story 6/15

when i was young, i used to be a pussy magnet.

i noticed it whenever we went to my ewa beach grandma’s house. there was a cat lady
who lived across the street, and so the area was always swarming with stray cats.
whenever i would walk outside, cats would come up to me, and rub themselves against
my legs. maybe i had some dry skin or something, and had a lot of static electricity.
but i didn’t think of any of that, at that age. i just thought i was special. i thought the cats
could sense something about my personality, and they just couldn’t help themselves. they
had to get as close as they could to me.

i guess most people wouldn’t really think much of that. like, “cats like you, so what?” but
for a boy like me, who wasn’t much of anything to anybody, it meant a lot. to me, it meant
that there was some hidden secret buried within me that cats could recognize. it meant, in
short, that i had hope.

i had no idea what it was that they saw, but the fact that they swarmed around me meant
that it at least existed.

so one day, i was just standing in the middle of a cat-aclysm or cat-astrophe (haha).
i was actually reaching down and stroking some of the cats that rubbed against my
crouched legs, and enjoying the vibrations they made when they purred.

and that’s when my brother came out.

he surveyed the unnatural gathering around me, but he didn’t say a word. his already
skinny eyes thinned further. i could tell what he was thinking. “what the hell do those cats
see in HIM?” and i could tell, as he approached, that he wanted to erase this little talent i
had, so i could return to being the runty nobody that he knew and loved.

some of the cats that were smarter, or more aware, began to give him berth. but there was
one wiry tomcat, orange in color, that was so into rubbing the back of his head against my
calf, that he didn’t see what was coming. my brother, grinning, caught the end of the cat’s tail.
it immediately went stiff and yowled, as though my brother’s hand were filled with electricity.

i jumped up, and backed away.

my brother gripped the tail with both hands while the cat spasmed at scratched at empty air.
he looked at me pointedly as he began to swing the cat, first in slow awkward arcs, and then
faster and faster. the shrieks of the cat were unearthly, and almost human. it had become an
orange lillyhammer.

i didn’t even reach for the cat, but i guess i would have, if i weren’t already so helpless.

when he let go, the cat yowled and spun and tumbled through the air, crashing into some of
the nearby potted plants that formed a wall in my grandpa’s yard.

my brother walked over to one of the steel potted plants, and peered behind one of the white
trunks of a confined ficus. he looked over at me, who anxiously, hesitantly, approached too late.

he smiled.

“guess cats don’t always land on their feet.”