The Bobcat

I don’t remember when, but I do recall how.  In front of The Catasta, the antique store downtown, a curled up ball of mangy fur greeted me with a forlorn yellow stare.  A bobcat, here, in the city?  This far south?  Analyzing his condition and deeming him sick, I sat down on the curb of the avenue and watched him warily.  Who knows what such a magnificently ferocious animal might be capable of?  Most surprising of all, passers-by seemed not to notice him at all.  They walked by indifferently–one particularly oblivious woman even stepped upon the bobcat’s black-striped tail.  The bobcat was too sick to move much, to care at all–he just gave his offended appendage a limp little twitch, almost a nonverbal capitulation.

Seeing this, I resolved that I might help the poor creature.  I walked across the street and bought it a gyro from Gus’ Pizza Palace, figuring that lamb meat constitutes a feast for such an animal.  As I approached the bobcat, my legs had to swim through a sea of trepidation.  This is a feral cat, probably rife with parasites–mange at the very least–and maybe even rabid.  With that coldly ominous thought in mind, I stopped about ten feet from the feline.  It’s normally frozen hunter’s glare was softened by the hammer strokes of happenstance and illness.  I tore the tinfoil off of the meaty sandwich and tossed it to him, congratulating myself as it landed within a foot of the cat’s face.  Shockingly enough, the prospect of a free meal did not break his concentration.  He was intent upon me, watching me, and I could not tell if I was alarming him, or if he might prefer a meal of a completely different sort.

That last thought worried me most of all, so I turned and hurried back across the street, figuring that the bobcat would eat the sandwich with me a safe distance away, unable to threaten him or his food.  But as I turned to consider him once again, I was superlatively thunderstruck to see that the bobcat had yet to budge an inch.  In fact, its stare, directed at me, remained strong and unbroken.  It stood abruptly, and crossed the street.  My muscles tensed, telling me to run, but I remained in an incongruous paralysis.  The incongruity of the whole damn thing up to that point, as a matter of fact, demanded that I stay and see how this incongruity might become congruous.

The bobcat moved with the lithe grace one expects from a feline, no matter the sort.  Its shoulders rolled at an even cadence, its gray stomach mirrored the concrete beneath it, its tufted ears caught every nuance of the cityscape’s soundtrack.  I put my hand out upon a streetlight to support my weight, as my weakening constitution was becoming increasingly unstable.  The bobcat, spots flashing like midnight caution lights, its attention still firmly attached to me, gathered his haunches, curled his tail around his paws, and sat himself directly at my feet.

A preoccupied man in a business suit, barking officious commands into his cellular phone–I need this portfolio by Friday, have my secretary call Johnson, I want a tee-time before ten o’clock–briskly walked between the bobcat and me.  He glanced neither left nor right, manifested not an inkling of surprise that a bobcat and a boy might have a staring contest in such an urban setting.  This, I decided, was definitely getting odd.  The bobcat promptly took to his paws, then, and nimbly jumped up a nearby tree.  I took slow steps backward, keeping my eye upon the cat.  Almost there, so close, and then I was around the corner and out of its eye line.  I sprinted to my car, fumbled with the keys, jostled myself into the seat, and sped off.

My thoughts were racing my car the entire way home, yet as I pulled into the driveway, I had managed to calm down somewhat.  Although the encounter had been quite strange, by that point it had become simply a good story for friends and coworkers.  So I entered the house through the kitchen door and lit the kitchen burners, intending upon chicken breast for dinner.  I grabbed a High Life from the fridge, cracked it open, and took a sip of beer.  I watched the shadows grow like tumors across the backyard.  After a few minutes, I threw the chicken on, snagged another brew from the icebox, and took the stairs two at a time to my room.  Strangely, the hallway towards my closed door was quite cool.  I got down on all fours, and, putting my hands to the air seeping through the crack beneath my door, I nearly gasped at its chilliness.  The air got a little colder when I heard a sound.  Something shifted around on my bed, trying to get comfortable.  Who is in my bed?  And why is it so goddamn cold in there?

I, with extreme caution, slowly opened the door.  There, curled in a ball of mangy fur before the open window, partly shrouded by the billowing taupe curtain, was the bobcat.  I shut the door.  How the hell does a bobcat open a window?  How the hell did it beat me here?  And why the hell did it even want to beat me here?  What does he want?  Quite irritated, I attempted a semblance of nonchalance as I sauntered back into my room, shut the door behind me, and sat in the easy chair next to the bed.  As I lounged there, I realized something–I am incredibly comfortable with this bobcat.  I studied him a moment, and, perhaps impulsively, decided that he might be my pet, and that I might be his.  The issue than became his name.  Conservus, I decided, though I could not remember its Latin definition, it felt right.

Bobcats are crepuscular, meaning they are active around dawn and dusk.  Conservus left around four o’clock; to do what, I’ve no idea, but I figure it is whatever bobcats do.  Hunt, perhaps, or maybe to mark its new territory.  With Conservus gone, I figured it a fine opportunity to make some concessions and alterations to my living conditions, in order to accommodate my new roommate.  I prepared a pile of blankets for him to sleep, one well away from the window for his daytime slumbering.  Above the bed, I rendered him in red and black upon the wall; instead of spots, I covered his fur in open eyes.  The bookshelf became stocked with volumes upon feline behavior and diet, while the books that they replaced I tossed into the fireplace.  Animal Planet on the television, with the hope that I might learn a thing or two from a documentary.  I then settled in to wait for Conservus’ return through the open window.

The door opened suddenly, and the curious countenance of a housemate confronted me.  "Hey, man, I’m going downtown for a beer.  Want to come with?"  He stepped into the room, stopping when he saw the new drawing upon the wall.  "A new picture, eh?  I’m not going to lie, Mitchy, but that thing is really creepy.  Are those eyes instead of spots?"  I nodded.  "Weird," he said, and sat down on the corner of the bed.  "Why is your window open?  It’s cold all the way down the hallway, and the furnace is on."  He was obviously irritated, his brow drawn down, his mouth tight-lipped and stern.

"I’m waiting for Conservus to come back," I told him, and I wondered why he was being so dense.  An Asian beetle scuttled across the bedspread, usually a reminder that open windows in the heart of fall will invite in the children of autumn.  "Normally I’d go with you, of course, but I don’t know what he’ll do if he comes home and I’m not here.  It’ll freak people out if he goes looking for me downtown."  The housemate frowned.  I opened the miniature refrigerator next to the recliner, grabbing him a High Life.  "Want to have a beer here?" I asked him, not wanting him to say yes.

He shook his head.  "That’s cool, man.  I’m going to go to the bar soon."  He leaned in, then, and he cocked an eyebrow.  "Who the hell is Conservus?"  Something written below the bobcat on the wall caught his attention.  "Does it say ‘Conservus’ beneath the lynx you drew?  Is that Conservus?"

"Not a lynx, my friend.  A bobcat.  And no, that is not Conservus–don’t be ridiculous.  That is only a drawing of him," I told him, my voice pitched smooth and slow for a man acting the idiot.  "You don’t want to meet Conservus; he is a wildcat, and while I can’t understand the affection that him and I have for one another, I’ve a rather firm suspicion that it does not extend to you."

He stood suddenly.  "Fine, man, don’t come with.  But you don’t have to be mean about it, or so goddamn ridiculous, either."  His feet pounded on the stairs as we stormed out of my room.  I locked the door behind him as he left; he heard the lock turn, and he yelled an epithet at me as he stomped down to the front door.  I laid low upon my bed, keeping my eyes just above the windowsill, and watched him as he briskly made his way down the street.  Where the hell is Conservus?

The day had been eventful, although the confusion of it had, peculiarly enough, faded, and the outrageous and inexplicable now felt commonplace.  Just the same, though, so much numb excitement had exhausted me, and I fell asleep at the open window.  I dreamed of wind and trees, Asian beetles and bobcats stalking sleeping people.  No, not anymore, now–stalking me.  Closer, closer, my blood is hot, I begin to run to someplace, someplace important, someplace different and changing and always moving upwards when…What are you doing what are you doing wake up stop stop stop stop…

My eyes opened and I was halfway out of my window, attempting to throw myself off of the roof.  The roommate was in the driveway, screaming at me, and a crowd of people had gathered across the street.  They were shrieking, too.  "Mitch, what the hell are you doing?  Stop!  Wake up!"  Ugh.  The sun was bright on my eyes; it was grappled too high up a blue cliff to be anything less than noontime.  I felt no real surprise at being upon the roof–the precipice is always close. Embarrassed by the scene I’d caused, I turned to crawl back into my room.  There, upon the bed, was Conservus.  I couldn’t tell, but I think he was smiling.  He stared at me, and then motioned with his head towards the bed I’d made for him.  Still tired, and not wanting to disturb my bobcat friend, I slept in the bobcat bed while he slept in mine.

This arrangement continued for several weeks; he’d leave twice a day, and I would patiently wait for him.  Sleeping was difficult, as the ground was hard; I had given Conservus the blankets I’d originally prepared for him on the floor, and now I slept on the bare carpet.  The lack of sleep began to bleach out the daytime and corrupt the neon hues of nighttime.  Shapes shifted, faces changed, monsters imbued the spirits of the world.  My relationships with my roommates became riddled with distrust; how could they possibly understand me?  Never like Conservus–of that much, I was sure.

A knock on my door, then, one day.  Immediately upon unlocking it, the roommate put his shoulder into it, wood cracked, and he came stumbling into the room upon me.  "Mitchy," he hissed, "how can you not see what is going on, here?  Are you insane?"   He grabbed my shoulders and put his mouth inches away from my face.  "Are you fucking insane?"  He looked up, and gasped.  All over the walls, someone had written "ergastulum" over and over again.  Thousands of times, even.  "Mitchy.  Listen to me," he said, and his red eyes were heavy with unshed tears.  "What is going on?  What is ergastulum?"

I shrugged, perplexed by his concern.  "I don’t know, man.  How could I know?  Conservus wrote it."  Although I struggled to break his hold upon my shoulders, I could not; months of solitude had stolen thirty pounds of weight from my body, and my unused muscles had settled into a neglected dormancy.

The roommate drew back an arm, and then hit me once, twice, with an open hand.  "You’re telling me, Mitch," he yelled, bringing his face back to a close proximity with mine, "that your fake pet bobcat wrote in Latin all over your fucking walls?"  He swallowed a few deep breaths, visibly trying to compose himself.  "You’re insane," he said calmly, standing up and stepping backward, towards the door.  "You’ve gone insane."  And he left, softly shutting the door behind him.

I stood up, and tried to lock the door behind him.  I was upset to see that he had broken it, though, when he’d put his shoulder into the door.  The dresser screeched across the floor as I pushed it into position in front of the door.  As I turned, Conservus leaped through the window.  It was distressing to see that his mange had gotten worse, and his motor skills, for whatever, reason, seemed to be failing.  The box mattress creaked as I sat upon the bed, and I began to slowly stroke the top of Conservus’ head.  I noticed something, then.  A bit of bloody froth, dribbling, drooling so menacingly slowly, from the corner of his mouth.  He was rabid.

The bottles in the refrigerator clinked as I jerked the door open.  I pulled out a package of deer venison, and I fed it to him, piece by piece, until the entire pound was eaten.  I took an extension cord and tied it around his neck, and then tied the other end to a knob upon the dresser.  Throughout it all, he simply stared, neither baleful or friendly, someplace beyond my surface.  The case beneath my bed had not been opened in a while–it had been years since I’d used its contents.  The metal fittings snapped as I flipped it open.  As I removed it, the black metal caught the light and the smell of oil filled the air.  The breach clicked and moved like clockwork; the slug fit perfectly, promising something unpromising.  "Alapa," I told Conservus, as I put the single barrel into the place where I’d just been stroking him, firmly, filling the first inch of barrel with the feline’s fur.  Then–much live a man squeezes a lover in the midst of the night–I squeezed the trigger.