A pink night gown is crumpled on the far side and, it should be said, I’ve been keeping it by my face at night, nuzzling in just a bit. But rolling onto my side, pulling a comforter close, the scent shifts and I real back from something far too reachable. The smell is undeniable and a roll of toilet paper is enlisted to pick out the cluster of cat poo in the bed’s centre. There is also pee I realize.
I love the cats, their neediness, their aloofness – their contradictions – but will admit to a glimmer of relief at soon having to contend with only my messes and desperate emotional deposits. What we have here, on this page, however, is not a discourse on scatology but on domesticity.
My fear is of silence and stasis. In one of my soon-to-be-a-shut-in panics I consider populating my new apartment with a cluster of small, cute and well considered taxidermied animals that might make no sounds but could be used to generate mean-spirited anthropomorphic dialogues within my mind. I need something to remind me of failures recent and ancient.
The silence of my upcoming house equals failure and the cats are the last audible mewlings that might deny such a future. A stuffed badger offers no response to my opening the door and crossing the threshold. There is no leg rub, no pleading outstretched paw, languishing hairball or calling out for wet food. A groomed and stuffed chipmunk or otter though, well they couldn’t offer a salve but might be a sort of mammalian masochism made real – furry reminders or taunts of a family lost.
“Hey dude, yeah, you in the burgundy track pants. [click-click of incisors] We’re dead and so is that idea of family you thought you were worthy of.”
or
“Hey fucker, yeah you with the bowl of soggy Corn flakes, there’s some dust on my coat. You used to empty kitty litter and make a school lunch daily and now [tail slapping on particle board] you can’t even keep a static otter dust-free.”
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