Louie’s Catdemic
By: Christopher Burke
Tags: Pandemia, Cats, Pandemic, Pandemic Diaries, Pandemic Reflections

Our provider is very good at making strings fly through the air. Among ourselves we call him Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh. We are three. His human name is long and complicated and hard for us. So we call him Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh. We call him that often throughout the day, especially my brother Seba, who is very talkative.

Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh calls me Louie. Maybe best of all, he takes each one of us to the bathroom window every morning to see birds and other mysterious living things fussing from bush to bush, tree to tree, day after day. But a strange thing happened about a year and a half ago. Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh started putting a cover over his face before he opened the window. I don’t know why. The outside air still smelled the same to me, to all of the rest of us, really. We can still feel the fresh air on our faces as always. But Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh seemed to want to protect himself. As an aside, for simplicity’s sake, we call all the flying creatures Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh too, even the birds.

I should add that time doesn’t mean much to us. I say a year and a half, but it could be 10 or a 100 years. I don’t know. Some time ago, and right about the time that Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh started to put coverings over his face when he opened the bathroom window in the mornings, he decided he wasn’t going to leave us alone for most of the day anymore. It was momentous to me, but momentous in a good way. He decided he was going to concentrate all of his time on us here at home. Of course, he should have done that all along, but guilt is canny, and it may just have finally caught up to him. That’s a possibility. Or maybe he was fired from his job. I don’t know. Whether or which, Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh decided he was going to spend all day every day with only us three.

The doorbell stopped ringing right about then too. I no longer needed suddenly to run into the fireplace and up into the chimney when kidnappers would try to apprehend me, appearing out of the blue disguised as grocery or food deliverers. The doorbell always sounded the alarm for me. That’s when I knew I had to run to where the delinquents would never find me. But something changed. The intercom still sounds because Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh has an insatiable appetite for food. He seems to need deliveries daily. We need food too, but our needs are simple. We just need kernels in our bowl. And water, of course. He needs a remarkable variety of products to make even a simple dinner. So the intercom still sounds. But I no longer fear it, as Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh now goes down to the gate of our guarded fortress to get his deliveries, far from our door.

I have a sister and she is a strange one, I have to tell you. She is called something like Figgeee. Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh calls her different names. Figgeee, he sometimes says. Other times, I hear him call her Fairy, or even Fairree, with the r trilled. Sometimes he calls her Figgeee Fairree, even Figgy Wiggy or just Figgy Cat. She is old now. I came to know early on that she has a special place in his heart. Even though she is stranger than strange, because Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh loves her, so do I. So at times, I go and lie down next to her. I sleep next to her, sometimes for hours, and sometimes even at night.

But still she is a strange one.

She sleeps maybe 99% of the day. Seba and I sleep a lot too, but 99% of the day? That’s a lot. We don’t do that. We have a lot to do other than sleep. There are the visions that appear on Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh’s computer every morning. These never used to happen before. Seba and I go to the computer screen first thing in the morning now, sometimes even before the bathroom window. As often as not the visions start early. There are birds and squirrels, but more importantly there is often a fast moving string. That string drives us crazy. Seba and I jump at the screen, and Seba even tries to bite it. Then the string disappears to where we don’t know. It seems to go behind the computer, or off to one side, but when we look there, we can never find it. If I am honest, I will tell you that we like the conundrum. We love our mornings. Things were never like this before when Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh used to leave us alone for many many hours starting early on in the day.

Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh became a little crazy about the time that he started staying home all day. He would begin to pace back and forth in the apartment at unexpected hours. And he started counting out loud while he paced. It was not frightening, but it was strange. He would say thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three and so on. Seba really liked it. He would race in front of Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh and try to trip him up. Seba was funny really as I watched them both from a distance though Seba never once caused Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh to fall. He tried and tried and tried, but he couldn’t trip Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh up. Then after awhile — two days, two months, I don’t know, Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh stopped pacing. He lost interest in the pacing and the counting. One day, I heard him say, This isn’t working. I think he was trying to find a better game for Seba.

Our provider is an entertainer. As I said, Figgeee Fairree sleeps nonstop, and even in her rare waking moments she has no interest in playing with us. She wants to eat, pee or poop, and that’s it. Seba, on the other hand, is a gameaholic. He’s somewhat short-circuited (I don’t like to use the word crazy) when it comes to games. Did I mention that he jumps off the walls for speed? I prefer to be humble; Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh is still our provider. And I think he may have a Master’s of even a Ph.D. in strings, and not just in the vision strings on the computer but real strings!

Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh wakes us up unexpectedly at any moment, with a string dangling over our shoulders. We react like lions, attacking the intrusion. We sometimes summersault off the bed, leaping after the string. Well, you know who is the best summersaulter by now. The said Seba often runs and runs round and round after the string on his tail. Even though I can tell from my point of view that it’s just a string, Seba has no distance. He jumps and reacts and imagines who knows what. When he first came, he was a scrawny slip of a thing. Even then, his first day here, he tried to interact and jump at me, play with, me. Can you imagine? I gave him what for. I said Sonny, just a minute of respect. As always, Seba was oblivious. He just made his way straight into my heart right then and there.

Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh spends days and days in front of his computer now. For all I know it might be years or decades. He talks and talks and talks. Sometimes shadows talk back to him, and he seems happy with that. Seba likes the sound of human voices a lot, and he always wants to lie down on Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh’s arm when Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh talks to his shadows. And Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh seems good with that. I watch and I am unsure. I just don’t know.

Recently, I’ve come to like sleeping in my cat box near the window. This is not my litter box, just to be clear. This is my transport pod. It’s warm and comfy, and private. And private is important to me, especially in this household. I used to hate this box even though it has a really soft — yes I know it’s synthetic — mattress. This was the box that Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh always used to use to take me to the vet’s. I have no words to describe my aversion to the vet torturers. But the vet’s is a thing of the past. I haven’t gone there for I don’t know how long when. Now, Ahh_ahh, Ahh_ahh doesn’t seem to be interested in taking us to the vet at all anymore. Such is life, I tell myself, as I settle into my cat box in the sun afternoons now. Everything changes, I tell myself. Anything is possible. Life is a moveable feast.