Week 39 - My Cat in a Box

My Cat in a Box

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Some cats were good luck, and some cats were bad luck. Ed wondered what sort of cat his was. He couldn’t really say for sure. Ed wasn’t superstitious by nature and he didn’t really know what to look for. There wasn’t much about Mr. Harrington that had ever been lucky or unlucky. Mr. Harrington was just a cat. Flip, disinterested and incredibly annoying whenever he wanted food. Just like most any cat. But how was he supposed to know anyway. Emily had found the cat, Emily had named the cat and Emily took care of the cat. Ed didn’t pay much attention to that side of things.

It was too bad. Ed could have used a bit of luck right now.

The door had been left open. That wasn’t supposed to happen. There were safeguards built in. Redundancies set up. There was supposed to be a procedure in place. The door wasn’t supposed to stay open. But plans too often fail. That was far too obvious.

Black cats were considered bad luck. But that seemed to be some old wives’ tale. Mr. Harrington wasn’t a black cat at all. There was no such thing as luck. There was preparation and chance and the point they two met on a graph. No such thing as luck. Some cats were considered magic. Witches always seemed to have cats. Egyptians cats too. His mind was wondering. He was missing the point. The point wasn’t good or bad. Lucky or unlucky. The point was the question and in asking, creating a possible solution.

Ed forgot the question. He forgot. He could have used some luck right about now, but he forgot.

Ed’s eyes were watering. Something in the air. Some irritant. He didn’t have the strength or the time to consider what it was. There was nothing he could do now, even if he could have figured it out. It was all too late.

The door was left open. There was no telling what had come in or out in that time. Nothing was supposed to come in or out. But something had obviously gone wrong. The gate was left swinging. Anything could have passed on through. Anything at all. Like an airborne pathogen. That sort of thing. The things they hadn’t accounted for. The things no one thought about. The things that weren’t supposed to be possible.

Here he was, dying, but still worrying about what should or shouldn’t be possible, even though it most certainly had happened. Or so he thought. Maybe none of it happened. Maybe it was in his head. Or maybe it only happened to him. That was the point, wasn’t it? The infinite possibility of uncertainty, where only the interference of observation could create or determine the outcome. Where was the luck in that? Any outcome was possible, if only he could figure out how to look for the right one. He didn’t know what to look for. He didn’t know the clues. He didn’t know how to see. What had he seen? What had he done? How much of this was his own fault?

There should have been other people there. Guards. Doctors. Lab technicians. Where were they? Ed could barely muster the strength to lift his head and look around. There was no one there. He was all alone. That was no way to die. That was no way to leave this world. He was sure there had been other people. But there were none now.

Last night he had had several dreams of his daughter. Not his daughter as she was, but as she would be. He met her as an adult and she had been so happy. So full of life. It made him smile. Even now, he found the strength to smile. Or at least he thought he was smiling. He couldn’t really tell if his face moved or some muscle twitched at all. For all he knew, his face was already frozen.

Emily had named the cat Mr. Harrington. She looked so old in his dream.

The dream seemed so real. He felt her hand. The texture. It seemed as if he had really been there. Dreams weren’t supposed to feel that real, were they?

Where had he gone?

But what if he was still alive? What if this was the dream and he could still wake up? What would happen then? What if he was in the dream and here, at the same time? Split in two worlds, split in two? Would he still be there, in the dream, with Emily? If he died here, here on the floor of the lab, would he still be somewhere else at the same time? If something could come through the door, why couldn’t he do it too? He liked that idea. He liked that someone somewhere might carry on and that he might get to be there with Emily.

The cat was going to outlive him. Strange thought indeed. No one ever bought a pet thinking the pet would outlast them. He wondered what would become of Mr. Harrington, would he starve? Or survive? Dead or alive, dead or alive. The two ways it could go, but he wouldn’t be around to see it. Would someone else find him and take care of him? Maybe the cat was damned. A demon. A haunting. Maybe the cat had been his curse, his bad luck after all. Ed wished he had never bought that cat. It was too late for those sorts of thoughts. What was done was done. No changing that now.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder, if he was gone, then who would feed Mr. Harrington?