A Conversation Between Two Cats: Part VI

Autumn
sat on the meowing perch, caught up in her obsessive cycle of grooming.
The blinds were open, but there were no takers yet and the sympathetic
gesture of door opening was still only a wish.

Clem walked up and sat on the bottom step, but said nothing. Autumn continued to lick.

After 5 minutes had passed, Autumn's suspicion was piqued by the
silence. She looked down at Clem and saw a collar with a small aluminum
tag attached.

"Where did you get that?"

"What?" Clem's feigned ignorance was construed as genuine.

"The collar around your neck, Dopey. Where did you get it?"

"The family. That bigger boy came out this morning and put it on me."

"Really? I don't believe you. I'll bet you went down to the highway and copped it from some unfortunate road kill."

"Nope. It's mine. Come down and you can read the tag. It has my name on it."

"Read?" Autumn exhaled emphatically and in that breath uttered volumes of contempt for Clem. "I can't read, and I know you can't either, so just shut up with all this reading business."

"Sorry."

More silence.

"And I know you're lying, because if anyone were to get a collar around here, it would be me, the genuine family cat, not some adulterous hobo-cat with an unconquerable wanderlust and fur that looks like a Goodwill reject."

More silence, a twist of the knife.

"They still don't feed you either. What do you have to say about that? Not only am I being fed every day, but they bring me inside to feed me. How long since you've been inside? And I don't mean those times you've sneaked inside through the hole in the screen either."

Silence. Clem stepped down and slowly walked around to the front porch. He paused for a moment, then walked the other way around the house, taking a wide circle around to the back fence. Across the fence, under a small tree, sat another orange cat with a white face.

"Well? Did it work?," the cat asked.

"Oh, yeah! Can I keep this collar for a few more days, or at least until the fun subsides?"

"Sure. Keep it as long as you wish. It's not mine anyway. It belonged to Shadow, that black cat down by the highway. She was wiped out last month by a fast moving Kia."

"Oh, that's too bad. Didn't know Shadow myself. My wanderings have been strictly north and south, so I stay away from the highway. Thanks for the collar. I'll let you know if anything else interesting happens."