Silent Paws

The bird was already dead by the time I got to it. A sparrow, I think, though it's hard to tell when they're that small and the head's at that angle. I had it in my mouth before I understood what I was doing. Warm. Still warm. That's the thing about birds. They hold heat longer than you'd expect.

I dropped it on the mat.

"Jesus, Marmalade."

That's Ellen. She named me. I don't know why she picked that. I'm orange, sure, but I'm not a preserve. She says it suits me. She says a lot of things.

She scooped the bird up with a paper towel and threw it in the trash. Third one this week. I don't know why she keeps count. She stood at the sink after, washing her hands longer than necessary, like she could scrub something off that wasn't there.

"You have to stop," she said, not looking at me. "It's cruel."

Cruel. I turned that word over the way I turn over a beetle, checking for the soft parts. The bird didn't suffer. It was in the window before I got there. Hit the glass at full speed, dropped to the sill, and by the time I jumped up it was already going. I just finished what the window started.

But Ellen doesn't want to hear that.

She went back to her laptop at the kitchen table. The screen lit her face blue. She's been on that thing more since Marcus left. Working, she says. I don't know what kind of work happens at eleven at night, but it keeps her hands busy and her eyes away from the empty chair.

I jumped onto the table. She didn't push me off. That's how I know it's bad.

"Don't," she said, but she didn't move me. Her fingers kept going, click click click, little sounds like something small and trapped.

I sat on the corner where the sun hits in the afternoon. There wasn't any sun now, just the lamp above the sink and the blue glow. I watched her. She has a way of biting her lip when she's thinking, and she was biting it hard enough to leave a mark.

The apartment's small. Two rooms and a hallway that isn't really a hallway, just a space between things. I know every inch of it. The scratch on the doorframe from when Marcus brought home that chair he found on the street. The water stain on the ceiling that looks like a fish. The spot under the radiator where the floorboards creak no matter how light you step.

I know the sounds too. The neighbor's TV through the wall, always too loud. The elevator grinding up and down. Ellen's phone, which buzzes in patterns. Three short, pause, two long. That's Marcus. She doesn't answer.

She closed the laptop. Stood. Walked to the window and looked out at the street. Nothing out there but the usual. Cars. A man walking a dog that pulled at the leash. The streetlight flickering the way it's flickered for months, and nobody's come to fix it.

"I'm going to bed," she said.

I followed her. Of course I did. That's what I do.

She left the bedroom door open a crack. I waited until her breathing changed, that slow shift when the body lets go. Then I pushed through.

The bed's too big for her now. She sleeps on one side, the left, curled toward the middle like she's still making room. Her hand was stretched out over the empty half. I put my head under it. She didn't wake, but her fingers curled into my fur, automatic, the way they always did when Marcus was there and I slept between them.

I stayed still. Listened to the building settle. Listened to her breathe.

Here's what I know about Ellen. She doesn't eat unless someone's watching. She checks her phone in the middle of the night and puts it face-down after. She cries in the shower, which she thinks I can't hear, but water doesn't hide everything. She talks to me more than she talks to anyone else, and she talks to me like I understand, which I do, but not the way she thinks.

She thinks I'm simple. A cat. Eat, sleep, kill birds, repeat.

She's not wrong, exactly. But she's not right either.

I've been here since before Marcus. She got me from a shelter when I was small enough to fit in her palm. She was different then. Lighter. She laughed at things that weren't funny, just because. She'd pick me up and hold me against her chest and I could feel her heartbeat through my whole body, fast and sure, like she was running toward something.

Then Marcus came. Then Marcus left. And now she's running from something, I think. Or standing still while it catches up.

I don't know what happened. I wasn't there for the fight, if there was one. I just know he packed a bag on a Tuesday and didn't come back. She didn't cry until the door closed. Then she sat on the floor with her back against it and I sat with her, and we stayed like that until the light changed.

That was six weeks ago. Maybe seven. Time moves different for me. Faster and slower at once.

The window in the bedroom faces the alley. I can hear things out there at night. Raccoons. Rats. Once, a fox, which doesn't make sense in this part of the city, but I know what I heard. I wanted to go out. I always want to go out. But I don't. Because Ellen needs me here.

That's the thing nobody understands about cats. We choose. We're not like dogs, who love you because you feed them. We love you because we decide to. And once we decide, that's it. You're ours.

Ellen is mine.

She shifted in her sleep. Her hand tightened on my fur, then loosened. I heard a sound from the other room. The phone. Three short, pause, two long.

She didn't move. Her breathing stayed even. But her heart, I could feel it through her palm, kicked up, just for a second. Then settled.

She's not asleep. She's pretending.

I don't know what she's waiting for. I don't know what any of them are waiting for, the humans, with their phones and their doors and their paper towels. They spend so much time not doing things. Not answering. Not eating. Not saying what they mean.

I killed a bird today. It was already dying. I finished it.

Tomorrow I'll probably do it again.