Library Cat: The Observations of a Thinking Cat

The Black Dog

And then some days, everything is strange.

Just over a week had passed since Library Cat’s attempt to go missing. His old home returned to him in a sort of embrace with each vase and box of books seeming to apologise for having stood by silent during his untimely exodus. Nothing was said about the library books; they stood in his bedroom stacked up just as they usually did. With each afternoon that passed a heavy, grey rain lashed the windowpanes like a malevolent ghost, harder and harder as winter sunk its jaw deeper and deeper. Ginger-coloured leaves started to blacken and rot. People stopped going outside. Cats stayed in the warm.

And yet this particular day saw Library Cat on a long walk. Something was scurrying in his mind, around and around day and night, keeping him awake. A walk was always an attempt to purge such cog-spinning moods.

They always seemed to help. They always seemed to ease things…

At this hour – 4 am – the drizzle had given way to a velvety, clear night. The moon hung freshly in the sky above, decorated with countless stars that flickered like lighthouses across a misty, calm sea. On the fuggy Cowgate, the moon’s whiteness illuminated the backs of mice and rats as they scurried behind bins and down drains.

And yet Library Cat hardly noticed them.

As he climbed Borthwick’s Close towards the Royal Mile, a particularly foolhardy rat scuttled right across his paws. Yet Library Cat hardly winced.

As the clock of St Giles chimed the hour of 4.15 am, our little black and white cat was struck with a curious feeling. It washed right over him with the same speed it takes light to travel two inches, and in its vast soundless wake, a deep and profound tiredness seemed to spread through his body and sink down into his every limb. Somewhere, deep within the plumbing of his brain, a plug had been pulled. The elixir that swirled down the plughole, sparkling and unstoppable like the sand of an egg timer, was neither the iridescent manna of happiness, nor indeed the red, clotting molasses of fear or anger or jealousy.

It was, quite simply, the elixir of wellbeing.

Library Cat walked the length and breadth of the Royal Mile for several hours. It’ll be gone soon, it’ll be gone soon, it’ll be gone soon. Something, and he wasn’t sure quite what, was getting the better of him. He skulked up past the gallant City Chambers and eerie Mercat Cross where foreign tourists had already started to congregate for the day’s first underground ghost tours. Several people spotted him and came over to tickle him.

“Here, puss puss puss puss!”

But Library Cat just walked on, not even stopping to see who they were. The cobbles felt tacky under his paws; some were lathered with spilt fizzy drink, while others were thickly rinded with food muck. Normally, these might consist of little snacks. But right now, Library Cat felt he hardly even had the energy to sniff them.

It must be made clear at this point, Human, that normally Library Cat felt perfectly comfortable in his own company. He would trot along with his mind stretched out alongside the warm embers of his thoughts. He would heat his soul by them and feel them diversify his emotions. They made him feel free and alive. But now his thoughts seemed to writhe like salted slugs, their churning a physical agony, and their twisted dance too ghastly to behold. Library Cat wanted rid of them. Loneliness started to tower up around him in great sheets of Perspex. He suddenly felt enclosed within the sheets. Life felt muted. Other Humans felt distant; even their chatter and coos of affection felt as if he was hearing them down a long, hollow pipe.

But the salted slugs writhed louder than ever in a froth of red, like the macabre death cries of a bloody war that no one else could see.

What’s going on?

As he turned the corner onto George IV Bridge, he noticed odd new thoughts rushing into his head that seemed to open and close absurdly like tiny little cocktail umbrellas. One such thought he had was to chase his tail, and that if he did, his mind would feel much better.

I outright refuse, thought Library Cat sternly to himself, the still-glimmering rational quarters of his brain kicking in. I’m not going down that road again. You can give that one up, Brain.

Library Cat had once had the misfortune to be struck down with a severe bout of tail chasing in his younger years. “Silly Cat!” the Humans would say, many of them laughing at the same time. “Probably got fleas… quit being daft!” What none of them seemed to understand was just how strangely addictive tail chasing was to the cat in question. Aside from knocking over various ceramic ornaments, tipping them precariously towards the fireside and setting many a plate of food flying, the tail-chasing cat in question would often be scolded by a proximate Human for “being so stoooooopid”. This was difficult to hear, when your brain was completely deluded and telling your paws and your mouth that your tail really was a mouse, when deep down you knew, really, something was wrong with your head but you couldn’t do anything about it, because your head was in charge of you, and yet it was short-circuiting like a snake devouring its own tail.

Nope, not going down that road again, thought Library Cat with conviction.

For a moment, at least, he felt better. The warm smell of butter and croissants hit his nostrils as he sauntered past the Elephant House café. Over in the graveyard behind Greyfriars Kirk, he could see a clutch of cats, skulking between the headstones. He wondered whether going to see them might shake off his foul mood; it would be a means of distraction after all. But something about the way the cats moved and hissed at each other suggested they were not especially nice cats, and so were probably not worth the time, and might make him feel even stranger. And he was simply not in the mood for a catnip tryst.

Home. Home would surely help. A warm radiator, some food, a read, and then maybe head for a nap in the turquoise chair and a trip up to the Towsery to hang out among like-minded cats. This would surely make things better. It was okay, he was in control.

Nearly there, he thought as he saw the blocky university buildings stubbing into the grey sky above. Focus, focus, there are many cats who are much worse off than me, I’m sure…

But the moment Library Cat attempted to gain perspective by recalling all the other suffering in the world, a great mushroom cloud of all the global misery seem to splurge up into his mind: homeless cats, abused cats, cats maltreated by their Humans, cats living in slums, cats teased by their owners, cats with horrible life-threatening diseases… sacrificed cats. He soon began to feel ill-justified in having ever felt happiness at all, as if his suffering so paled in comparison to all the other greater sufferings on earth that his feeling unhappy was, itself, utterly indulgent, and that all the pleasures he’d derived in life so far – the reading, the strokes from Humans, the catnip, the treats, the books – were all a great sham, like the thin flaky crust atop a planet that really only conceals the simmering, churning mass of hellish mantle underneath it, ready to bubble up the moment the crust ruptures, and that to believe anything else was pure delusion.

Library Cat slowed his pace and looked down at his paws advancing on the pavement. Left paw, Right paw, Black leg, White Leg, Left paw, Right paw, Black leg, White Leg. New thoughts were now coming into his mind. Weird thoughts. Strange thoughts…

Am I those things?

…grey thoughts, bitter thoughts; a whole fog of putrid, multi-coloured thoughts that twisted inexorably through his brain like fairy light cabling. He turned off Middle Meadow Walk towards George Square, the nettles around its perimeters seeming to rise up and grab the air like eerie sea anemones. He had never seen them in that way before, but now felt like he couldn’t see them in any other way. They frightened him. Things seemed out of focus.

And still the temptation to chase his tail…

Don’t be silly, Library Cat. You know it’s futile and would make things worse.

And then it was upon him. An odd smell met his nostrils, cadaverous and brown and heavy as lead. It struck Library Cat strange that a smell could be heavy and brown, but this smell was undoubtedly both these things. So nauseating was the smell that a mere wisp of it across his nostrils, disturbing the otherwise chill air, sent a deep heat into him, making him gag.

And then he saw it.

Between where he stood and the warm refuge of the library was the Black Dog. It had caught Library Cat’s scent.

Library Cat felt his pupils widen and his back arch as an unspeakable terror shot through his bones. His gaze locked onto the Black Dog, snapping only right and left when he was brave enough to look for a tree to climb, or a something to bolt beneath. There was nothing. All at once the Black Dog’s head turned. In the cold air, Library Cat saw two tiny yellow eyes, as small as pinpricks, that seemed to strobe bluey-yellow like tiny fusing light bulbs. The fur was smarmed with what seemed like grease, twisting it in all directions – sometimes up in a tuft, sometimes flat along its back, and sometimes back on itself. It had no collar and Library Cat could not tell its breed. In fact it seemed difficult to suggest it had any breed in it at all, crossed or otherwise. There was something not-of-this-earth about the Black Dog.

At that moment, the Black Dog neared towards him, its back arched ready for combat. Its jowls drawled with grey saliva that bounced up and down as it panted. Directly above it, a set of drab clouds began racing over a darkening sky like nondescript items on a speeding conveyor belt. The eyes flashed wildly, bluer and more electrical as the distance between cat and dog closed. Its stench was indescribable. Finally Library Cat took a deep breath, opened his mouth, shut his eyes and let out a long sibilant hiss, as long and as loud and as threatening as he could possibly muster from his tiny cat-lungs.

And then silence. Everything except the grey clouds that scudded overhead became colourless and still. A kind of locked-in horror.

Library Cat opened his eyes. The Black Dog had fled.

Where did it go? Did I imagine it?

Ahead of Library Cat was a clear path towards the library. A car rumbled across the cobbles, and several satchelled Humans flitted in and out of buildings. A girl came over to stroke him.

“Library Cat, there’s no need to look so scared!”

The girl had blonde ringlets and weaved her fingers tenderly between his fur. She smelt sweet like oranges. Library Cat looked up at her eyes. They seemed empathetic. Despite his remoteness, Library Cat felt grateful for the company.

A little while later, he slipped away from the Human’s touch and into the library.

Sleep washed over him before his head even hit his turquoise chair.

Library Cat was still in his chair. It was difficult to say how long. The Black Dog had returned to him in a few sifting dreams but it hadn’t lunged at him, and for this Library Cat was a little relieved. His mood was a little better; he felt rested. The mysterious chamber in his brain had magically begun refilling with the magic elixir of wellbeing. He wasn’t fully restored, but he was on the mend. He still felt scared, and irritable, and jealous and angry, but that didn’t matter quite so much, if the wellbeing elixir was refilling. With no wellbeing elixir these emotions were unpalatable and overwhelming like squash concentrate. When diluted in the elixir, however, they turned into little threads of colour that swept through the clear water of his mind making marvellous patterns in their myriad colours. They made up his character.

I still don’t want to go outside again yet. I want to make sure the dog’s gone – away from George Square, away from Edinburgh. Oh… hello Humans…

All of a sudden, a large clutch of students had gathered around Library Cat. Realising he’d spent a long time in the library and had not returned home for quite some time, they began to get worried for him. So much so, in fact, that they had even alerted something called a “Tabloid Newspaper” – a dubious compilation of Human writings – that he had run away.

Well I’m here and I’m here to stay, thought Library Cat, craning his head forward like a plank, his eyes gummed shut, purring softly. He felt touched by the concern.

Even more touching, though, was the sudden swathe of concerned correspondences Library Cat received from his cousins. Biblio Chat, for one, had risen out of his lofty contemplative remove and shown an uncharacteristic amount of concern for his Scottish cousin; said he should try thinking through these issues with another cat… un chat thérapeutique et professionnel… who may be able to help. Maybe the spectre of the Black Dog originated in kittenhood? Saaf Landan Tom’s advice was of a rather different vein: “My cat flap’s always open mate. If you need to cotch at mine, yeah? Ya wiv me, bruv, yeah? It’ll pass, mate, we’ll get you out on da alley again in no time.”

Tom’s response was brave. Library Cat had, after all, lashed out at his cousin the month before, causing him to flee, even though Tom had never meant to harm by stealing his food, and even though he could have retaliated and made short work of his black and white cousin if he’d wished. And yet Tom, with a perturbed swish of his great bushy ginger tail, and a few licks of his bloody paw, had clearly put the matter behind him, and forgiven his cousin for swiping. That took a lot. That took being the bigger cat…

Saaf Landan Tom had then suggested – meaning well, of course – that his cousin procure some of the potent catnip offered by the alley cats of Tollcross in exchange for certain “literatures”. Though grateful, Library Cat was sceptical of the advice after a bad experience that once resulted in a bout of torturous rodent-based hallucinations. One could never trust the Tollcross Nip.

Library Cat thought it curious how, despite remaining sceptical about the advice offered by his cousins, he derived a definite warmth and reassurance from it nevertheless. And Saaf Landan Tom talked about feelings… Saaf Landan Tom never talked about feelings.

I should stop sending my cousins to Coventry, Library Cat suddenly thought, feeling a little ashamed. What’s more, if I send them to Coventry, they end up sending me to Coventry, and that defeats the point. Because we end up being in Coventry together. And surely the last place two cats would want to be, whether they get on or not, is Coventry.

At times like this, Library Cat wondered whether it might’ve been easier if he hadn’t been born a thinking cat – if he’d never had the warm, heady nirvana-pleasures of the Towsery, or the densely punctuated lines of Friedrich Nietzsche to send bright, happy thoughts across the pitchfork entrails of his synapses. He thought of all those cats who were not thinking cats. Right now they were all over Scotland: double-helixing their way between their Humans’ legs, neck craned up at a chicken titbit; offering purrs indiscriminately to whomever stopped to stroke them; chasing bits of string entirely at the whim of Human masters; trying to scream down their own reflection in long, thin IKEA mirrors…

Would it be easier to be like them? wondered Library Cat.

But no sooner had Library Cat begun to deconstruct the question and think of it from myriad angles than more Humans arrived with strokes and tickles. One even had some bacon rind. Another spoke softly and smelt nice.

Library Cat couldn’t tell how, but he was definitely feeling better. And it was down to the right company. He had never been so pleased for the affection of the student Humans.

Some three weeks earlier, in George Square, a lady and her son had been out walking their dog. The day had been beautifully clear, but now the clouds were racing and the lady worried that they may well be caught in one of those unforgiving Edinburgh downpours. As they let their dog off the lead to bound around the perimeters of the square, the young boy piped up to his mother.

“Mummy, that cat’s seen Toby!”

The lady furrowed her brow and called Toby back who cooperatively linked back with his lead.

As the pair headed away from the square alongside the library towards the Meadows, the boy looked back.

“Look Mummy! Ha ha! The cat’s running in circles! He’s chasing his tail.”

“The poor wee thing probably has fleas,” the lady replied curtly, giving the dog a tug on his lead and upping her pace towards home with another suspicious glance at the sky.

Recommended Reading

Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.

Food consumed

Bacon rind.

Mood

Empty, but improving.

Discovery about Humans

They can be kind and intuitive. They can be lifesavers.