I called her Cat. I don't know what her name was, and I never heard her speak or for that matter make a sound, not even when she burnt herself on the stove one day. She was probably in her mid thirties, blonde in a washed out kind of way and neither particularly pretty nor exceptionally ugly. In fact you wouldn't even have noticed her, quiet as she moved, if it weren't for one little quirk.
She hated clothing. I had tried on a couple of occasions to get her to wear at least panties and an apron, but no dice. She would stand patiently while I put them on her and then remove them equally as calmly. There was no indication of distress or dislike beyond the faintest look of scorn in her pale blue eyes. So for the past few months, I had stopped trying to get her to wear clothes, and she had padded about the apartment without making a sound.
She was clean enough, even tidying my mess once in a while, and she would generally stay out of sight if I was occupied with my work, but if I decided on a night of TV and Pizza, she would enter the room and silently sit in the corner by the door, and watch. It became a calming influence on my life, for the most part. And although we never touched, beyond an accidental brush in a doorway, I came to feel very close and protective of her.
I would generally talk to her, the way you would a cat, about what a bad day it had been or the neat things outside the window, but, like a cat, there was no response that I could discern. I have no idea where she had come from and I doubt I would ever find out where she was going when she decided to leave. She slept in the utility room, (her choice), ate when she was hungry, and once in a while showed that she had at one time had SOME semblance of an education – she could cook! When she decided to. I have no idea how she got the groceries, but about once a week I would come in and find a full course meal awaiting me.
I guess I had better get back to the beginning. I was out of town last September at my cousin Cheryl's wedding – she married one of those stockbroker types – all smarm and charm and little substance. I made a long weekend of it, and returned tired and dirty and broke about eleven o'clock one Tuesday night, and there was Cat, squatting by the door to my top floor apartment. I thought maybe she was hiding from someone – this building was an old one, and when the owner cut up the Penthouse into two suites, for some reason he placed my door in a niche so that it wasn't obvious that there was a door there. I have had some of the neighbourhood junkies hide there before, and usually a simple "Excuse me!" was sufficient to move them to the stairs again.
Cat was different right from the start. She looked hungry – who on those streets does not – but her clothes were good quality and obviously chosen with care. She stood immediately upon my arrival and instead of sidling for the stairs in that apologetic, fearful way, to which I had become accustomed, she looked me in the eye, said nothing and waited for me to open the door.
Amused and not a little intrigued, I figured "what the hell?" I could manage a slight girl with no obvious weapons, and opened the door. She glided silently in ahead of me.... I wonder to this day how she managed to be so quiet in heels on a wooden floor... and proceeded to give the apartment a thorough inspection, me behind her all the way. I asked a couple of times what she wanted and who she was looking for, but when I got no answer, I decided that she would tell me in her own good time, got a beer for each of us and motioned to the living room.
She took the beer, still expressionless, and moved into the living room, removed her coat and before she was completely settled on the couch, had finished the beer.
Then she looked up at me. And handed me the empty bottle. And fell over. Dead asleep or dead drunk or stoned beyond the ability to help it – or faking it better than anyone I had ever seen do before. It didn't matter at all. I Always am a sucker for a lady in distress, so instead of bundling her unconscious form out to the garbage chute I rustled up a spare blanket, covered her and went to bed, knowing I would be up early enough to make sure she was out of the place before I went to work.
I awoke sometime in the night to pee, and her bundled form on the couch reassured me that she hadn't made off with the TV or the computer, the only things of value in the apartment. I noticed obliquely that she had kicked off her shoes and went back to bed. I awoke to the usual annoying DJ at 5:00, and opened my eyes to see her standing in my doorway, totally nude, with a cup of (really bad!) coffee in her hand. As I said, she was a washed out blond and the sparse pubic thatch at the juncture of her thighs showed that it was her natural hair colour. She was trim, high breasted and her stance and movements showed a high level of fitness. She had been, or was still, a dancer or gymnast.
When she saw me awake, she walked over to the bedside and put the coffee on the nightstand. Thinking that opportunities like this don't happen every morning I reached out and stroked her flank.
She went completely rigid, and without a move or expression, save for tears starting in her eye and the faint involuntary tremor that terror lends to hands and eyelids, she waited until I removed my hand, and then calmly walked out of the room. I felt so bad about her obvious, if repressed fear, that I never tried that or anything sexually overt again., loathe to force my attentions where they were not wanted in the first place, and my upbringing was such that I was constantly forced to do and say things that were utterly repugnant to me, and at an early age had left home, vowing that I would never force my opinions or actions on another.
Cat's reaction to my rather gentle advance was such that it was obvious to me that she would have permitted anything I offered – and hated both the act and the person committing that act. From then on, any touching I did was because it was necessary, accidental, or in the case of the panties and apron, an attempt to make the girl feel more at home. Those actions were done with lots of explanation, slow gentle approaches and an instant backing off if I saw her become the least distressed.
I went to work that morning a little apprehensive about my goods and chattels, but feeling that if I had offended her so much that morning with my touch, she would have left. In fact it was a mystery to me why she had not screamed, thrown a punch or run like hell at the time. Nonetheless, I felt badly enough about my gauche behaviour, that I hadn't the heart to throw her out on the street. I told her only that I was going out for a while, and left, half certain that I would return to a gutted apartment. When I did come home from work, everything was as it had been that morning, no sign of Cat, nothing missing. She shyly popped out of the kitchen a moment later, still naked and that was that. A routine had begun.
It was the second night when I got up to pee that I noticed that she wasn't on the couch, and checking the appliances and small valuables, discovered her curled up in her blanket on the floor of the utility room next to the drier. Over her head her clothes were neatly hung on a nail. Even her underwear had been cleaned, ironed and hung with the rest. I went out that week and got a small futon mattress and placed it without fanfare in "her" corner, and although she never gave any indication that she had even noticed the gift, I got a feeling of gratitude. Maybe it was all in my mind, but it made me feel better, didn't hurt her, so who cares?
Of course it took a while for me to discern distress, or for that matter any emotion, in one whose face was an almost perfect mask of indifference.... Over the course of the next two or three weeks I tried actively to get a reaction out of her. And as far as she was willing to evince a reaction, I got some. I discovered that she didn't like being touched even in the most impersonal way, didn't like shouting, if I reacted in a typically male manner to some football game on the TV she left the room in a hurry, and wouldn't return, sometimes for hours. She also adored flowers, would spend hours arranging them, and would make herself scarce whenever the telephone or the doorbell rang.
I have few friends of the variety that like to "drop in" and sit for a time "visiting", but when they did show up, Cat was scarce. Only once had a man who was introduced as the boyfriend of a girl who would occasionally come over to watch football, (her current husband didn't like televised sports), came into the kitchen where I was getting a couple of snacks together, and said that he thought he had seen a naked woman coming out of the bathroom in the hall. I simply raised an eyebrow, and embarrassed, he went back to the TV. And once I had bought a large bouquet of flowers for a co-worker to celebrate the arrival of her second child, and while I was changing prior to going to the hospital to present my gift, Cat had them out of the wrapping, in a vase and arranged in a way that was subtle and pleasing. I picked up some more flowers on my way to the hospital, and began making a habit of bringing the odd bouquet home when I thought about it.
She didn't seem to be a real nuisance, didn't ask for anything, kept out of sight when I had friends over and cooked once in a while. I stopped worrying and wondering, and we became housemates. The grocery bill was a little higher, but that was the only noticeable impact of her arrival, and in very short order she became a sort of housecat.
Until Jane.
II Jane was a girl from this city I met and subtly lusted after, at my cousin's wedding, and we had been going out for coffee or drinks in a desultory way since; until her boyfriend left her in one of those dish-smashing-say-things-you-can-never-take-back scenes, and she washed up at my door at two in the morning, drunk and not a little horny and in need of sympathy and reassurance as to her desirability. I was loathe to turn her from the door, even in that defenceless state.
So I took her to bed. It was one of those nights with a drunk that I do not remember with any great pleasure. She was willing, but uncoordinated, I was not completely sure that this was a good thing, but my libido, as usual took over. So we bumped each other, hands and lips went to the wrong place, or to the right place in the wrong way... accidentally or not. She placed an elbow in my eye at the same time as she rather forcefully slammed a knee into my belly, and I left an unintentional bite mark on one of her breasts... but eventually we managed to stumble into that ageless position and complete that most primal of acts. It was probably the worst sex I had ever taken part in. It was glorious! But I forgot about Cat and her habit of bringing me coffee in the morning.
At five she showed up with the coffee, looked only very mildly surprised at the sight of Jane, placed the coffee on the nightstand and started to leave. All would have been fine if Jane had not decided at that moment to wake up, take in the sight of Cat in all her naked glory, and scream.
Now personally I would have thought that a cry of surprise would have been sufficient, but she grabbed her temples and moaned then proceeded to curse me out in no uncertain terms. This litany of low intense unrepeated vilification, more than the scream seemed to fascinate Cat and for the first time I saw some overt reaction on her face. It could only have been called a smile by the most charitable, but there was a definite lessening of the unrelieved indifference, a slight almost microscopic lifting of the corner of her mouth and she stood in obvious fascination until Jane had to take a breath, then calmly turned and walked out the door.
