Library Cat: The Observations of a Thinking Cat

Missing

Library Cat ran and ran in the pouring rain. His paws started to feel numb and cold as he galloped through watery clods of mud on the Meadows. As he ran, he looked over his shoulder at intervals towards the library. The mirage of its grey, square form bounced up and down through the drizzle with the motion of his run, getting further and further away by the second. To his left was the great hill of Arthur’s Seat, shimmering uncannily in the fog as if superimposed there by a lazy special effects editor. He felt himself panting like a dog. Without stopping he darted across a main road. A car braked just in time. Had he been any slower, or had his coat possessed a little more black than light-reflecting white, or had he not stared in the direction of the car with eyes not quite as vibrant and neon green, things would almost certainly have turned out differently. Eventually he slowed his pace, his front legs beginning to buckle. Calming down, he headed up a small alley, called “Meadow Place Lane”. Torrents of water poured out of gutters as a wind howled all around. Everywhere broken umbrellas lay in bins bent and twisted like electrocuted daddy longlegs. The air smelt dank with the fresh smell of moss and earth, which wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Shortly he found himself in a square. A large tree stood in the centre of it, bejewelled with white Christmas lights. Behind it stood a shop called Scotmid.

I’ve heard talk of this fabled place, thought Library Cat gazing up at the large sign. He sauntered over and sat just shy of the threshold, feeling pleasant wafts of warm air slip out during the moments that Humans entered and left through an automatic door. He thought about the journey he’d just made in an effort to keep alive its various details for the return trip.

There was the library, the big park, the car, and then the… what came next?

But the harder he tried to recall the details, the faster they seemed to recede back from view, like a knowing mouse in its hole when it gets the whiff of hungry cat stalking slowly close by the other side.

“Hello, cat, you look lost.”

Library Cat looked up. Above him was a bearded, gangly Human, quite possibly a student, carrying a large square box, from which he extracted and chewed large Trivial Pursuit segments of some doughy food. It smelt wonderfully of anchovies and tuna. Library Cat rubbed his side against the student, purring loudly, and was duly rewarded for his affection with a morsel of the stodgy anchovy goodness which dropped to his feet. It was the most delicious thing Library Cat had ever tasted. The Human started to move away.

Um, I think not, thought Library Cat, trotting after him, his tail held high in the air, as if the Human had suddenly morphed into the Pied Piper of cats. Presently, Human and cat turned a corner towards a large green door that opened into a stairwell.

“No, no, no, you can’t come in here. Go home!”

I’ll go home when I please, thought Library Cat, but first I’m having more of that stodgy anchovy stuff. And I’m also not altogether sure where home is at the moment.

The tenement stairwell was echoey. Beneath Library Cat’s paws were small black and white square tiles as if its Human designers had entertained a funny notion that one day other Humans might be inclined to play chess there. Higher and higher they spiralled until Library Cat felt the warm waft from an open door. He darted in.

It was a student flat. In the room straight ahead of him a few Humans sat on the floor while drinking a clear fluid from tiny cups which seemed to them to be disproportionately funny. From another room to his left, a big black cloud wafted into the hallway as an unspeakably loud alarm started to squeak on the ceiling, while another Human balanced dubiously on a three-legged chair to try and whack said alarm with the end of a broom. And from yet another room, whose door was propped open rather randomly by a traffic cone, there came the noise of “grrrrr”s and “arrrrgh”s (and worse) as another student jabbed away at a laptop keyboard, illuminated exclusively by the dull glow of an adjacent desk lamp.

So this is how the other side live, thought Library Cat, following after the bearded Human and the delicious hammy stuff into the main room with the giggling drinkers.

“Guys, we’ve got a new flatmate.”

“Eeeeeeeeeee! Oh my god he’s so cute, can we keep him?”

Of course you can’t, you moron, thought Library Cat.

“Oh my God, can you pick him up?” said another, hoisting Library Cat up by the belly so that his head and back end flopped pathetically downward like a damp rugby sock.

Kindly place me back down and leave me be.

“Aw, he’s quite friendly.”

Mmmmm… no I’m not.

“He doesn’t seem to bite or claw…”

I have the power to, should I so wish.

“Careful, he’s looking a bit grumpy. I’d put him down if I were you.”

Yes, so would I “if I were you”.

“Have you fed him?”

“Well he likes this pizza…”

“Make him some dinner.”

Good thought…

“Here puss puss puss puss puss. Over HERE puss puss puss…”

Yes, I know. I’m not blind.

“Has he gottun a collar on?”

It’s “has he got a collar on” not “has he ‘gottun’ a collar on”.

“Um no don’t think so…”

“Is he that cat that hangs out in George Square? What’s he called… Library Cat?”

Honestly, you should really know who I am by now.

“Yeah it’s HIM!”

Oh God, baulked Library Cat, squirming suddenly from a clammy grasp and bolting towards the kitchen.

Out in the kitchen, the smoke had slightly subdued and a window had been flung lavishly open, sending great rolling plumes of icy air into the room. Wary from the overabundance of attention he received in the living room, Library Cat eavesdropped upon a conversation through a crack along the hinge of the door.

“He said, that she said, that he said, that he pulled her on a night out,” a boy was saying to a girl.

“Really… no way.”

“Yeah. And Tom said that Livvy said that Lawrence thinks that isn’t true?”

“Right.”

“But did he say to you anything about what she said to him?”

This conversation is unfathomable, flinched Library Cat, backing away from the door, wondering how it was possible for one sentence to have so many pronouns and not one antecedent. That dark room seemed more my kind of room. He made his way to the room with the single yellow light glowing over a desk and behind it a girl holding her head as if its contents might explode. The room was big and cold. An electric heater glowed in the corner, sending out the throat-rasping scent of burning dust. Christmas lights adorned the window, and a pin board hung, slightly skee-whiff, above the desk.

“This question just doesn’t make any sense!” the girl suddenly piped up, rising from her chair and beginning to pace the room holding a scrunched piece of paper that she gazed at in fits and starts. Finally, with one massive sigh, she cast the paper down to the floor, sending it swirling on a little loop-the-loop and coming to rest by Library Cat’s paws at the door. Then she plonked down on the bed in the darkness; a few moments later her face glowed a dullish white from the screen of her mobile phone.

Library Cat looked at the paper. It contained a quotation and a question for an academic essay:

Library Cat felt sick.

No wonder she’s confused. The professor is trying to intimidate her with the use of semicolons. Punctuation should communicate, not intimidate.

Feeling suddenly sad for the girl, Library Cat ventured in. He looked under the bed momentarily. Dust, single shoes and bus tickets lay variously scattered in its cavernous gloom, along with a single earring which Library Cat was sure the girl must’ve given up trying to find. He looked up at the girl. She sniffed and glided her finger along her phone’s oblong cube of light. She seemed despondent. Library Cat felt moved by her evident despair. Maybe I’ll say hello? He tiptoed silently along the foot of her bed.

“Meow?”

“What the F***!” said the girl scrambling to her feet in total shock, sending her phone smashing to the floor. Library Cat took to his heels and darted out the door and up a small set of stairs into the eves of an attic, his chest pounding and his paws prickling with rushing blood. A few moments later his eyes adjusted to the light. He took a few steps forward, his tail swishing curtly. The attic seemed a little like the Towsery but felt much colder, and had a peculiar herby smell. Mould crept up one wall, blooming in various daubs of grey and green like a Seurat painting, while on the opposing wall, a layer of paint flaked off the side of a stone-cold gas boiler.

Strange pictures hung on the wall – some old oils of the Highlands in moulded gold frames that looked like heirlooms, others plainer and more abstract of Scottish tenements. Clothes hung mildewed on a drying rack, and the carpet beneath his paws felt wiry and scratchy. Above, a skylight window held the moon in a slightly oblique frame – its platinums and black-blues seeming mysterious. Sitting on top of the window was a scattered array of bottles and little lozenges and Library Cat wondered how on earth they got there.

He suddenly felt calmer. Despite its dampness, the attic had a nice feel to it. Excitement and mystery seemed to commingle in its very atmosphere. What’s more, it was high up, and Library Cat enjoyed being high up. Sniffing along the corridor for mice, he heard a noise from a room. Walking over to the door in question, he paused for a minute, and pushed it with his paw. It swung open with a creek. A herby fug hit his nostrils. On a bed in the far corner, under the slope of the roof above, a boy lay on his bed in shorts, eyes half-closed smiling inanely as if in some sort of a trance.

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude”, he said lazily.

Indeed? thought Library Cat.

“Hahaha Duuuude”, the boy repeated again between laughs. “Duuude, how’d you get in, pussy cat?”

The Human’s voice sounded strange – sort of slowed-down, like a cat’s when initiating a fight. On the floor were many scraps of paper with countless bits of writing on them scrawled messily in an incredibly inelegant hand. Library Cat gazed closely at one of them:

Library Cat paused. The Human is clearly a moron, he thought turning to leave. And charming as it is, this place is incredibly cold. It is no place for me to make my new life. They have books, I grant them, but their ways are too bizarre for me. This is their “down time” and yet they have found very odd ways of relaxing. I wonder if most Humans descend into madness behind closed doors?

As Library Cat moved discreetly towards the stairs, something else struck him about the way in which the student Humans live. Up until now, he hadn’t noticed the plethora of notes pinned up everywhere on various walls. Beneath the clothes horse in the hall, for instance, was one that said the following:

Upon the door of the bedroom he’d just left was another note, much longer, written on a torn piece of paper:

That’s it I’m staying! thought Library Cat impulsively upon learning that mice inhabited the flat in plentiful numbers.

Then a new thought occurred to him. Why do Humans over-communicate when it comes to nonsense and under-communicate when it comes to serious things? And why do they use their voices freely when it comes to nonsense, but resort to the pen and paper when it comes to reasoning? He looked over the two angry notes… He noticed how one was signed by “Tiff” and seemed angry but also quite warm, whereas the longer one wasn’t signed by anyone and referred to “us” instead of “me”. This seemed to give the vague impression that it spoke for, or was trying to look like it spoke for, the feelings of an entire group. Consequently, it possessed a certain heavy-handed gravitas, and a warmongering feel. A rhetorical flexing of the muscles. It gave the impression that the “war-on-household-chores” was not equally weighted on each side, but instead much more powerfully weighted on the side of the “us”, and thus aimed to intimidate Lawrence into action by suggesting he might alienate himself even further in this barren, cold, lonely, draughty upstairs part of the flat lest he fail to respond appropriately.

Yet downstairs it was all babble and fun, and the chatter stood as irrefutable proof that any one of the downstairs students could just as easily have come upstairs and told these things to Lawrence face-to-face, but chose not to because the anonymity, and reason, and rhetorical power of a good note nails the point home further, and is served with a bonus of a side order of ostracism. Suddenly Library Cat felt lonely, as if Lawrence’s peculiar isolation up here was seeping out through the bottom of his door and across the landing and into Library Cat’s skin like an airborne disease. He felt sorry for having thought him a “moron”. I bet he’s colder up here as well, considered Library Cat beginning to shiver himself. Trotting down the stairs, he tried to think about Puddle Cat to cheer himself up, but her beautiful image was lost amid the clamour and cold. He went towards the front door, looked up at the lock and mewed until someone came to his aid.

“The cat wants to go out…”

“No, no, don’t let him go out! Is he OK? He might get lost. Guys I think we should call Animal Protection. What if he gets hit by a car?”

Look, I’d rather just go, thought Library Cat, feeling suspicious at the Human’s sudden fit of righteousness.

“I’ll take him downstairs.”

Library Cat felt himself being scooped up, and bounced down the great echoing stairwell of the tenement, feeling more relieved with each descending storey until he was by the front door.

“Bye bye, puss, take care!” said the student disingenuously, closing the door behind him and leaving Library Cat alone and cold once again.

Recommended Reading

The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown.

Food consumed

Anchovy pizza.

Mood

Curious, becoming lonely.

Discovery about Humans

Humans can be alienating and cowardly when it comes to speaking their mind.