The Hologram of the Cat
Meg Pokrass
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Today, Muffin barks at the front door for an hour. She nips at our ankles, though not in a painful way. Not in a way that means, ANIMAL ALERT.
What is it, girl? we say.
Maybe it’s the hologram of the cat, my husband says. Maybe she’s back.
We brush her and tell her not to overthink and we give her some Happy Pup snacks on her comfort-towel. She leaps up on the sofa unit and we all three watch an episode of The Man Next Door together. My husband wraps one arm around my luxurious locks, and we go deep into our Creature Comfort Routine.
On today’s The Man Next Door episode a man-next-door is a nice man who’s bringing some families with children ice cream directly from the beach. He has a facial tick that makes him look as if he’s been electrocuted, and the children in the house next door house are happy as toys when they hear his ice cream truck twinkling down the block.
*
On Tuesday we embark on the Creature Stress Reduction therapy program for childless dog-owners and we do-it-ourselves with our own sullen and sometimes depressing minds.
We fold our red towels!
We abolish our old sour thoughts!
We plan a future picnic at the beach!
We praise each other’s hair!
We order the dog a new toy!
We nip at the gin!
Today, it is time to prepare for Routine Separation. On Saturday my husband is to be transferred to a lone wolf beach for a year, and he packs up his towels. Muffin is to be transferred to the canine athletic picnic for a year and needs no luggage.
I am supposed to sit on the sofa with mindful ideas about letting go, not feeling sour re: missing them. We are used to this routine, can teach it in our sleep and we don’t make a fuss.
Goodbye in advance to your lustrous hair, my husband says with a weepy eyed wink.
He’s always so funny, but not when it’s nearing time for him to depart.
Goodbye in advance to you too, I say, in a human voice, not in the voice of my hair.
Goodbye in advance to Muffin, we both say, and this time it hurts because Muffin is too old now for exertion, and we don’t know if she’ll understand the point of a picnic.
*
On Wednesday, my husband’s large glasses look like ethical toys attached to the bones of his face. Sometimes we use each other’s red towels, thereby breaking the codes of the Creature Stress Reduction Program.
We were not made to last, he says.
How can we not become sour? I ask.
*
On Friday night Muffin slumps around the living room, impatient for us to sit next to her on the sofa to watch The Man Next Door. We turn on an episode for the dog, even though we’ve seen it before. It’s the one we all like the most.
In this one the Man Next Door is pushing a small child on a very high swing. The tiny-boned eyeglass-wearing child on the very-high swing looks like our child might have looked had we checked all the boxes.
Like a large cluster of hair with bad breath, husband and dog fall asleep on each other while watching the episode again and again.
This is the last time we’ll all be together for who knows how long, so I stand at the window hoping for a surprise aurora, imagining the hologram of the cat and listening to the music of sighs.
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Dedication
To Malvin and Hobbs.
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Meg Pokrass is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in 3 Norton anthologies including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; The Wigleaf Top 50, and magazines such as Electric Literature, New England Review, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review and Passages North. A new flash fiction collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in 2024.
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Posted in Boudin April '24 Pet and tagged in #boudin, #fiction