CATerWaUL
Written by Theo Kogod.
Illustrations by 皆川修人.
Except tonight, Kou hadn’t answered the door.
He called the cat’s name, but the only sounds to
answer him were the dull buzz of his fridge and the
growing silence in his heart.
Sometime between his fourteen-hour workdays of
caffeinated angst and the insomniac delirium of nights
spent swimming the sea of karaoke bars, Ken stumbled
through the door to his apartment where he knew he’d
find peace.
In his experience, peace accompanied guilt, as Kou
greeted him with the expectant headbutts and neck rubs
every cat dolls out to show affection to its human. This
would be followed by demands for food and clean water,
which he prepared even as he peeled away the skin of
sweat-soaked clothes and set out a clean suit of company-approved work attire for the following day. Then he’d
collapse on his futon and Kou would cuddle up to him,
purring soft vibrations of joy as Ken rubbed the cat from
neck to tail.
Kou would return the favor by rubbing the side of his
face against Ken’s temple, as if to say “you’re my human
and I love you.”
And every night, Ken drifted from the day’s chemical-fueled delirium of cubicles and empty cups into the
peaceful slumber of cat cuddles.
He began to look frantically, until he saw the window.
Near the top, he’d left it open—a gaping 12cm hole. He’d
done it to let wind breathe some cool life into the stifling
summer heat of his apartment. He hated opening his
door each evening to a waft of air like boiling oil, the
atmosphere a humid soup that clung in his throat and
curdled the drink in his stomach. He also thought Kou
would be more comfortable with some room to breathe.
But the cat loved to jump.
It was cute how he jumped. One moment he’d be on
the kitchen floor. A second later he’d be arcing through
the air to land upon the counter. Sometimes he’d even
manage to get into the cabinets fitted just below the
ceiling if Ken left them open.
Ken imagined a bird flying past the glass, or perhaps
some scent of fish drifting on the breeze from another
apartment, and he wondered if such enticements might
have lured the cat to leap.
He looked out the window’s open crack, and the
breeze blew in like the winds of death, a cold chill creeping across his face. He stared down into the six-story
abyss, his heart falling out of his chest into the garbage
cans below.
“Kou,” he breathed, but no sound passed his trembling lips.
He searched the house again, and called his brother
Koji and his girlfriend Yuna--the only people with keys to
his apartment. Neither answered. In their voicemail, he
asked if they’d been by his apartment, but didn’t say
more.
He remembered how he and Koji had caught a frog
one summer when they were kids and kept it as a pet
without telling their parents. Their mother found it while
they were at school and waited ‘til they got home that
evening so they could watch her as she stepped on it and
threw it out with the garbage. That had been his first pet.
He hadn’t ow