Chapter 03. Whiskers Behind Bars

On the third day the door swung wide.

In the woman’s hands there was a green capsule with a grille in it. It gave off a sharp smell of new plastic and rubber. No one’s scent had settled on the bars yet. She set the capsule down on the floor, opened the little door, and put a bowl of dry food inside. I sniffed. Food on the inside of a thing is an invitation. I stretched my neck out towards the smell of it, but I did not go up to the door.

She picked me up — those familiar hands, soap and flowers. Set me inside, shut the grille. The mesh lay across my face in green squares. The world fell at once into even slices. I squeaked: I am here. The capsule swayed, was lifted, was carried down. The wooden steps answered with a creak; the house saw us off with a quiet murmur. Through the grille the world began to flow forward, and in that flowing there was a place for me.

Outside stood a big white beast, breathing, its flank cold iron. The capsule took its place on the seat. The woman said to somebody, ‘Get the carrier out,’ and the word stuck fast to the green mesh. Carrier.

The beast began to purr, level and deep. The road drew us in without any fuss. I watched through the slits: the trees smearing into grey bands, the wet road swimming away behind. The mesh trembled on my face. The world was loud, but it did not press on me. I tried bracing a paw against the plastic. The plastic did not give. So I sat up straighter and went on watching.

We stopped at a place with a different air about it: sharp, ill-tempered. The clinic struck my nose with bleach, with surgical spirit, and with other creatures’ fear. Metal chinked. A halt. She set the carrier on a slippery table, opened the door, and drew me out. I began to purr — you keep your footing better that way, when everything about you is slippery and smells of alarm. The injections were thin and cold, as though winter had put a claw through my skin for a second and taken it back. I bore it. Wads of cotton wool looked into my nose and my ears — hunting for forgotten illnesses. The mesh danced across the table. A lurch. Another. The people talked about the grey cat and looked at me closely. So there was something in my smell they were searching for, something that ought not to be there. They have their rules; I have my whiskers. I twitched one. Fair enough.

Then I was put back in the carrier, the woman took it up, the iron beast started again, and the way home laid itself down like a soft ribbon. It seemed shorter — perhaps I had grown used to the even purring. At home they carried me upstairs, opened the door of the small room, let me out of the carrier, set water down. She looked at me.

‘Now we wait. Sit here, little one. And keep quiet for now.’

I stretched out on the blanket and sniffed at my paws. The bleach still held in my fur, a chill that was not mine — the table remembering itself. I licked a pad — once, twice. It would not come off. All right. I washed my whiskers and took the road and the table off them. Beyond the door the gods finished saying what they had to say, and the quiet came in. I gathered my paws under me and settled down to wait.