Shannon O'ConnorDROWNING IN CATSHolly, devastated over giving away her mother's forty cats, didn't know what to do. She had lived in an apartment with her mother and the Maine Coons her mother bred. Holly didn't think it was weird with an ocean of cats running around because it had always been that way. She would have thought it was weird if there weren't that many cats. Holly's mother died from breast cancer. She had lived alone with her mother, her father was not in the picture, and she didn't have any siblings. She was old enough to live on her own, but she went to a commuter college. She didn't want her mother to be alone. Not really alone, but alone with the cats. "I want to know if you can help me," Holly said to her Aunt Maureen on the phone. "I don't want to have to have all the cats euthanized. You have to help me find homes for them." Holly's mother had bred them to sell. "I'll help you. I know you're going through a lot right now. I'll put an ad online and we'll get people to take them. I'm just as crushed as you are." The cats walked around Holly's feet and climbed in her lap. They knew something was wrong. They always did. Cats were intelligent. She felt for the first time in her life she had to take control of something. She was twenty-three. Since her mother had died, she had the burning urge to binge and purge, but she hadn't done it in a year, and she didn't want to start again. She used to do that when she came home from campus, she would eat a ton of food, then puke it up. She did it before her mother came home from work to keep it secret. Holly's mother was a great person, but she wasn't a good mother. She was a selfish creative type who had big dreams that were never fulfilled. Before her mother had died, Holly started dating Paul. She only brought him back to the apartment once, because she didn't want him to freak out about the cats and the mess. He didn't freak out. He wasn't weird, there was no drama, and he was smart and kind. "If you want to take some cats with us, we can take a couple," Paul said as three cats crawled around his feet. "No, I don't think I can do that. I don't want them around me." "Is it because they'll remind you of your mother?" "It's not that. It's that I want to let all this go. I want to break away." Holly nudged a cat out of the way to sit on a chair. "I understand. If you want to get one cat later, maybe we could do that." Paul stood in a swarm of fluffy gray and black cats. "I don't know what it would be like to just have one cat. I think it would be lonely. I'm used to drowning in cats. I like it that way." "I don't think I could ever live drowning in cats," Paul said, lifting up one of the cats by the middle. "Maybe we could get two. That way, they could each have a friend." "I want to be alone with the cats for a little while before I have to say good-bye to them." "You won't have to say good-bye for a while." "But I'd like some time with them." "That's fine. Call me when you want me to pick you up." Holly walked him to the door and kissed him. "I love you," she said. "You're the best." Holly sat on the couch in the middle of the cat ocean. She remembered how she would shut the door to the bathroom, but the cats would get in while she was purging after she binged. Holly had violent mood swings at times because she had bipolar disorder. She was mostly manic, but she would go into dark periods on occasion. She took medication, but she was still fast. She worked at Starbucks and drank a lot of coffee. One of the perks of working at Starbucks was that people who worked there could take home any leftover pastries because most of the time they ended up in the trash. Holly would drink a ton of espresso at work in the morning, take home all the M&M cookies, apple fritters, and seven layer bars, scarf them down, then purge. She tried really hard not to purge since she started dating Paul. She told him about her problems, and he was okay with it, just as long as she didn't make herself sick. She knew if she did, he would know because he could smell it on her breath when he kissed her. She had an urge to go to the supermarket and buy a package of little holiday cupcakes. Since it was spring, the cupcakes would have flowers on them. They had different decorations according to the season. In the fall, they were orange and yellow, for Christmas, they were red and green, for Valentine's Day, they were red and white. She could imagine going to Stop and Shop, buying two packages of those, and some Cape Cod barbecue potato chips and a bottle of Diet Coke to wash it down. She couldn't do it, she couldn't! She didn't want to ruin her life with Paul. He said he would come to pick her up and she didn't want him to smell her breath. "Tell me, Mr. Bejesus, what should I do?" The cat jumped on her lap. She and her mother had called all the cats Mr. Bejesus, even though some of them were female. Holly stroked the cat. She scratched behind his ears and looked into his eyes. She could tell the cat was trying to communicate with her. "What?" she said. He stared at her. He was trying to tell her not to be a fool and to get on with her life. She understood exactly what he meant. He was telling her not to go buy the cupcakes and chips. She hugged the cat. "Thank you. You're brilliant. You're the one I want to keep." * * * * Holly moved in with Paul and she took Mr. Bejesus with her. He was the smartest cat she knew. She wanted to get a friend for him, so they were planning on going to a shelter. "I love cats, but two is enough," Paul said. Mr. Bejesus stared at him while they ate dinner. "Why does he stare like that?" "He's just making sure we're okay," Holly said, laughing. "You can't pull anything past this one." Holly and Paul and Mr. Bejesus lived together happily and Mr. Bejesus watched over Holly and made sure she thrived for a cat's age.
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