I Called Her Cat

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.

"Just who was THAT? And why are you bedding me when your girlfriend is still here? And why didn't you tell me you had a girlfriend?"

I am sure she would have gone on but the effects of too many drinks got her in both the head and the stomach, and grabbing the sheet, she bolted for the ensuite bathroom. I needed to get ready for work, so took my clothes to the main bathroom for my shower. When I came out it was to see Jane and Cat sitting calmly drinking coffee at the kitchen table in utter silence. Cat as usual in her birthday suit, and Jane with the sheet loosely wrapped about her waist.

She, Jane, looked up at me and asked for an explanation, claiming, not surprisingly, not to be able to get an answer out of Cat. Grabbing a second cup of coffee, I sat at the table and told her the whole story.

"So she isn't your girlfriend? You expect me to believe that you have this blonde wandering about your apartment naked and you haven't even thought about it?" Jane's voice went from tense to practically screaming. There were of course more innuendo, vilification and outright insult, but that is all I can remember from that painful scene.

For the second time I saw a visible reaction from Cat. She frowned very darkly and stood so fast that she spilled the cup she had been drinking from. It hit the floor and shattered, sending coffee and china shards all over the legs of my suit. She also left the room in a REAL hurry! I didn't know what to do for her, she seemed to be really terrified of being touched or coddled, and I had gotten into the habit of leaving her alone when she evinced distress, so I continued to sit, and glancing over at Jane and was astonished to see her crying!

"That poor girl! So terrified of even the thought of sex!" She picked up the sheet and wrapped it more tightly about her, covering what was truly a pleasant sight, crossed her arms in front of the sheet, and glared at me, "You've been hurting her! That's why she isn't talking! You've been taking advantage of that tortured soul! [I think her favourite novels were Bodice-Ripper romances!] That's what you do to women!" One moment she was giving me hell for having a naked sex-slave in the apartment, the next for being the worst kind of man. I could see this relationship blossoming sweetly!

"Done that to you, have I?" I asked in a mild tone, more amused by these accusations and truth be told, more than a little worried about Cat, "I don't know whether or not she is scared of sex; the matter hasn't come up, but she is terrified of loud voices and angry confrontation."

"Oh! That poor girl!" And with that third volte-face, Jane got up and rushed from the room, towards the utility room. Knowing that Cat would feel trapped in there with someone she felt was trying to touch her, I too got up and went that way. When I got there I saw the two of them, both naked, hugging in the puddle of Jane's sheet, Jane weeping, and Cat as usual, without expression of any kind. Including her usual faint distaste at being touched. She seemed to be accepting, if not actively a participant in the hug. Assuming that the two of them were better off without me, I went to work.

And that was that. Sort of. Well, Jane kept coming over to the house, and over the course of the next three or four weeks, she spent more time there than at her apartment. Normally I would have thought this a good thing, but she was more into her Florence Nightingale mode, seeming to think she could help Cat. She spent literally hours, trying to get Cat to talk, cry, show some reaction. She continually broke down, and murmurs of a teary "You poor girl" would waft from the kitchen or the utility room. For her part, Cat didn't repulse her, accept her or in any other way show that she really even noticed Jane's attempts. The only difference I noticed was that she never seemed to mind Jane's occasional hugs. And for her part and to her credit, Jane didn't seem to be too badly daunted by her obvious failure.

She was still sleeping in my bed, but it had become a kind of frustrating platonic thing. She slept in my bed. No repeat of that first night. Not that I didn't try and initiate things once in a while, but the response was lacklustre – as though she was willing to allow me to do what I wanted, but seemed to be waiting for it to be over before it even began. Serious turn-off. So we slept. Cat got into the habit of bringing coffee for both of us at five. Cat never did learn to make a decent cup of coffee, but the ritual had set in, and any coffee at that time of the day is at the least acceptable. And Jane continued to sit with Cat while I got ready for work. The two of them sitting at the kitchen table. Silent. Unmoving. Bonding in some primitive secret females-only way.

As I said, that was for a few weeks. Then Jane had to go out of town for her company and would be gone for a while, (odd... I still didn't know precisely what she did. She claimed to be a troubleshooter, but other than that never spoke about her work.). She was going to Winnipeg, one of those Prairie Cities which are charming in the summer, pure hell in the winter, and utterly baffling to me - and would call me and would miss me and all the usual things lovers say when they are going to be apart for a while. I was beginning to think there was more than one strange woman in my life, but as things were getting hectic at work, I didn't press her, and she went.

III Jane didn't call, nor did I hear from or of her for the better part of a month, then one day I got a call at work from her. For the first two minutes I couldn't understand a word she was saying, she was so excited. She was bellowing into the receiver, and was in such a hurry that all her words became one incomprehensible jumble of sound. All I got from the first minute of her conversation was "...I found her!...My purse... " I waited until she had to take a breath and said calmly,

"Who is this?"

She got very nearly hysterical, and shouted louder and more incoherently into the telephone at her end. Then taking a very deep breath, she laughed and said a lot more quietly, "It's Jane, and I found her! I know who she is!"

"Who, Jane? Whom have you found?"

"Cat, silly! I found out who she is, and wait till I tell you! You won't believe it!. Can you come get me? I don't have enough for a cab."

"I thought you were in ---?"

She started to get excited again. "I told you. I'm at the airport, and I need a ride!"

I sighed, "Jane darling, I am at work, and antediluvian as it sounds, the bosses here kind of get miffed if I walk out in the middle of the day. Seems they have this old fashioned notion that a day's pay means a day's work. I have tried and tried to talk them out of –"

"Idiot!" a lot less vociferous and not a little affectionate now, "I know you're at work, but I had hoped after I told you about my purse and that I didn't have any money you'd find a way to come and get me." Can you at least pay for a cab if I come by your office?"

"Purse? No money? You told me this? Oh never mind. I'll be there in an hour!". I sighed again, arranged to meet her in one of the concourse bars, hung up and went to talk to Jim about taking off the afternoon. He didn't seem to mind, beyond reminding me of a deadline rapidly approaching, told me that I had several days coming to me and if I could get the Wentworth Project in on time, I could have all the time I wanted. Good guy.

I went to the Airport, with a feeling of playing hooky. That feeling persisted when I met Jane, who was at a minimum six inches off the floor with good cheer, so we had a couple of drinks. When she started to tell me her astounding and incredible and fantastic news, [her adjectives], I stopped her, and told her it would keep, that I didn't really care who Cat was, and that she would tell me in her own good time, when she felt I needed to know.

Jane took it, with a little bad grace, but she took it and even ordered the next round. Then suddenly it was closing time, we were in a loud honky-tonk on the South Side, my car was still at the airport, we were both smashed, and the previous eight or nine hours a hazy recollection of poor music, bad food and worse whisky. In the parking lot, waiting for a cab, we hugged and kissed and stroked a bit, then it got a little more sensual. We weren't alone either. There were about five other couples in various states of inebriation equally romantic, and equally indifferent to the carnal laws of that city. Mercifully the cab came before we got totally embarrassing, and we snuggled and necked until we reached my place.