In a Cat’s Eye

The butterfly was fluttering around against the ceiling, in the corner near the web. It kept flying into the two walls and the ceiling. It wanted to go someplace different, and I wondered why it didn’t just fly out the window so that it could be outside. I guessed it didn’t know which way to go. It probably didn’t know what was outside anyway, so it just kept bouncing off the two walls in the corner. I wondered if the spider knew the butterfly would end up doing that, and if that was why he built his web there.

Mr. Winkley saw that the butterfly was cornered and he jumped from my bed onto my bureau and pawed at the air above his head, but the butterfly was just out of his reach. That spider was still waiting.

The police weren’t going to do anything. Except for Mr. Winkley, the killer and I were the only people in the world who knew that Nancy had been murdered. I didn’t like to think that I had something in common with the killer. It made me feel guilty. I didn’t want anything to do with any of it, but the only other way was for me to believe what everyone else believed, that Nancy used drugs and killed herself, and I wasn’t going to believe that.

The butterfly got caught in the web and was trying to get out. The spider waited until the butterfly was tired, then ran over and turned her over and over with his feet, and smothered her in silk. All this time Mr. Winkley was waving his paw trying to reach the web. I didn’t want him pulling it down; I wanted him to just leave it alone. Nancy was dead, and he was playing around like he didn’t even care. That cat was getting on my nerves.

I threw the newspaper at him but it fell apart before it got there. He jumped off the bureau and went after the newspaper sheets. He flung one up in the air and it landed on top of him and he scrunched down, hiding under the sheet of newspaper.

Nancy was dead and Mr. Winkley wasn’t. I thought it should have been the other way around. I’d just start to get Nancy off my mind and then I’d see him fooling around like that and it would remind me of her and I’d feel bad all over again. I thought, He doesn’t care about anything or anybody, not even himself.

He was still hiding under his newspaper, not moving. He was playing a game but I wasn’t. I said, “That cat is going to learn a lesson.” I scrunched down on the floor and slowly put my hands out toward the newspaper he was hiding under. I was just about to grab him when he pounced at me, swiping the air with his claws. I jumped back and stood up. He’d almost clawed my face. Then he stared at a spot on the floor as though there was something there, a small bug or something, but I didn’t see anything. He got down ready to pounce at the spot, and then he gave up the idea. He looked up at me like he was asking, What?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.” I picked him up, and I wasn’t mad at him anymore.

I figured his brain was so small that he had to forget things right away or he wouldn’t have any room for new things. Probably Nancy was as big a part of him as she was of me, but it was just that he was smaller than I was. In his own way he missed her even more than I did, and that was why he got mad at me and pissed on my underpants. I was beginning to think that he probably shouldn’t be spending so much time outside. I didn’t know if he was smart enough to keep from getting hit by a car or attacked by a dog.