The Adventures of Fluffy & Mitzi

A sudden squealing of brakes and the blare of a horn jolted Fluffy Lowenstein awake. Lifting her head slowly she gazed around through heavy-lidded yellow eyes, and drew in a deep breath. She noted no unusual scents in the air, and stretched her limbs.

On the street outside the window a few floors below a moving van was double parked on the narrow two-way street. A livery cab attempting to pass it had pulled around into the oncoming lane, only to find itself staring down the headlights of an oncoming bus. Trapped now, between the bus and the line of cars behind him, the outraged driver leaned on his horn, while the driver of the bus responded in kind, wildly gesticulating his arms and mouthing the words, “Back up, moron!” The honking continued.

Fluffy raised herself into a sitting position and yawned, then twitched her tail. She didn’t turn to the window, but could sense from the level of light in the room that the sun was obscured by heavy clouds, and would not appear today. The current of heat rising from the radiator beneath the windowsill made her feel heavy and slow, and content. Raising herself to all fours, she contemplated a leap directly to the floor, but decided against it. She stepped elegantly to the arm of the sofa instead, then to the cushions, and descended to the polished parquet like a princess arriving at a ball.

She moved swiftly across the room, her body moving fluidly like a fur-covered fish. Her tail rose high in the air like the standard of a proud king, curving over gently at the top like a shepherd’s crook. Carefully she avoided the weak spot in the floor that creaked under even her gentle carriage. Lightly she bounded up the two steps out of the sunken living room and headed toward the kitchen.

As she bent towards her water dish, her nose wrinkled in involuntary distaste. Mitzi had been at her water again.

For five years now Fluffy had lived contentedly in her two bedroom apartment that she shared with two humans in upper Manhattan. It was a life of utterly predictable routine. The man was up early on a daily basis, and his first task was always putting fresh food in Fluffy’s dish, whether she was there to meow for it or not. (As she got older she tended to sleep in more.) Though the apartment remained dark, he sat under a solitary lamp in the dining room reading the newspaper while listening to the radio, slowly sipping a cup of coffee and nibbling two pieces of whole wheat toast with strawberry jam. He never varied this routine.

After dressing he would slip on his grey overcoat, regardless of the weather, and disappear out the door, leaving the radio in the dining room on. Moments later a harsh buzz would emanate from the bedroom. The woman would rouse herself out of bed, turning on both lamps on either side of the bed, the overhead light, then the light in the hall, the bathroom, the four lamps in the living room, the television, the foyer, the kitchen, and the entryway, before disappearing into the bathroom. Five minutes later she would reappear in a burst of steam and dressing quickly, she would retrace her earlier steps, this time turning off the lights as she passed them. Then whirling frantically from room to room mumbling to herself she would pick up scattered papers, books and magazines and stuff them into her oversized woven shoulderbag before flying out the door with a slam. Frequently she would re-appear a moment later, repeat her circuit around the apartment, pick up one additional item, and be gone again.

Fluffy would then have the rest of the day to herself, which she spent having naps in various locations followed by baths. All this had changed two weeks ago with a fateful knock on the door.

It was Mrs. Rosenbaum from across the hall, a kindly old woman whose hearing deficiency frequently prompted her to answer the question she thought she heard, rather than the one that had been asked. A friendly neighbor might greet her by saying, “Good morning, Mrs. Rosenbaum,” to which she might reply, “Yes, isn’t it awful?” or perhaps, simply, “What?”

Lily Rosenbaum explained that her family had decided she shouldn’t live alone in the City anymore, and they were taking her to live in an apartment facility for senior citizens in Hewitt. She was peeved; she was getting along just fine, thank you, and did not like the idea of being babysat twenty four hours a day and held hostage in a dining hall filled with chattering yentas and somnolent men. What’s worse, Schapiro Estates did not allow pets, and Lily’s daughter-in-law loudly protested that she was allergic to dogs. She needed a home for Mitzi, her 2 year old Shitzu. Would the Lowensteins be able to help?

They asked if they could have the evening to discuss it. It was hard to say no to Mrs. Rosenbaum, not least because she was the kind of woman who didn’t take no for an answer to begin with. But she was a kind, old-fashioned lady and had been a very good neighbor for many years, and had taken excellent care of Fluffy last winter when the Lowensteins had taken a Bahamas cruise. The woman was reluctant, but the man argued that it was the right thing to do to help Lily out, and that basically it would be like having a second cat. The woman conceded, but on the condition that the man took Mitzi for her morning walk.

And so Mitzi had arrived. She spent her first hours racing from one end of the apartment to the other, her short black nails clattering against the hardwood, yipping and yipping as she tried to manage the corners, her back legs sliding out from under her as she collided with the wall. It didn’t seem to stop her. Even now, two weeks later, she still slid into walls. Fluffy, terrified, had curled her lip in disgust and hissed.

Perched high on the living room windowsill, she surveyed her new housemate. Mitzi had two black circles for eyes, that shifted rapidly and never seemed completely in focus. Fluffy had the sense that Mitzi saw much but understood little. Or nothing. She was snaggletoothed, the right lower canine jutting up over her lip, which made her look like a mentally retarded vampire. Her off-white curly fur was the color of an old mop, except under her chin, where it was stained the same brown as the smelly food she inhaled. She proudly wore a black collar studded with fake rhinestones. “Like putting lipstick on a pig,” Fluffy sniffed.

“Yip!” cried Mitzi. That was all she ever said. And she always yipped it in precisely the same way, leading Fluffy to speculate that it likely meant nothing at all.

“Yip!”

The next days proceeded in agony for Fluffy. Where before the days were filled with blissful, mellow silence, excepting only the constant hum of human voices from the small radio in the dining room that was always left on – for her? Fluffy sometimes wondered, disinterested – now there was the cringe inducing click-clack of shitzu paws on the floor, the uncouth “xhaxhaxhaxhaxha” sound of her idiotic panting, and the goddamned yips.

“Yip!”

Mitzi spent hours sitting just inside the door at the end of the long entryway. “Yip!” Pause. “Yip!” Fluffy wished there was a way she could explain the ceaseless unvarying rhythm of the humans’ lives; they would be home around the time of the setting of the sun, give or take an hour or so, depending on whether the days were long or short. The woman would come home first, dumping her coat and bags on the wingback chair in the living room before bustling about in the kitchen. The man came a few minutes later, and would sit on the living room sofa and watch TV while communicating with the woman in a loud voice, so that he could be heard over the TV and around the corner into the kitchen and over the radio, still on, in the dining room. “Mm-hmm,” was all the woman ever seemed to reply.

“Yip!” was not going to speed up this process.

Worse still was the loss of many of Fluffy’s favorite napping spots. The top of the bed in the man and the woman’s room was too low. Mitzi would come click-clacking down the hall at top speed, and after regaining her balance following the collision with the right side of the door frame would leap on to the bed and dance in circles before leaping back off and repeating the routine.

“Yip!”

Under the bed, her favorite refuge when strange humans appeared, was also out. Mitzi frequently crawled under the bed herself and yipped at dustbunnies. When they’d shift in the breeze caused by her vulgar breathing, Mitzi would “Yip!” in terror and click-clack out of the bedroom in a panic.

The bed in the unused second bedroom was too high for Mitzi, but the room itself had a stale and somewhat oppressive mood to it, and Fluffy did not like to nap in there. Invariably she would be restless and have unpleasant dreams. She avoided the dark bedroom most of the time. In the back corner of one of the hall closets there was a pile of old comforters and winter clothes, and Fluffy frequently retreated here when she wanted isolation. She had assumed it was a safe spot, until she was once roused from a nap with the uncomfortable sensation that she was being watched. When she opened her eyes, blank-eyed Mitzi was staring at her and panting. “Yip!” she said, and scuttled away. Fluffy frowned.

In the living room she was safe under the sofa; it was just the barest bit too low for Mitzi’s clumsy, oversized head. Fluffy would press herself against the back wall and smile patronizingly at Mitzi, and occasionally stick out her tongue. She was also safe in the seat of the wingback chair, but the windowsill was higher still and commanded a fuller view not only of the living room, but of the world outside, including the idiotic pigeons who would stare at Fluffy through the glass. “Hooo,” they would say, blinking.

Despite this, Fluffy mourned the loss of the broad open space in the center of the living room on the worn, faded Persian carpet, where she liked to bask in the golden rays of the morning sun, rolling onto her back and feeling herself melt into the floor like butter in a warm saucepan. In the evenings when the humans would sit quietly and watch television, Mitzi usually claimed this patch of carpet, coarsely biting and sucking on her fur, though to Fluffy’s eyes she never appeared quite clean. Now the carpet smelled like dog.

So she sat, as her tail slowly slid across the floor from one side to the other, and gazed at her reflection in the water dish. She pondered whether her thirst overpowered her revulsion at the taste of Mitzi’s slobber. A medium-sized cockroach ambled across the floor nearby, as Fluffy watched. In earlier days she’d have swatted it and chased it, playing with it until it vanished under the crack in the corner by the steam pipe, but now she didn’t bother. She had outgrown such behavior, except at full moon.

The water dish had been one of their first disputes. The humans aptly figured that having two four-footed creatures in the apartment would require more water, so they set out a larger bowl. Mitzi would lap at the water with a nearly pathological aggression; Fluffy stared in disbelief as the rhinestone-bedecked dustmop slurped and hacked over the bowl, spattering water in every direction and leaving the floor nearby wet with small puddles. The water then tasted like dog. Fluffy did her best to tolerate this, until one evening, as she delicately sipped her water, lost in thought, Mitzi padded up behind her and sniffed at her nether regions.

In the blink of an eye Fluffy wheeled on her with a snarl and smacked Mitzi hard across the snout with her right paw, claws fully extended. Then she hissed for good measure. Mitzi leapt backwards and made a whining noise akin to the radiator when it starts up on cold mornings. It was the only time Fluffy ever heard her say anything other than “Yip!”, and she wondered if perhaps maybe she wasn’t completely stupid after all.

Hearing the fracas, the woman came running and quickly sized up the situation, seeing the orange cat’s hackles raised like a porcupine’s quills and the cowering Mitzi in the far corner of the kitchen. “Bad cat!” scolded the woman, as she picked up a plastic water bottle and squirted a cold jet in her face. Fluffy felt betrayed by the woman, and glowered at the quaking dog as she retreated into the living room. The rest of that miserable evening had passed in heavy silence.

After that, Fluffy decided she needed her own dish. She circled the dish in the kitchen and mewed, glancing at the water and then back at the humans. “Whatsamatter, kitty?” the woman would say. “What do you mean, ‘meow’?” The woman frowned. “I don’t understand, honey. There’s food in your dish, water in the bowl, I just changed your litter. What do you want?”

Fluffy mraued in consternation, frustrated by her inability to articulate what she needed. The man’s gruff voice called from the living room.

“Honey, I don’t think the cat likes sharing the dog’s water, let’s get her her own bowl.”

As the woman went to the cupboard to get another bowl, Fluffy danced in circles between her legs and purred, humming in victory. Her own water dish! All was well.

Except Mitzi didn’t seem to understand this arrangement. Clearly, thought Fluffy, this bowl by MY food is MY water, and THAT THERE is your water. But Mitzi happily lapped away at both bowls. Fluffy gave up.

Heaving a sigh, she closed her eyes and bent her slender neck toward the dish, wrinkling her noise to avoid inhaling the scent. Just as her delicate pink tongue touched the water, she heard a familiar sound.

Click clack. Click click click click click.

Turning, she saw Mitzi standing in the doorway, panting like an idiot. “What do you want?” she meowed softly.

“Yip!” said Mitzi.

Fluffy sighed.

“Yip!” Pause. “Yip!” Fluffy hissed and raised her paw as Mitzi turned tail and headed back down the hall. Finished with her drink, Fluffy slinked back down the steps and ascended gracefully in a single leap to the top of the warm windowsill. The rising heat made her feel drowsy at once. Circling twice, she tucked her head under left arm, curled her tail around, and fell asleep.