CAT CAFE

"Why the hell would I pay someone to go watch cats play?" Stan Stevens asked his daughter Jessica.

She rolled her eyes and shut the driver's side door, buckling her seatbelt before the car could drive her crazy with its warnings. Her father didn't beat the clock.

"I'm trying to get the damn seatbelt on, stop barking at me," her father grumbled.

He always grumbled. It wasn't exclusive to him either. Her father-in-law did the same, and so did her neighbor's father. It seemed to be a national epidemic of the modern American male over sixty.

"Dad, please," Jessica said in her most patient voice, the kind her mother would have also used to help tame the beast.

They backed out of his driveway and turned onto Collins, immediately greeted by brake lights and a comically oversized truck with two giant smokestacks that belched dark smoke into the morning sky. The truck growled as it inched forward, the sound reverberating off the steel tailpipes.

"Damn kids, how's that legal?" Stan hissed.

"Dad, let's talk about something else. How was poker last night?"

She looked over at him for a response, but his dark brown eyes were fixed on the truck's license plate.

"Give me a pen, Jessica. I want to call this guy's license plate in."

"Dad, c'mon."

"I'm serious."

"No, I know you're serious. I'm saying that you shouldn't be serious. Seriously, less serious."

He looked out the window at the left lane, which had moved forward a few feet.
"Get over there, that's moving."

She gripped the wheel a little tighter and exhaled slowly through her nose.

"Jess, it's movi… oh, it stopped. This one's moving again."

All at once, Jessica realized that she had made a potentially massive mistake this morning.

The door was cheery when it opened, an old-time bell announcing the arrival of the pair to the Furry Feline Cat Café on Atlantic and 4th. If the door was happy, then the walls were ecstatic as they navigated the small hallway lined with colorful paintings and photos of hundreds of cats. Bright colors abounded, and their shoes click-clacked over the vinyl flooring.

Jessica stopped at the window and covered her mouth with her hands.

"Oh my goodness, look at how cute they are!"

She was suddenly five again—the family's cat, Sprinkles, darting through the house, her and her sister in hot pursuit, the cat leaping into her father's lap on the couch for safety. Now that she thought about it, the cat was likely running for its life, but at the time it seemed a willing participant in the chase.

In the corner on an elaborate red pillow closest to the window was a small gray kitten, curled up, deep in sleep, its white paws stretched to the corners of the space. Along the top of the wall, not far from the ceiling, a long wooden shelf supported two cats who, in another life, may have been construction workers in Manhattan, perched with no fear on their haunches, as if they could be getting ready for their lunch break. A creamsicle-colored kitten chased after a green piece of string dragged along the floor by an overeager little blond girl who had either never had a pet or too many of them.

A friendly teenage girl, closer to driver's license than drinking age, greeted the pair at the counter and asked how long they wanted to stay.

Her father, as he was apt to do, responded, "What's the shortest amount of time you have?"

Jessica stepped in, familiar with the dance.

"What he means is, what are our options, please?"

The girl—who seemed unfazed, perhaps because she too had a crochety old man for a father or grandfather—gave three choices: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour.

Her father looked at Jessica, and she rolled her eyes.

"We will take 10 minutes to start, please," Jessica said.

"Great, you can go ahead and go into the room now," the girl said with a bubbly tone.

Stan followed his daughter with the same interest as a high school student walking into class on the last period of the day. Once inside the room, they were greeted by a rambunctious black kitten named Midnight, that Jessica knelt down to pet.

"Oh, she's so sweet."

Her father made no such movement, instead walking over to a chair at the side of the room where no cats were nearby. He watched the father of the girl tormenting the cats, driving them to higher ground, approach a full-grown cat. It looked like it was dipped in a variety of paint buckets—coated with splashes of black, orange, and white— with one bright green eye, and another that lay cloudy and empty. The cat lay uninterested in the center of the room on an island that he seemed to be the sole resident of. As the young father reached down to pet the cat, the cat swiped at him, and the man retracted his hand quickly, not escaping without a mark.

One of the employees standing near Stan chuckled and told him that the cat's name was Albert, and he was blind in one eye. Albert's life had been far from easy, starting as a stray, then hitting the lottery when a wealthy woman adopted him for five glorious years. Then the woman passed, and in her will, provided a sizable donation to the café if they would keep him there.

Stan watched the cat turn his head slowly over toward him and make contact with his one good eye.

"You're a fighter, huh?"

The cat sized him up, and Stan stood slowly and approached him.

He whispered to the cat, "I don't like people either. You and I have that in common."

The cat sat up on his haunches, staring Stan straight in the face, almost daring him to get closer.

Stan took a step closer and extended his hand out for the cat to inspect.

Neither made a move.

Slowly, the cat moved a hair closer to Stan's hand and sniffed, Stan not moving a muscle.

From the corner of the room, Jessica watched the stand-off intently.

The half-blind cat touched its nose to her father's hand, and still Stan didn't move an inch, except for the corner of his mouth drawing up ever so slightly. The cat reared its paw back like it was going to strike, then placed it softly against her father's hand. They stayed there like that for a second, and then the cat circled back and lay back down in its bed.

Jessica's jaw dropped.

For the first time since her mom died, she watched her father smile—a genuine smile, the kind that comes from somewhere deep down, the kind that can't be faked.

He stared at the cat, and she walked over to him, touching him on the arm.

"Our 10 minutes are up, Dad," she said.

He didn't look at her; he just kept his eyes on the cat.

"Maybe we can stay a few minutes longer," he said.

THE END