To buy a cat
“So,” I said. “Where’s the cats?” The old man’s eyes squinted as he smiled. His beard seemed to part only to show an impenetrable white wall of teeth.
“You don’t see them do you.” It was not a question. “Many people have that problem. Expecting to see them upfront, when they’re in the back.” He opened the door behind him. “Here. Come. We walk.” He picked up a cane from behind the clerk desk. Despite this he moved swiftly, albeit with his left leg a bit stiff and crooked. “Come. They won’t bite. No, they won’t.” He laughed. Suspiciously I followed Erwin through the doorway, not knowing what to expect.
We walked down shelves with boxes, each one labelled according some arcane scheme I couldn’t understand. On each box someone had also scribbled a date. Some of them had been stashed away several years, almost decades, ago. Others were far older, covered with a thick layer of dust.
“What’s the cat for? If an old man can ask that is.” We stopped at a crossroad. Shelves ran every direction, each one filled with more and more boxes. The man looked about, searching for directions or something in his mind.
“It’s for my nephew. He wanted a kitten for a birthday present. That’s tomorrow.” The man continued to look and I began to feel uneasy. “Have you lost the cats?” He burst out in a deep belly laugh that travelled through the hallways and probably could be heard from outside his shop.
“No. Not lost the kitten. How could I? I know where it is, just not where ‘where’ is. The mind plays tricks down here sometimes you know.” I knew what he meant. Sometimes when we walked there I could have sworn I had heard cats meow from somewhere I couldn’ts pinpoint. He pointed his cane towards a dimly light in the distance. I never understood how the shop could be so huge on the inside. From outside, Schrödinger’s Used Cats looked like small 19th century house someone had dropped in the back alleys behind the newer houses. It was a wonder I found the place.
Suddenly his hand hit my chest and stopped me from going any further. He looked at the boxes, reading the texts. Beside whatever useful information it hid from me, it also seemed to provide old Erwin with directions.
“Here it is. Kittens. New one too. Got this one today.” He tapped the cane on one of the boxes. I could hear a meow from inside. At that moment everything dawned upon me. Where all the sounds had came from.
“You mean there’s a cat inside every box?” I was astonished when the old man nodded. “But, aren’t some of them dead?” He raised his eyebrows and made a gesture and a face that represented a universal I-don’t-know. “But that’s horrible! You can’t just…”
“Sure I can.” He looked surprised, as if this was the first time someone had complained about his cat-keeping methods. “They fit nicely into the boxes,” he said matter-of-factly.
“No, you can’t. It’s inhumane. They die,” I protested. I hit one of the other crates and beside the sound of fist and wood everything was quiet. “See, that cat in there is dead.”
“It could just be sleeping.” I couldn’t believe what he was saying. That he even had the nerve to justify this bizarre behaviour. Erwin’s gaze fixated me as he scratched his beard. Clearly he saw nothing wrong with it. “Do you still want the kitten?”
“Yeah,” I answered. Sure, he might be weird and insane, but he did have cats for sale. “Make that two. Perhaps something older than the first one. You got anyone in the ten-year range? I was thinking about making a banana cat-cake when I get home.”
“Several, down this aisle. ” He limped onwards as I picked up the box he had previously tapped on. I followed him out of the maze with the cat-box under my arm.
