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:
“Governmental power intrinsically; unleashes; energises; propagates and responds to a post-Romantic crisis of the ‘self’ in Foucault’s writing.”
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.