sure this wouldn’t happen in the enclosed city but none of us live in the enclosed city. No, I haven’t seen Greg: why would I? I have no idea what he is doing ... I don’t care what kind of catch he was. I’m sure he has moved on. I hope so. I do. You know what. My life is my life. If I want to live with an animal, that’s my choice. Why don’t you marry Greg?’

I end the call, stymied and furious.

I flip-flop to the underground station, slapping with conviction. I don’t call any officials. I am too scared. I’ve had issues with the authorities in the past. Who hasn’t? The police are dangerous people. I must remain secretive. I must be circumspect.

I sit on the journey home, through the brownouts, looking up facts, when I can, about leopards. Leopards are solitary; they only seek company for mating. They hunt hoofstock. There are no hoofstock nearby, save for deer in the municipal parks of the enclosed city. Leopards can jump more than 50 metres from standing, which still doesn’t explain how he got through the snake sock crack in the window.

I need to buy more cat food. I wonder if the leopard will be waiting. I wonder if he will gobble me up.

I see myself prostrate and ruptured, darkly inking across the floor, finally gasping with less conviction than before, turning towards the beautiful animal as he laps at my slivers. I am chosen.

I walk up the stairs of my building. The elevator hasn’t worked since the scarcity began.

I exhale.

I stand, wobbling and wavering, in front of the door. I turn the key. There is a pregnant click. A silence. The weighted moment when I step into the apartment. This is my place, festooned with mold and broken fixtures, invasively lit by street signs, cheap, mundane, and cat-less.

There is no sign of the leopard.

Perhaps my former guardian is correct. Perhaps I have imagined the entire episode.

I walk from room to room, turning on lights.

My heart rate slows. Was the scrumpy laced with something? Did I dream too much?

I am too grubby to think on the matter. The possibility of getting mauled to death is no longer as pressing as my need to wash.

I am hungry. I wish for an apple. I am too tired to make porridge. I peel off my clothes and draw enough bathwater to cover most of my emaciated body. Relieved of stink and heat, I have curled myself into a seated ball when the leopard, in a single electrifying swoosh, springs through the doorway and into the bath, making an elegant, precise wave in the tub. He sits and gleams. There is no room or possibility for him to do otherwise.

I rise, thrum under my ribs, moving so haltingly that I have drip-dried by the time I reach the kitchen.

I reach for the cat food and the plate from this morning. His plate.

He follows and moves nonchalantly past me and towards his meal.

I almost slip in the hallway in the great puddles he has shaken from his fur. I’m unsteady. I’m naked. I’m too tired to mop. Even the adrenalin can’t keep me awake for much longer.

I lie down on my bed. It is too hot. It is always too hot. Stealthy as he is, I hear him coming after. He sprawls alongside me, his claws unsheathed and lethal between his toes, almost pushing me over the edge as he stretches into a stunning, fanged yawn.

I hang on.

As if to compensate, he sniffs at my throat, a motion that shimmers through my body and on to the stars.

We look at one another, his pupils sliding outwards and onwards.

I map his scars and spots. The gash across his shoulder has reopened. I lick the snarled fur around it until I’m too exhausted to continue.

It’s too late to call animal control. I’m too tired to speak, to run away, to think, to fight back. He heaves, snarls indecipherably, and brings his tail down across my body, imprisoning me under cartilage and fur.

I close my eyes and sink.

From issue #9: autumn/winter 2019

About the Author
Kali Brady is originally from Northern Ireland. She is a martial arts instructor and a member of Dublin’s most Marxist witches’ coven. She lives with humans and other animals.