“Yah, I’m screwed… I’m, like, so screwed. I’m really, really screwed. I was out until, like, four, and then, like, I forgot I had this second deadline for this other essay and, like, now I’ve got the deadline in, like, TEN minutes. Now I just need to quickly print it. But if I miss the deadline, like, I’m going to be, like, so screwed for this course that I mightaswelljustlike, drop out of uni.”
Library Cat was appalled, on many levels, but most markedly at the student’s unrefined rhetoric. He was so appalled in fact that he had to organise his responses to the overheard conversation into the following list:
1. Use repetition and intensifiers sparingly. It would have been sufficient to have just said “I’m screwed” rather than “I’m so screwed”, and then, “I’m really, really screwed”.
2. Drop some of that ham sandwich you’re eating, it looks tasty.
3. Calm down, you’ll give yourself an embolism.
4. Address your preoccupation with the word “like”.
5. Avoid histrionics. You will be calmer yourself, and seem more sincere, if you avoid pointless, indulgent affirmations of impending failure. It is unlikely a late essay will mean expulsion from university.
6. Tie your shoelaces, they are making me want to pounce.
7. Respect time. Avoid recruiting time simply to ameliorate the terms of your story. Less is more, in this respect.
8. Stop standing by the door, you’re letting the cold into the library.
9. Avoid split infinitives: it’s ‘to print quickly’ not ‘to quickly print’.
Before Library Cat could think any more there was a tap on the back by another student, this time a man, with a friendly face. Behind him, the door swung shut, and the door in front, where the girl had been standing, swung shut as well. All at once one of Library Cat’s greatest fears had befallen him: entrapment. With the doors immediately ahead and behind closed, he was trapped in a kind of liminal foyer space that served no purpose. And to make matters worse, now this male student was attempting to initiate conversation with him, except he was going about it in a deeply strange manner. Instead of addressing him as a brainless animal in the condescending manner that most Humans do, this student was instead attempting to “talk” in a series of meows and mews and purrs as if this might somehow dissolve the communicative barrier that has endured between cat and Human since the time of the Egyptians, and suddenly prompt Library Cat into a great mellifluous outpouring of reassurance and wisdom that would appease the Human’s guilt at having started her essay so late in the day.
“Caticus Domesticus! You don’t have to worry about the atomic properties of caesium and all-nighters do you? Lucky wee b*****d. Here, puss, puss, puss, puss! Look at me! Puss, puss, puss. Meow, meeeeow, meeeeeow. Hey UP HERE. Puss, puss, puss, puss, puss…”
Oh jog on, thought Library Cat, seizing the opportunity offered by a Human walking through the main door to make a dash for the square.
Outside, the bitter evening hit Library Cat like a train. An iciness encircled his whiskers making them ridged like little frosted twigs. He scanned the square for Biblio Chat. It wasn’t long before he spied his cousin. A little way off, between the black railings, Biblio Chat was enveloped in a cloud of blue-grey features as a scuffle between him and a pigeon ground ever closer to a conclusion. Presently, much to Library Cat’s surprise, the pigeon wriggled free, running a feathery zigzag along the grass, until finally lumbering up into the air like a perilously overweight cargo aircraft. Library Cat sniggered inwardly as he watched the very tip of his cousin’s tail switch with annoyance. He walked over…
“Meow?”
“Miaou,” replied Biblio Chat despondently.
Library Cat’s heart softened. He was at once sadistically pleased that his cousin had been outsmarted by a bird, while at the same time sympathetic towards his frustration and defeat. He’d been there after all. All cats had been there. He nuzzled his cousin’s coat in an act of kinship. As the two cats walked silently back across the square, both hungry and with the cold cobbles nipping the undersides of their paws, Library Cat thought back to the students and wondered if they ever found time to relax. He had heard it said that students do nothing but relax, but then again, the sight he had just seen thoroughly disproved such an assertion. Is it that they don’t pace themselves? Or oscillate wildly from one extreme to the other? Do they go back to their flats and breathe clear air, free from the demons of anxiety, loneliness and despair that so often unsheathe their invisible daggers in the hideous echoes of silence? Are their homes warm? Are they greeted by nice flatmates? Or are they met with a blaze of ice, slamming doors and passive-aggressiveness? A closed-room culture of segregated fridge compartments and alienation?
A sudden sadness hit Library Cat. He had a horrible feeling that the Humans had forgotten how to live. He had been to the neighbouring Edinburgh districts of Marchmont and Sciennes on adventures sometimes. They had seemed, superficially at least, quite wonderful. He’d gazed up at ambient rooms where posters of Le Chat Noir hung beneath fairy cake ceiling cornices and thought these student Humans are doing it right. He’d walked along the moss-linted pavement and watched cars quaintly lumber over the street humps, their wheels on the cobbles sounding like waves washing up the seashore. The tenements at night faced each other serenely, some bandaged in scaffolding, others adorned with moulded cornucopia that illuminated ethereally in the moonlight. Everything was tinged with a lovely flavour; it was the flavour of elsewhere.
But sometimes, Library Cat would hear the local cats discuss ownership in their electrically synthed voices and suddenly feel uneasy and out of place. It was not his territory after all. The scents were all different, none of them his. Was that why it could feel so lovely and magical? And did the Humans feel the same way? Or did they only feel the sudden estrangement of the whining cats… the unmistakable feeling that they don’t belong?
Back inside the chaplaincy, Library Cat and Biblio Chat sat down to dinner. Suddenly Puddle Cat came to mind, and Library Cat felt particularly proud that he had gone several hours today without thinking of her, and that he’d eschewed the lovey-dovey mood he’d wallowed in up at the Towsery earlier, having read the inspired, Human-penned ‘Cat sat on the mat’ poem. It made him think again of the student Humans.
I wonder if cats and Humans could ever communicate with each other? he thought. He put the thought to Biblio Chat, who merely looked indifferent. He cast his mind back to the male Human at the foyer who believed that he was trying to talk in ‘cat’ but was in fact just making purring meowing sounds. It suddenly occurred to him. Maybe the Humans think we cannot speak, whereas in fact we can, but just choose not to?
Biblio Chat looked up from his food, momentarily interested. He had once written to Library Cat:
For eons the Humans have thought we cannot talk. But they have also killed us believing us to be in cahoots with the devil during The Black Death, whereas the whole time we were feasting upon the very rodents that spread it. They have thought us lucky, then unlucky; eternally wise and couch-dwelling fools; hailed as gods in ancient Egypt and robbed of all dignity in the internet memes of the twenty-first century. Does it really surprise you to discover they think we cannot speak just because we chose not to in front of them? Us thinking cats have our own way of speaking, and its language glistens more than the sunniest sea they have ever beheld, and is just as rich and deep. We know the secrets of Babylon; the truths of the Orient, and all the beauties and ills of every continent on Earth. We are God in Paradise Lost – understated and calm. Us thinking cats, we live for knowledge; it is its own end. The Humans, however, smother it beneath their personal desires for fame, money, sex and war. They covet knowledge like gold bullion putting a price on it at universities or shaming it to make killing machines. They are like the Devil in Paradise Lost – ever-moving, clanging and loud.