Parmesan Time Out
cats
The pasta steam is still hanging in the kitchen when the humans carry their plates to the table, and on the cutting board a small drift of grated parmesan sits unattended, golden and shameless.
Moxie sees it first because Moxie sees everything first. He is on the kitchen threshold, tail twitching, ears swiveled toward the cheese as though it might speak. Bagheera comes up beside him, slow and considered, the way she does everything. Maisie pads in last, lifts her face, her face turning to point at a smell she cannot place precisely but recognizes as forbidden.
“They left it,” Moxie says. He says this with the rapture of a saint who has just witnessed a miracle.
“They left it on the counter,” Bagheera corrects. “There is a difference.”
Maisie sits down at the foot of the cabinets and considers the geometry of the situation by ear. She can hear forks against ceramic in the dining room, the low rumble of the tall human’s voice, the shorter human laughing at something. She can hear the refrigerator humming. She cannot hear the cheese, because cheese makes no sound, and so for her the cheese is not quite real.
“I am going to go up there,” Moxie announces.
“You are not going to go up there,” Bagheera says.
“Why not.”
“Because you are good.” Bagheera says this the way one might inform a child that he is six years old, with a faint edge of pity. “Last week you cried at the vacuum and the tall one carried you around like a baby for an hour. You have a reputation to protect.”
Moxie’s tail thumps once against the doorframe. He hates that this is true. He hates more that Bagheera is the one saying it.
“What about you, then,” he says.
Bagheera tilts her head, considering. She has the calculative stillness of an accountant about to commit a small, beautiful crime. “I have considered it. The taller one is facing the kitchen, but his line of sight is broken by the island. The shorter one has her back to us. The cheese is approximately three body lengths from the edge. The recovery jump is unobstructed. I estimate I have nine seconds.”
“Nine seconds is generous,” Maisie says from the floor. Her voice is dry. “Five, perhaps. The tall one’s chair scrapes when he stands.”
“Five is enough.”
“Five is enough for one bite.”
“One bite,” Bagheera says, “is the whole point.”
Moxie looks between them, scandalized. “You can’t. You’ll be in trouble.”
“I can be in trouble,” Bagheera says, “and I can also have parmesan. These are not mutually exclusive states.” She lowers herself, hindquarters wiggling, and Maisie hears the small scrabble of claws finding purchase on the cabinet face. There is a soft thump at the counter level, then silence, then the unmistakable wet snuffle of a cat with her face directly in dairy.
Maisie’s ears swivel. From the dining room: the scrape of a chair.
“Oh no,” Moxie breathes.
The tall human’s footsteps are already crossing the floor. They are not angry footsteps. They are the slow, weary footsteps of a man who has lived with this cat for a long time and has understood, perhaps from the moment he met her, that this exact event was inevitable.
He rounds the island. Bagheera is mid-bite, parmesan flecking her whiskers, her expression one of pure and unrepentant grace. She does not flinch. She does not run. She regards him over the cutting board with the calm of a queen receiving an ambassador.
“Bagheera,” he says.
“Yes,” her posture says.
He scoops her up under the front legs, and she goes limp against his chest in the way only black cats can, a small puddle of agreed-upon defeat. “You,” he tells her, walking back toward the dining room, “are very naughty. Do you know what naughty cats get?”
She does not answer. She has parmesan on her chin.
“Naughty cats,” he says, “go in time out.”
He sits back down at the table. The shorter human looks up, sees Bagheera arranged across his forearm like a stole, and starts laughing. He scratches Bagheera under the jaw, slowly, exactly where she likes it, his knuckle catching the soft place behind her ear. Bagheera closes her eyes. Her purr starts as a small motor and builds.
In the kitchen, Moxie stares.
“Did she,” he says, “did she just get rewarded.”
Maisie tips her face up toward the sound of the purring, and her empty socket creases into something that, on any other cat, would be called a smile.
“She got loved,” Maisie says. “It is a different thing. Although in this house, often, it looks the same.”