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Cat's in the Cradle
We need to talk. Or at least I need to, just to get this off my chest. I think you have something to say too, but I’m fine talking alone. It seems to be the only talking I do these days where anybody’s listening.
Anyway, I want a cat. A little fuzzy one that purrs and walks around with its tail swishing in the air. It wouldn’t be too hairy, like those poofy things with hair nine inches long and their coats so thick the only way you can tell which end you’re looking at is their little green eyes staring out at you. But it wouldn’t be hairless either, like the ones from Egypt. They’re so sad to look at, like their mothers struggled so hard to bring them into the world that they couldn’t even give them a nice fur coat.
No, I want a Goldilocks cat. Not too hairy, not too bald. Something like Ms. Rodriguez’s cat. I saw the two of them yesterday when I walked back from the mailbox. They were sitting on her whitewashed porch and looking happy. Truly happy, like we used to be. I wanted to run back into the house and cry, but I needed to know what kind of cat could make someone so content and willing to sit in the summer heat. So I swallowed back the tears and walked up her driveway. I asked her what kind of cat it was, and she said it was a British Shorthair. Said his name was Lobo because that was exactly the wrong name for a cat and sometimes a thing needs to be incredibly wrong so everything else can be right. I smiled and pretended I understood.
So I want a British Shorthair. A grey one with a little puffy coat that feels like the softest pillow giving way under your touch. We can pet it at night after we come back home or huddle inside from the next hurricane deciding to come up the Gulf. It won’t matter though, with this little ball of fluff sitting on our knees and acting like it’s just another thunderstorm we’ll all get through.
Don’t say we can’t afford it. You know we can. We have plenty of money, now that the nursery isn’t filled and the crib’s returned and all we have left of her is the robin egg blue paint on the walls we thought her eyes would be like when she came. It was the kind of pain I was ready for, that couple of weeks in discomfort and the hours of agony on the hospital bed to bring something into the world that would outlast me and be wonderful in ways we can only imagine.
But I’m not ready for this pain. This terrible nothingness inside and out. I don’t even have you to help. You’ve said maybe seven sentences to me since then, all in the same shaky timbre you had when your mother died.
So I’m getting a cat whether you want it or not. I told you I wanted to talk, not argue. It’s not because I blame you or hate living in this empty house with you. I just need something, anything that will let me love it in the way I was supposed to love her. It won’t be the same, but just close enough that I can go on without wanting to cry all the time and can act like something new came into our lives.
Please don’t say anything, even if you agree. Don’t shake your head or nod, just sit there with your book on ancient Assyria and stare with your blank face. That’s all I need to know you’re still here. That you love me and will start trying again someday to be the man from long ago who promised to make my life paradise and delivered on it for years. I know you can do it. You just need time.
Like me.
Don’t worry. The cat will make things better. In the big ways and the small. It has to. I don’t know what I will do if it doesn’t.
I don’t know what we’ll do.
Anyway, I want a cat. A little fuzzy one that purrs and walks around with its tail swishing in the air. It wouldn’t be too hairy, like those poofy things with hair nine inches long and their coats so thick the only way you can tell which end you’re looking at is their little green eyes staring out at you. But it wouldn’t be hairless either, like the ones from Egypt. They’re so sad to look at, like their mothers struggled so hard to bring them into the world that they couldn’t even give them a nice fur coat.
No, I want a Goldilocks cat. Not too hairy, not too bald. Something like Ms. Rodriguez’s cat. I saw the two of them yesterday when I walked back from the mailbox. They were sitting on her whitewashed porch and looking happy. Truly happy, like we used to be. I wanted to run back into the house and cry, but I needed to know what kind of cat could make someone so content and willing to sit in the summer heat. So I swallowed back the tears and walked up her driveway. I asked her what kind of cat it was, and she said it was a British Shorthair. Said his name was Lobo because that was exactly the wrong name for a cat and sometimes a thing needs to be incredibly wrong so everything else can be right. I smiled and pretended I understood.
So I want a British Shorthair. A grey one with a little puffy coat that feels like the softest pillow giving way under your touch. We can pet it at night after we come back home or huddle inside from the next hurricane deciding to come up the Gulf. It won’t matter though, with this little ball of fluff sitting on our knees and acting like it’s just another thunderstorm we’ll all get through.
Don’t say we can’t afford it. You know we can. We have plenty of money, now that the nursery isn’t filled and the crib’s returned and all we have left of her is the robin egg blue paint on the walls we thought her eyes would be like when she came. It was the kind of pain I was ready for, that couple of weeks in discomfort and the hours of agony on the hospital bed to bring something into the world that would outlast me and be wonderful in ways we can only imagine.
But I’m not ready for this pain. This terrible nothingness inside and out. I don’t even have you to help. You’ve said maybe seven sentences to me since then, all in the same shaky timbre you had when your mother died.
So I’m getting a cat whether you want it or not. I told you I wanted to talk, not argue. It’s not because I blame you or hate living in this empty house with you. I just need something, anything that will let me love it in the way I was supposed to love her. It won’t be the same, but just close enough that I can go on without wanting to cry all the time and can act like something new came into our lives.
Please don’t say anything, even if you agree. Don’t shake your head or nod, just sit there with your book on ancient Assyria and stare with your blank face. That’s all I need to know you’re still here. That you love me and will start trying again someday to be the man from long ago who promised to make my life paradise and delivered on it for years. I know you can do it. You just need time.
Like me.
Don’t worry. The cat will make things better. In the big ways and the small. It has to. I don’t know what I will do if it doesn’t.
I don’t know what we’ll do.
Kind of medium mood. It's a mood, but it didn't force-pull my wig or anything.
Something I liked:
It's clear that the author has a lot of confidence in the reader to connect the dots for themselves, and I very much respect that. This is a mood piece that actually develops its point throughout, instead of laying everything bare from the get-go. The narrator is sad and wants to get a cat, but why they wanna do this is not made immediately clear. I like this; it gives one the illusion of suspense. I say illusion because nothing really happens in this entry, but we do get a nicely pace examination of a relationship that is clearly on the rocks, and with at least one party going through a very rough time.
Something I didn't like:
I have to wonder, though, why this story was told in this particular way. It's a monologue, or more like a one-sided conversation, but putting the reader in the silent party's shoes is kind of a risky move. Putting the reader in a position where they seem to have an effect on the plot (this is technically a 2nd person story), but then you don't give them anything to work with, which seems to defeat the purpose. You could probably revise this story so that the narrator is now a character who is talking to someone else who is not the reader, and it might be more effective that way.
Verdict: Far from bad in my opinion, but it's missing a certain ingredient to really make it big mood.
Something I liked:
It's clear that the author has a lot of confidence in the reader to connect the dots for themselves, and I very much respect that. This is a mood piece that actually develops its point throughout, instead of laying everything bare from the get-go. The narrator is sad and wants to get a cat, but why they wanna do this is not made immediately clear. I like this; it gives one the illusion of suspense. I say illusion because nothing really happens in this entry, but we do get a nicely pace examination of a relationship that is clearly on the rocks, and with at least one party going through a very rough time.
Something I didn't like:
I have to wonder, though, why this story was told in this particular way. It's a monologue, or more like a one-sided conversation, but putting the reader in the silent party's shoes is kind of a risky move. Putting the reader in a position where they seem to have an effect on the plot (this is technically a 2nd person story), but then you don't give them anything to work with, which seems to defeat the purpose. You could probably revise this story so that the narrator is now a character who is talking to someone else who is not the reader, and it might be more effective that way.
Verdict: Far from bad in my opinion, but it's missing a certain ingredient to really make it big mood.
I'm always intrigued whenever someone's bold enough to go for a very significant and limiting gimmick like this, so kudos for that! The "I want a cat" hook is also pretty darn good, and it alone carried my reading experience for the first 1/2 or so of this.
Now, I'll be honest and say that for me, this story kind of falls into the trap that a lot of these one-sided-monologue type things end up in, which is that they come across as really, um, blunt. When you're following this format, it's really difficult to approach subjects with any kind of subtlety, and it's pretty easy to come across as heavy-handed. It's a little tough for me, personally, to imagine somebody saying, for instance, the "shaky timbre" line to other person in spoken speech. It's a little bit too well-articulated, IMO.
I'm also a little concerned about the general pacing/structure here. We spend about half of our word count talking about cats, and in the very next paragraph we get hit full force by the sad reveal. There might not be enough build-up at this point to make this feel earned to me. The tension escalates really quickly, and a result it feels a little jarring.
So overall, while I do like that you went with something different for this, I'm not 100% sure the gimmick carries its own weight. There are tradeoffs to every decision we make in writing, and at the moment I tend to feel that you might not be using the advantages of this medium/style enough to offset the disadvantages. If I had to give advice, I think I'd say that you might want to focus on making the prose feel a little more raw. People generally aren't very articulate at all when they're upset, and this kind of format could give you a real opportunity to channel those feelings if you word the monologue in a more immediately emotional way, IMO.
Thank you for entering!
Now, I'll be honest and say that for me, this story kind of falls into the trap that a lot of these one-sided-monologue type things end up in, which is that they come across as really, um, blunt. When you're following this format, it's really difficult to approach subjects with any kind of subtlety, and it's pretty easy to come across as heavy-handed. It's a little tough for me, personally, to imagine somebody saying, for instance, the "shaky timbre" line to other person in spoken speech. It's a little bit too well-articulated, IMO.
I'm also a little concerned about the general pacing/structure here. We spend about half of our word count talking about cats, and in the very next paragraph we get hit full force by the sad reveal. There might not be enough build-up at this point to make this feel earned to me. The tension escalates really quickly, and a result it feels a little jarring.
So overall, while I do like that you went with something different for this, I'm not 100% sure the gimmick carries its own weight. There are tradeoffs to every decision we make in writing, and at the moment I tend to feel that you might not be using the advantages of this medium/style enough to offset the disadvantages. If I had to give advice, I think I'd say that you might want to focus on making the prose feel a little more raw. People generally aren't very articulate at all when they're upset, and this kind of format could give you a real opportunity to channel those feelings if you word the monologue in a more immediately emotional way, IMO.
Thank you for entering!
Haha, I definitely know who has written this piece! :p
I don’t agree 100% with what my two (way more competent) peers said above. This is, to me, quite a moving piece, and I like how the monologue reinforces the feeling of solitude. I mean, maybe you can’t appreciate this story fully unless you have children yourself? When I try to imagine what would happen if one of mine died, I’m at a loss. I know I would be gutted. So, this might be a reasonable answer.
Fortunately, it doesn’t apply to me, since I already have a cat.
I don’t agree 100% with what my two (way more competent) peers said above. This is, to me, quite a moving piece, and I like how the monologue reinforces the feeling of solitude. I mean, maybe you can’t appreciate this story fully unless you have children yourself? When I try to imagine what would happen if one of mine died, I’m at a loss. I know I would be gutted. So, this might be a reasonable answer.
Fortunately, it doesn’t apply to me, since I already have a cat.
For an actual review:
The perspective didn't bother me too much, but I can see where others are coming from. For me, this story read like a cathartis after a traumatic event, a kind of small prayer from the man to his wife. Can I consolidate that with an explanation of how the story is being told? No. But I only really like to do that with epistolaries, anyways.
You may be lucky, Author, that I had a conversation with a fellow writer a few weeks ago who asked me how rigid I was with perspective, and my answer at the time was super rigid. And, even more, I get bent out of shape about it when I read it other stuff.
But the emotion carried me through, here. I felt this one hard.
Also, I felt the sorry escalated well, too. The reveal comes in hot and heavy, but I had a feeling something was up because of A) our character holding back tears during an innocuous exchange, and B) this line:
Thanks again for submitting this story, Author. I'll carry a flag for it any day.
The perspective didn't bother me too much, but I can see where others are coming from. For me, this story read like a cathartis after a traumatic event, a kind of small prayer from the man to his wife. Can I consolidate that with an explanation of how the story is being told? No. But I only really like to do that with epistolaries, anyways.
You may be lucky, Author, that I had a conversation with a fellow writer a few weeks ago who asked me how rigid I was with perspective, and my answer at the time was super rigid. And, even more, I get bent out of shape about it when I read it other stuff.
But the emotion carried me through, here. I felt this one hard.
Also, I felt the sorry escalated well, too. The reveal comes in hot and heavy, but I had a feeling something was up because of A) our character holding back tears during an innocuous exchange, and B) this line:
Said his name was Lobo because that was exactly the wrong name for a cat and sometimes a thing needs to be incredibly wrong so everything else can be right. I smiled and pretended I understood.
Thanks again for submitting this story, Author. I'll carry a flag for it any day.
Damn that is a gut punch and a half. Incredible job with giving enough info to the reader to understand at the right time how things are. It's an excellently written piece.
Cat's in the Cradle Retrospective
Thanks for the reviews >>No_Raisin, >>Bachiavellian, >>Monokeras, >>Miller Minus, and >>Flashgen. This was actually a much warmer response than I expected for this piece. I was thinking the limited perspective would alienate readers, and while it was a little off-putting for some of you, I'm glad all the reviews admitted the story had some value and artistry to it. It wasn't a very comfortable story to write, but those are always the stories that seem to be my most effective.
As for the background of the piece, I was inspired upon a recent re-read of Ernest Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain". It's such a neat story that uses the titular cat to talk about relationship problems without outright stating the issue. While that tale focused on a couple arguing over a cat, I thought it might be interesting to do a story where a couple has experienced something so tragic that they can't even bring themselves to argue. I chose the British Shorthair because I think they're one of the prettiest cats and they usually have rather plain coats. They're the kind of cat people want to have just from looking at them, regardless of whether they're the right fit for their owner's personalities, something I think the narrator may be falling victim to just to assuage her sadness.
Hope everybody who read this story got something out of it, and I'll see you all in the future rounds!