Cat Piss.

The cat pissed on my bed.

It was the only mattress I owned and it was winter. There were holes in the floorboards and the winter came up through them along with the scent of marijuana. She had pissed on my mattress and my pillow and my doona. I hugged my coat around me, dragged four pairs of socks over my frozen toes. I huddled in the corner of the room and listened to the incessant drone of the traffic trundling through the Normandy five ways.

He had written his number on a piece of paper and even though I didn't really like him, I had kept it. I liked his friend. His friend said he was a talented artist, huge canvasses, exhibitions. He used to live in my flat and there were cryptic lines of text scraped into the floorboards from the days when he would sit in what was now my bedroom smoking dope and making art and living the whole Hunter S kind of thing.

He leered at me and I knew he liked me, but I didn't even return his smile. I was polite for the sake of my friend but he had come back up the stairs an hour later and passed me the slip of paper with his number on it.


He wasn't my first choice. I wanted to stay with my friend, but he had started experimenting with the needle and he raised his head, bleary eyed and there was the smell of vomit on his breath.

"The cat pissed on my mattress"

He blinked at me. He looked sick. I couldn't bear it if he had to throw up while I was in the room with him. I trudged out to the telephone booth. I didn't have the phone on. I didn't have the money for a phone. This new home was one step up from the park I used to sleep in, not far from it at all. Already I had had an urge to wander out and curl up under a hedge and watch the boys queuing up for the toilet block.

"The cat pissed on my mattress."

I heard his heavy breath rasp into the phone.

He was happy to hear from me. He had a car. He was more than happy to get into it and drive all the way across town to pick me up. "I'll sleep on the couch" he said and I almost believed him.

I waited in my flat. I hissed at the kitten when she tried to crawl into my lap. The whole place smelled like urine. My life smelled like urine.

In his car I weighed up how much a night in his bed would cost me. Sex probably. Maybe just a head job. Maybe even a hand-job without even having to take off my clothes. I sulked in the passenger seat and he put his hand on my knee as he took the corners quickly with a little screech of the tires.

"You've had a hard day, haven't you?" He asked me, hungry eyes wide with fake concern.

I steeled my self for the whole shebang. Sex, head job, hand job, everything all at once probably. I resolved to up my end of the bargain. Dinner, a glass of wine, maybe even two.

There was never another mention of the couch. No dinner, but a bottle of wine presented to me beside his bed. It was a beautiful house. There was an ornate bedside table and he told me that he had found it in my flat. He had stolen it because no one cared about the place, no one would notice. I touched the mahogany swirls, the little clawed hands carved into the wood, the wings and curliatures. It would be worth a fortune and I wished it was back in my flat where it belonged. I began to hate him a little bit then. I wouldn't be able to hide it. I removed my belt and gulped wine and when I lashed him with it it felt right. I wanted to hurt him.

He wrestled the wine out of my hand and picked me up and threw me onto the bed. Sex. The kind of unlovely, scratching, fighting kind of sex. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I lunged for his face with my fingers and he caught my hands and I put all my force behind it, knowing that he was stronger than me. That he'd always win the fight.

I wouldn't let him touch me. Wouldn't let him kiss me and when he was done I kept on him even though I knew it would hurt. He struggled away from me and tried to lie peacefully but I wouldn't let him.

He stood up eventually and slept on the couch. I helped myself to his wine and sniffed my armpits which smelled of cats piss and fury. I was hungry. I wanted to help myself to the contents of his fridge. Rich kid, living off an allowance from his parents.

I hated him for that. I hated that I had to ask him for a place to sleep. I hated that the only other option for a bed for the night was a schizophrenic junkie with breath like vomit. I sat in his luxurious bathtub and ran the shower too hot and felt sorry for myself. I scrubbed myself with expensive hand-made soap and soaked my hair in organic conditioner and cried.

In the morning, when he dropped me home I smelled like sandalwood. He sniffed my neck and kissed it and told me that he had had the best time. He wanted to see me again. Tonight. He wanted to pick me up before dark.

"I'm fine" I said, "I'll call you." and I dragged the heavy mahogany door closed. I looked at the mahogany picture rails, thick with dust, the ornate fireplace, the badly painted wall with a ghosting of graffiti bleeding through the thin top coat. I longed for the bedside table that he had stolen from the house, from me, from every other renter who would find some refuge here.

I fed the cat and hugged her and scolded her gently with a kiss to the back of the neck. That night we curled up together in the fading reek of her urine and her body heat was comforting. Sometime after midnight there were footsteps on the dark wood stairs. Someone hovering just outside the door. I held my breath. I stubbed the tiny glow of my cigarette out into a jam lid.

A moment later, the footsteps padded away down the staircase and then they were gone.