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I stand at the door for near ten minutes and think of the myriad and unfathomable ways I could kill my mother before I put my key in the lock.

“That little bitch has been at it again,” she spits as I walk in; the paragon of getting to the point, that she is. 

“Hello, mum,” I say.

I daren’t ask if she’s talking about my sister. She could easily be talking about Emma because she can’t be nice to one of us without snarling at the other. However, it becomes clear she’s talking about the cat when she picks up the TV Times and launches it. It’s almost hilarious the way the magazine flops through the air like a goose taking off, but I feel for the living creature in front of it. The cat delicately sidesteps, looks at me (bored; I swear) and sits on its haunches. Not giving one solitary shit. It’s been here before, you can see that. 

Give it time hen, I think.    

“Clawing up the curtains again and sitting there, staring at me, all defiant,” she says. “It’s trying to kill me.”

I roll my eyes towards the cat in solidarity. Nothing to do with the fags, vodka and toast diet that we’ve put ourselves on then?                            

“Maybe it needs to go outside, mum?” I offer instead to eyes fixated on Bargain Hunt. The cat has now slunk its way onto the armchair but isn’t sleeping like a cat should. Instead she sits with all the regal grandeur of a sphinx and I admire her courage under fire. We’ve a lot in common, this cat and I. 

Back when mum worked, she was a Ticket Examiner on the railways. The cat was left in a carriage, just after some set of points near Hyndland. Cats abandoned happen way more than you’d think. Anyway, mum and her workmates looked after the kitten in their office, but after a week no-one came back for it and so Honeypaw came home.

Tortoiseshell, she was, looking for love and named on account of her unusual left paw.

By all accounts, their relationship started well. Constant parcels arriving in the post: catnip, jingly balls, fish bites. The nesting stage—a new bed, scratching post, and named bowl. But as the kitten grew into a cat, their relationship grew more fractious.

And here we were:

“Vet says she’s going to need putting down,” mum says.

I raise an eyebrow and look at the cat. “Why?” I say.

“It’s gone mental,” she says. 

Oh here we go, I swear the cat rolls its eyes at me this time. 

“Vet says it’s been spayed before it’s time. I should’ve let it have a litter. It’s hormones.”

I wince. If we’re putting things down on account of hormones, I’m a goner and would’ve been long before now. 

“Do you not think it just wants to go outside?” I say again, already seeing where mum is steering us. 

“Don’t you think we all want to be mothers?” she hisses through gritted teeth. The comment a dig, archaeological-sized … Maes-Howe, even.

Having lived through this shitshow I have decided to abstain from bringing an adaption of these genes into the world. My hair bristles. She knows this is a conversation I refuse to have with her. She’s like a medieval inquisitor, the way she gets into your nail beds with her needling. And while her claws are clearly out, I sidestep the swipe with skill. 

“You seen Emma lately, mum?” I say. My sister, the forlorn hope. 

“Have done, as a matter of fact,” she says, teeth bared in a grin that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” Mum almost barks the words. She’s loud, the cat startles, springs up, back arched, and skitters from the room.

I’m struck dumb. I remain sceptical about anything mum tells me, but this business with the cat seems like projection. The way she wants it to squeal.

The fact of the matter is that having children ruined my mother’s life. She wishes that she’d been unable to, that’s the difference. She couldn’t maintain the ruse of being a normal person past my 14th birthday and so here she is, unmasked, blaming a defenceless animal for all the issues we try to ignore. Lying about the state of its health to deflect from the plain fact that she wants to kill the cat because she couldn’t get away with killing us. But maybe cats are different, who knows, maybe it is going mad because it hasn’t had a kitten. Regaining my composure and being my mother’s daughter, I want to toy with her, so, giving her a flick of my own talons, I ask, “Did you take the cat for the hysterectomy, really?”

“Nope, too expensive,” she says, taking a swig of cold tea we all ken is £4.95 Pinot Grigio.

“I just keep her in now.”

“Jesus,” I whisper and I look at her, she’s tired, anyone can see that. The pair of them, stuck together in this place, cats in a sack, both going demented in their own ways.

“Are you staying hen?” 

This term of endearment, ‘hen’. I shrug and sit down. I’m clearly tied into this relationship and as much as I’d like to leave after the news about Emma, I don’t want to give her any more ammunition. Flicking through channels, we settle on some Hallmark tele-drama. I drift off into thoughts of what I will do when I get out of here. Chinese for tea? Pasta? The world is my oyster. I’ll just stay an hour. The guy in the film has been caught cheating on his wife and she’s just smashed his windscreen with a mallet. I feel sure I’ve seen this before. 

“Tea?” She looks at me. 

“Aye.” 

In the kitchen I boil the kettle. Take the milk from the fridge and pour the wine into the Blackpool Rock mug. A pebble lands in my stomach. They’re heavy, the fond memories of childhood. I don’t hear the cat enter the kitchen on account of the kettle but I feel my hair stand on end. I turn and it’s there on the table, sitting on bills and dirty tights. I look at the back door, the most paranoid door in Britain, with its eight locks. The kettle clicks. A clattering fumble in the spoon drawer produces what I’m after at the back of it and I begin. 

When the wave of fresh air finally hits me I close my eyes. It feels good to breathe. The cat sits down at my feet in the doorframe and I give its rump a gentle nudge with my big toe. 

“Go.” 

She needs no further persuasion but just before she goes into the path that is now a jungle, she turns and nods (I swear she does). A lump reaches up into my throat, one of those pebbles removing itself. And, while I am sad to see my fur sister go, I am happy with what I’ve done here. After all I, in particular, have always respected a cat’s right to choose.

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BIO:

Laura Cooney is a writer and editor from Edinburgh with work widely published in print and online. Happily hindered by her children, who enjoy clicking the keyboard keys as much as she does, she somehow manages to write a poem or flash a day!

Find her on her website at www.lozzawriting.com or on all socials @lozzawriting. When she’s not writing, she’ll be found with her girls, as close to the sea as possible. There will be ice-cream!