My cat has learned to speak from watching 'Sesame Street'
Three very short stories by Sherwin Tjia, with special "virtual cat" accompaniment
Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of work from an artist who's earned our respect and affection.
There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.
BOOTSIE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY
[Consider reading the following story with special “Virtual Cat” accompaniment.]
MY CAT IS IN LOVE WITH ME I swear to god. Sometimes she stares at me with like, prolonged eye contact. She’s got a little cute smile when she does it too. Her name is Bootsie. Sometimes Boots. Other times, Bootsie the Cutie. Or Boo Boo. When I’m drunk I call her Boots Ootz Ootz Ootz Ootz. (Like dub step.)
We named her that because she has these white socks on her hindlegs, like thigh high stockings on your wedding night.
Occasionally she’ll casually mention things she wants to do or see. Sometimes it’s like, “I haven’t sat in the windowsill for a while. Do you wanna come and watch birds with me?”
The day she started talking was really insane. Honestly I thought I was going crazy. You know how she learned to speak? Sesame Street. I’d put the TV on in the mornings before I went to work, to give her something to look at, to keep her company. Bootsie likes to gaze at small birds. I figured she’d like BIG Birds too.
Her first words to me were, “I’m baby.” But it evolved quickly. When I retrieved her plushie banana from deep behind the couch she yelled, “Banana home! Banana’s hoooome!” Weeks later, when she pawed at the back door, I said, “Hey Bootsie— whatcha want? You wanna go outside? Yeah?” She replied, “Of course I would like to. It would be nice to.”
Sometimes she licks herself around me. She’ll lick her arm and look over, as if to say, “Look how sleek my fur. Look how long my limbs. Look at the sheen of me. I’m so nice to lick.” I swear to god she’s flirting with me but that’s crazy. She’ll show me her belly, like an invitation. “Look how safe I feel around you,” she murmurs. “I can show you everything.”
Bootsie brings home a mouse to torture. “I love their stupid sounds of distress,” she says. When I point out that when she was a kitten she made similar cries to her mom, she notes, “But I’m not their mother. I’m their monster.”
Over time I think Bootsie got too smart, honestly. One time she complained for hours—about her stale food, the room temperature, how I spend all day on my laptop not paying attention to her.
“Why are you in such a bad fucking mood today?” I asked her, and she shoots me this look. “What do you want from me?!” she says. “I’m trapped here, on Earth. In this fucking body! And YOU won’t have sex with me, even though we sleep together every night. Do you know how crazy that makes me?”
I nod. “That’s fair. I’m sorry. But you’re a cat.”
Bootsie snarls. “Is that all I am to you?”
A week later I find it, hidden deep behind the couch. My medication. Bootsie must have knocked my pill bottle back there. Almost like she did it on purpose. I hadn’t taken them for months. But today I start again.
Later, Bootsie strolls in through the kitchen cat door. “Meow meowr mrr meow mrr,” she says, then frowns. “Meowr?!” She sees the bottle, the blank, uncomprehending look on my face and begins to howl.
BULLY 4 U
THERE ARE THINGS YOU’VE BEEN putting off for whatever reason. I understand. I get it. That’s why I’m here.
You wanted to change the battery in your laptop. You have the new one, the right tools, even a YouTube video showing step by step how to do it right. And yet... you find it hard to start.
So you finally admit it—you’re powerless to do the things you know you want to do. You need help. A person who can almost force you. And so you call me.
I come over and I’m very gentle. I smile and encourage. I break things down into tiny steps. I walk you through it. You and I watch the video and I pause it while you pry the laptop open. In this way we get to work, and we get it done.
The next week you want to install a new shower rod and curtain. The week after that you want to mend some mittens.
Then one day I come over and you serve me tea. We chat. You want to show me this hilarious YouTube video about a parrot that purrs. You ask me about my life, my family, my other clients. You are paying me a hundred bucks an hour. We’re not getting anything done.
“Stop stalling!” I snap, and you sit upright, like a pointer dog, hairs on your nape stiff, and you get right to it.
When you’re done, I apologize. “I’m sorry I yelled,” I said. And you shake your head. “It’s okay. It worked.” It did work.
The next week I raise my voice again. And it works again. And I apologize again, for yelling. “I shouldn’t be shouting at my clients,” I tell you. But you are glowing. You got to work. You got it done.
The next time I raise my voice I stand up, and tower over you. “Help me help my client!” I say. “I need my client to get to work.” You scurry over to your spreadsheet and begin doing your taxes. As I growl threats under my breath like a grumpy boss, you don’t just do this year’s taxes, as we had planned, but chart a budget for next year too.
I start wearing leather. I get a weathered jacket. Then pants. Soon I am covered in dark skins, orbited by musky unmistakable aromas. This seems to encourage you.
I double my prices, and you pay it. You reason that you’re so much more productive, you can afford it.
I make you strip nude and do humiliating poses for my camera. “Don’t give me a reason to send these to your family,” I say. “Finish everything on your To Do List and these photos die with me.” You nod. You get to work. You get things done.
At work, you get a promotion. I am full of praise for you. I’m so proud of you. Eventually you become the manager, and I make you hire me. After a team meeting I come into your office, alone, close the blinds and have you show me all the things you’ve been putting off. Then I rub your neck while you work, making sure you don’t slack off, only squeezing you gently when you linger on Instagram too long.
Years pass. You become CEO. Then, one day you tell me you’ve been putting off doing one last thing—having a kid. So we get to work. We get it done.
AFTERLIFE
LAST WEEK I TRIED TO KILL myself and succeeded. I saw the tunnel. I followed the light. I ended up in this nice waiting room, like at a dentist’s. A chirpy Blonde comes over with a clipboard and takes me into a private room. On the monitor is a view of me hanging from the maple tree. “What a mess, huh?” the Blonde says. “What did you think would happen after you died? Where did you think you would go?” I put my hands on the table and open them. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I really didn’t think that far. I just wanted to leave... I was just so tired.”
“Well, by killing yourself, you’ve put yourself in a lot of karmic debt,” she tells me. “Your story stops here unless you do some work for us.” The next day I’m floating high above Toronto. The job is to talk two other people into killing themselves. Right now I’m a ghost. No one except psychics and crazy people can see me. But some people—those for whom suicide is a possibility—are on my unique wavelength. They can hear me, faintly, like a radio signal, like it’s their own thoughts, when I speak. I talk to five people that first day but I can’t tell if they can even hear me.
The Blonde tells me to be patient. I tell her that I had expected the job to be to save people, to talk them OUT of killing themselves, and she laughs. “In the Afterlife,” she says, “the only currency are souls and emotions and memories. When people choose to live, those memories stay with them. But when they suicide, they come here. After a human lifetime where everything COSTS something, what made you think everything in the Afterlife should be free?”
Over time I get better at whispering into the ears of people on the edge. I discovered for me that the soft sell works better than a rebuke. The suicidal especially are susceptible to compassion. “Oh my darling,” I coo, “being human is so hard. No one would blame you for anything you need to do to make the pain stop. Be kind to yourself. Let go. My dear, you don’t have to stick around for your family. They’ll understand. It might even be easier for them. You can free them by freeing yourself. You’ve been a good soldier, baby. You gave this life a good go already. You’ve given enough. Not every life works out.” That night, he slits his wrists and the Blonde receives him like a warm mouth.
I discover I’m pretty good at this job. It’s like the reverse of a suicide hotline. Soon, they have me training other ghosts. For every ten souls I harvest, I am rewarded with one hour on Earth in possession of someone’s body. Usually they’re insane or psychotic, but oh, the smells, the scrapes, the weight of them.
We don’t harvest very young kids—their memories are small saplings. But 15- to 18-year-olds is a fruitful demographic. They’re overwhelmed by puberty, and every word we whisper has the feel of forever to them. Over time, I become manager of a crew of 25 suicide whisperers. I get a 20% cut of every soul they take, and once I’ve accumulated 10,000 souls, I am eligible to reincarnate, and this time as someone whose life is nicer, easier, rich, white, in a country that rewards those things. Finally, on October 17th, 2034, at 6:18 in the morning, I am born June Abigail Morrison at a hospital in North Vancouver, Canada. I have an older sister who I idolize, and my parents are both physicians.
I live my life with no memory of the Afterlife, my former crew, or the 10,000 souls I spent to get back here. I grow up spry and strident, becoming the kind of girl who will one day do burlesque. But on October 17th, 2050, I have the worst sweet sixteen birthday party in the world and as I’m crossing the Lion’s Gate Bridge I hear a voice. It sounds like me, but it might also be someone else. Whoever it is, they understand whatever I might need to do.
These three pieces are part of the new zine put me in your pocket and pull me out when it’s safe, a self-published collection of 12 very short stories. Email Sherwin to purchase a copy.
SHERWIN SULLIVAN TJIA has written some weird ass shit over the years with Insomniac, Coach House and Conundrum Presses. For many years they invented, organized and emcee’d quirky events, like the Queer Slowdance in Toronto, Strip Spelling Bee, Crowd Karaokes, and other participative events, all with the goal of making the world less lonely, and more lovely.
Their charming invention, the “E-Z-PURR: The Virtual Cat!”, an audio recording of over an hour of cats purring, is available on Spotify and Bandcamp and all proceeds go to making the lives of cats without parents nicer.
Sherwin’s Links
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
Buy E-Z-PURR: The Virtual Cat! on Bandcamp
Stream E-Z PURR
Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.
Fellow Travellers “Eyes” banner adapted from Opal Louis Nations’ “An Eyeball Alphabet” (1980).
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