Good Boy
cats
The lap is a trap. I know this. I have always known this.
The tall one sits in the soft chair every night and pats his legs and says my name in the high voice, the come-here voice, and I do not come. I sit on the floor where the floor is solid. The floor does not move. The floor does not shift you off when it wants to stand up. The lap is warm, yes. I have felt the warm coming off it. But warm is a lure. Warm is how they get you.
So I watch instead. Watching is safe.
Maisie goes up. Maisie always goes up. She finds the lap with her face, the way she finds everything, nose first, slow, and then she steps onto the legs like she is stepping into water she already knows. She turns once. She turns twice. She drops. And the tall one makes the low sound, the rumble sound, and his big hand comes down over her and her one eye closes and she is gone into the warm.
I want to know what she knows. I do not know what she knows.
I press my belly to the cold floor and I stare. Maisie’s chin goes up under the fingers. The fingers scratch. Her throat starts the engine, that deep purr, the one I can hear from across the room. The short one says something soft. The tall one says something back. Maisie does not move. Maisie has been swallowed by the warm and she is happy about it.
This is the part I do not understand. She gave up the solid floor. She gave up the running-away. And she is purring.
I creep closer. I am not going up. I am only closer.
Many nights of closer.
Closer is a place I live now. I sit at the foot of the chair and I watch Maisie disappear into the warm every night and every night she comes back down fine. She is not eaten. The lap returns her. I have checked this many times. The lap is a trap that lets you go.
Tonight the tall one pats his legs. He says my name in the high voice. Moxie. Come here, Moxie.
My feet do the thing before I decide the thing. One foot on the soft edge. The cushion gives. I do not like that the cushion gives. I want the solid. But there is the warm now, right there, rising up against my chest, and Maisie’s smell is in it, the safe smell, the she-came-back-fine smell.
I put the second foot up. Now I am all the way up. Now I am standing on the legs of the tall one and the legs are warm and they are breathing, up and down, slow.
I turn once. I do not know why. My body knows why. I turn twice. The warm is everywhere under me now and I fold, I drop, I am down, I am a loaf on the lap and the legs hold me and they do not throw me off.
The big hand comes.
I freeze. Here it is. Here is the part where the trap closes.
The fingers find under my chin. They scratch. They scratch the exact place, the place I cannot reach myself, the itch I have had my whole life, and the scratch undoes it, all of it, in one slow drag.
Good boy, the tall one says. The rumble is in his chest and I can feel it through the warm. Good boy, Moxie.
My throat starts the engine on its own. I did not tell it to. It is running, deep and loud, and I am purring on the lap of the tall one and the short one is laughing the soft laugh and I do not care that the cushion gives, I do not care about the solid floor.
I want to stay. I want to stay now.