Gato

The cat was his wife's. It hated him, he hated it. He refused to give it a sex or a personality. To him it was a beast, a large furry beast that his wife had forced him to accept as a part of the family. The cat. His sworn enemy. Second on his list of despised things following his wife. He hated her as well and that meant anything connected to or associated with or beloved by her. Her friends, her coworkers, her family and definitely her cat. The parasite, the freeloader sleeping all day coming around only for food. In one end and out the other. The cat. The big furry lazy, lay on the furniture and shed cat. Clogging the vacuum with hair balls so large he thought his house had been invaded with tumbleweeds. And the smell. Yes, he would confirm that cats smell. They have their own peculiar odor, a cat odor.

He drank down his beer from the bottle so that he didn't dirty any glasses. Didn't want to have to wash them and then arrange them back in the china cabinet in her special order. He hated her. After fifteen years of nagging, fussing, complaining and whining he was through.

As he plotted on how he could be rid of her and the beast, the cat came up to him and dug its nails deep in to his leg as if he was a scratching post. He kicked at it sending the beast flying across the kitchen. As he drank his plot thickened.

She could fall down the stairs.

She could fall asleep in the tub and drown.

She could get hit by a bus, a truck, fall off the platform in front of a speeding train.

She could be dismembered and the pieces of her body be scattered along the river.

There could be a fire. No. He wanted to stay in the house once she was gone. He had plans for a man cave, a room just for him with no cats.

An intruder could break in and hit her over the head with one of her Egyptian cat statues. She had hundreds in all sizes, tiny ones in the bathroom and large ones guarding the fireplace.

Who would push her in front of the bus?

Who would trip her so that she fell on to the train tracks?

Who? Who?

She had left him dinner on the counter with detailed instructions. Her note to him was on her cat stationary, a smiling cartoon of a cat holding a pen pretending to write the note. He placed his beer bottle on the cat. The ring left the cat's face disfigured. Making it all wrinkled as if it had spent too much time in the tub.

Rummaging through the kitchen drawers looking for oven mitts he found it. The electric carving knife. He sat watching the time tick down as his dinner heated in the oven and it hit him. There was a large tag on the knife. He pulled it out of the drawer and read. Do not use in or near water, may cause electric shock or be fatal. A large thick red line was drawn through the image of a faucet.

He drank some more. He stared at the knife on the counter. “How? How does one get the electric carving knife in to the tub to cause the fatal event?” The beast came striding back in to the kitchen seeing him it hissed, arched its back and left.

Sipping what was left of his beer he made a plate from the casserole his wife had left for dinner. Staring at the gray and yellow mush dotted with green peas he wondered why he was subject to such culinary torture. “Tuna casserole she said, fishy noodles with peas,” he said aloud.

It was then that he realized he had been speaking aloud all evening about his plans to eliminate his wife. As his leg began to sting from the clawing he got earlier, he regularized that he needed to put some antibacterial cream on any open scratches. “Wouldn't want to die from cat scratch fever.” He laughed at his joke.

Upstairs in the bathroom, he found the cream located in the big closet tucked in a basket of band aids, suntan lotions, hemorrhoid creams, anti-itch salves, and ipecac. All nice and snug behind the big salon style blow dryer with seven settings. On its chord was a large tag with a drop of water with a red line running through it.

“Bingo.” He held it to his chest as if it were a long sought after trophy. He kissed it and then placed it back in the bathroom closet. Staring at the large pink Jacuzzi tub with cat stickers he thought about how she liked to spend hours relaxing with her candles and new age music. It would be the perfect crime. He laughed a sinister laugh.

The cat came in the bathroom to bother him. Befriending him now, rubbing up against his leg, like he was its friend. He shooed it away with his good leg. It meowed, stopped and stared that cat stare and then left.

His phone rang. Realizing he had left it downstairs, he hobbled down the hall to the stairwell repeatedly yelling, “I’m coming”.

The stairwell was dark, he didn't notice the cat laying on the step until it was too late. He didn't think as he stepped over and went sailing down the stairs twisting his body like some bad circus performer, bouncing his head off of the newel post, then the wall, finally crashing in to the hardwood floor.

The cat just sat there on the step smiling that cat smile. For a minute she stopped and cleaned herself. Then she sauntered down the stairs, sniffed at the corpse and in an act of cat freedom and defiance she peed on him.