Contested space, contested objects – Oliver defending what he considers his.
She came in this afternoon carrying a paper bag with something heavy and round in the bottom of it, and I want it understood that I was there for the whole thing — the bag set down, the rustling, the moment she reached in and produced it and set it in the middle of the … Read more
It got dark earlier tonight than it had any business doing, and she turned on the lamp by the window before she turned off the big light, which is a sequence I have never liked and have never been consulted about. The room went soft and yellow in the middle and black at the edges, … Read more
She brought out a flat cardboard box this afternoon, the kind that arrives folded nearly to nothing and has to be coaxed back into a shape with your thumbs along the seams. I watched her do this from the hallway with some suspicion, because boxes in this house have a way of either containing something … Read more
There is a flat plastic container that lives under the bed, in the dead zone past where my paw can reach without real commitment, and until this afternoon I had made my peace with not knowing exactly what was in it. I assumed dust. I assumed the particular nothing that collects in places nobody goes. … Read more
I came downstairs this morning to find my bowl had been replaced with an impostor, and nobody had thought to ask me first. The old bowl was deep and blue and had a small chip along the rim I’d long ago decided gave it character. It had been there, in that exact spot on the … Read more
She did not go to the desk today. I want that noted, because the desk is where the working happens, and the working happening somewhere else is the sort of thing a cat is entitled to have opinions about. Instead she came into the front room with a mug of tea and a stack of … Read more
I want it on the record that I did not object to the candle itself. I objected to what it was doing. There is a difference, and I intend to explain it slowly, because I suspect no one in this house has fully appreciated the scope of the problem. She brought it home in a … Read more
There is a spider in my window today, and I want it on record that I did not invite it. I found it this morning in the usual way I find everything important, which is by nearly walking face-first into it. The windowsill in the back room is mine. It has been mine since before … Read more
I want it on record that I heard them before she did anything about it. A voice, male, unfamiliar, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen table where she’d set up her laptop, laughing at something in a way that suggested he found himself very charming. I was on the floor at the … Read more
I want it on record that I was not consulted. The reading chair — mine, functionally, though she sits in it sometimes when I allow it — has been moved. Not far. Perhaps the width of three of my own body-lengths, which I recognize is not a great distance to some, but to me it … Read more
