outdoor cat

a short story about housesitting, a violent dog, and doing what you're supposed to

Steven is one of those guys who reflexively does his best to do the opposite of whatever he is told to do, or else just doesn’t do it, no matter who is telling him to do it, or why. This sort of contrarian attitude of independent liberation is common among those who can afford to enact it, often young males with parents who can cover for when this attitude inevitably goes wrong, like when they are told by a police officer not to climb that lamp pole after the Phillies win or need a LinkedIn connection after they get laid off for doing nothing.

Indeed, often one of their chief life goals is to find a job where they are able to do as little as possible while getting paid enough to live the lifestyle they feel entitled to. Another is to find a partner who might not do what they say (in fact, they respect disobedience in a partner) but at the very least does not ever tell him what to do.

Steven has succeeded in the former (he works in IT), but is still in the process of finding the latter. The pursuit of such a suitable individual to pair with has brought forth a level of self-awareness about his condition such that he is not necessarily proud of it, so much so he pulls out his phone to Google the symptoms and find whether it’s a diagnosable psychosis. He hopes it is because then it might merit prescription drugs.

Reactance is what it’s apparently called, this predisposition toward disobedience, according to the God-like and infallible internet. The reasons for it are latent and innumerable and, most importantly, not his fault.

“Steven, hello? I’m trying to talk to you about something serious,” says his latest girlfriend. “I hate it when you take out your phone when I’m talking to you!”

This girlfriend, Madeline, has begun to suspect this disobedient quality about Steven and so tries to disguise her desires of him as suggestions, seeds to blossom in him on their own, incepted. The latest is her crusade to move in together, which is the Next Step. They are currently on step ‘Dating’, which is after the step ‘Talking’ and prior to ‘Move In’, after which is ‘Marriage’, then ‘Baby’, what she believes to be her ultimate fulfillment of womanhood.

Since Madeline was first able to pretend to have her own baby in the form of a doll, her chief goals in life have been to move on to The Next Step, as quickly as possible and as life will allow.

“So, when is this?” Steven follows up, even though he’s already been told. It’s true he wasn’t paying attention, which is another problem of his.

“Next weekend. And I was just saying it might give you a chance to...you know. See how you like it, living here. Even when I’m not around,” Madeline said, rubbing her dog’s ears. Steven can’t help but feel jealous of the dog.

They are discussing Madeline’s trip to Florida for her friend’s bachelorette. She seems to be complaining a lot about it for what is presumed to be a joyous occasion; having to take time off work, having to pay for the plane ticket, the outfits, having to plan what they’re going to do, etc. Steven can’t understand why she’s so excited about something she’s complained so much about.

So then don’t go? Is what Steven has been imploring her.

Ugh, you don’t understand! Is what Madeline says back. It’s true, he does not.

She wants Steven to house-sit for her while she’s gone. Because she is a strong-willed, smart, and modern woman, Madeline owns her own house, albeit a very small and normal one, but Steven admires her for it. He doesn’t own a house.

Since she’s phrased the request as the asking of a favor and not an order, he considers it duly.

“Yeah, I’ll watch the house for you,” he says. “And the dog.”

“Hooray!” Madeline says.

They lounge on her couch while Steven watches college football on the 65-inch TV which would be way too big to fit in his apartment. She grabs her dog, Riley, a huge pitbull mix, by the face and smooshes it and scrunches it to mouth words as she says in her dog voice:

“Oh, Mr. Steven I am so glad to spend the weekend with you and not at the stinky kennel, ohhhhh so much fun we’ll have!”

Steven chuckles politely and turns up the volume on the TV. The dog is amenable to such degrading treatment in a way he can’t imagine.

“I want to go on a hike!” Riley the dog (via Madeline) continues. “Mr. Steven, I want to go for a hike!”

He remains interested in only the University of Kentucky playing University of Georgia, Wildcats vs. Bulldogs.

“No seriously. We should go for a hike later!” Madeline says, forsaking the dog and hopping onto his lap and straddling him, a common tactic for attracting 100% of his attention. What she should have asked was, Do you want to go for a hike this weekend?

Without realizing it, Steven has already decided he’d rather go back to his apartment and play video games instead.

“I mean I have a few parlays on this game and it’ll only be an hour till dark by the time it’s over...”

“Oh, you’re such an indoor cat,” Madeline says, hopping off him. “Right Riley? Mr. Steven is such an indoor cat. Booho, doesn’t like being outdoors.”

“Indoor cat,” he says. “That’s me.”

Madeline leaves on the bachelorette the next weekend, and Steven has been left a handwritten list of tasks and procedures for housesitting. As he reads them, he begins reasoning as to whether or not he should actually do them, whether they are bullshit or not.

Turn off lights before bed! — Okay, whatever, no big deal. So she spends a dollar more this month on electricity. She’d never know anyway.

Lock the door when you leave! — Obvious, but she lives in a quiet neighborhood with no crime.

Recyclables go in the blue container in the garage! — They’ll go in whatever container is most convenient for him.

It’s not so much he doesn’t believe in these things as he must have already pre-conceived excuses for not doing them. Fail-safes of blame to assign when he doesn’t follow through. Most in-depth are the tasks regarding Riley, the last of which is:

MAKE SURE TO PUT HIM ON A LEASH WHEN TAKING TO THE BACKYARD OR HE WILL CATCH AND KILL A BUNNY.

Steven certainly did not plan on waking up at seven to feed the dog, but the dog wakes him up with some licks to the face around eight because he can’t wait to shit anymore. The sleep Steven had was luxurious; another great reason to date Madeline is that she has the room for a king-sized bed and outfits it with fine linen sheets, an improvement Steven has never considered, let alone implemented.

He eventually rouses himself, puts on some sweatpants, and slips on some boots to take Riley out into the springtime morning of the backyard. The dog follows him by force of habit into the garage, where the leash and collar shall be applied.

Or where they should be applied. Steven can’t find them or remembered their stored location. Was it in the note? he wonders. But if there is one thing he is not going to do, it’s read the damn note again. All he knows is that the leash and collar are not in his immediate vision.

It’s a small backyard, less than an acre, enclosed by a six-foot wooden privacy fence. He looks through the paneled windows of the storm door from the garage and sees no sign of rabbits. He doesn’t see how the rabbits would get in there. So what if the dog kills a rabbit, anyway? He thinks. It would be the best moment of the dog’s life, meeting the requirement of every instinct that it’s evolved to fulfill over the course of millions of years. Steven figures that would be the closest this neutered dog would ever feel to orgasm. Certainly a better feeling than any in his life.

“Alright Riley, no leash, let’s go. You’re a free boy,” Steven says, letting the dog into the yard. He takes an apple out with him and chews it as he watches Riley pee. It takes a couple of minutes but eventually the dog paces and squats to poop as well.

The note said something about collecting the poop in a pooper-scooper, but Steven doesn’t even have an excuse for that one; he simply forgets it because in the moment the notion of doing so entered his brain, it seemed so unnecessary and wrong it couldn’t stick at all.

In the moment between him chucking his apple core into the bushes and turning back to the door, Riley goes full alert on something, hair raised and leg pointed.

Steven turns and sees an intruder in the yard.

Not a bunny, but a little black cat with a green, worn flea collar, who has just jumped down from walking the tightrope of the fence. Riley is a powerful dog, muscular chest and legs, wide mouth and healthy chompers, and he kicks into a gear between ‘lightning’ and ‘roadster,’ propelled to the cat in just a few bounds.

It’s impossible for the cat to return the way it came, and it immediately sees the finality of its mistake. Riley corners it, grabs it by the neck with a crunch, and with two massive shakes of his head, the cat goes limp.

The chunk of apple in Steven’s mouth falls to the lawn. He runs to Riley (who is emitting guttural sounds in-line with Steven’s thinking vis-a-vis it having the time of its life having caught prey) and yanks the back of the dog’s neck. It thankfully lets the cat drop to the ground, a bit perturbed by Steven’s roughness but happy all the same, panting with what looks like a smile and a few wags of the tail.

It’s debatable as to whether or not Steven would have consulted the note if the note had contained something as to what to do in this scenario. Doubtful that it would. Regardless, he is now bequeathed with a dead cat in his girlfriend’s yard and having custody of a cat murderer.

Step one, he decides, is getting the dog into the house, which he does easily with the promise of some treats that the dog is supposedly not to get until nighttime, but whatever.

Step two, a considerably longer and more considered step, is to figure out what to do with the cat. He looks down at it lying in the morning dew of Madeline’s well-manicured lawn. It’s definitely dead; a trickle of pee runs down the pale and slightly more hairless inner thigh. Looking at the deadness of its eyes makes him nearly throw up. He inspects the collar. There’s nothing written on it, no modicum of address or identity. Surely it belongs to a neighbor.

In the back of his mind is the bubbling notion that Madeline would be very pissed at him for this happening, even though technically a rabbit was not killed. It’s clear she cares for the lives of other things, though, and that was the reason for the leash rule, which he deliberately disobeyed. Therefore, he needs to bend reality such that this has never happened, which he figures is better than lying, since it would never be asked about. Especially since he would make the neighbor’s cat disappear, and they would never know what happened to it.

He gets a garbage bag, puts the cat in it, and locks up the house, suddenly very observant of what the instructions from Madeline say. It’s another few hours before Riley has to go out again (the note is specific on the times to take out the dog for potty), so he has the time to drive an hour out to his parents’ house in the rural town over. He takes the cat onto their many-acred property, snags a shovel, and finds one of the undisturbed spots his dad has not been able to landscape, where he buries it with little ceremony.

“Soooo, if you liked living here...and you like me...and you can see a future together...why not move in?” Madeline probes a week later.

“You know, I was thinking about it, and it would make sense...” he starts.

Later that night, he gets a notification on the Neighborhood app on his phone, the one that comes with the Ring camera Madeline has. She gave him access, since they are moving in together and all.

The post is from the area of Madeline’s house. The message says:

hello! my granddaughter showed me how to use this app. i have a black cat with a green collar named Midnight. he is an indoor cat but i have not seen him for a few days. i think i accidentally let them outside. he is an indoor cat, he is probably very scared and confused!! please call...if you see him!

“Aw, did you see this?” Madeline asks him. He has, and because he is a human being, albeit a flawed one, he feels guilt. “Someone lost their cat. I bet that’s Miss Sanders, down the street. She’s so sweet but she has bad dementia. I bet her granddaughter wrote this for her. She’s always over there helping out. So sad.”

“An indoor cat? Aren’t all cats indoor cats? Or at least the domesticated ones? Otherwise by definition they’re like...wild cats, right?” Steven says, engaging his inner contrarianism to distract from the matter of the grandmother’s message.

His parents didn’t let him have any pets growing up, and Madeline can’t help but look at him like a child.

“Of course not! Sometimes cats come and go outside. Sometimes they even poop and sleep outside, but they come home for, you know, comfort and affection. You’re not supposed to do it anymore because they kill all the area wildlife. I’ve called you ‘indoor cat’ a million times and you’ve never known what I meant?”

“Oh,” he says. “I thought it was like an oxymoron. Like an ironic thing.”

“How would that even...” She sighs and settles into the crook of his arm. “I swear, you’re not all there sometimes.”

Steven smiles as Riley puts his face on his thigh and looks up at him with his beautiful brown eyes.

“That’s how I knew you were a good one,” Madeline says. “Riley just freakin’ loves you. And she loves you even more since you spent your little weekend alone. Have you noticed that? You guys bonded, it’s so cute!”

Steven pats Riley on the head. He loves this dog now, like he loves the beautiful Yankee Candle scent that warms Madeline’s house, the 65-inch TV, the couch with the chez longue and the linen sheets. He is glad that things always seem to work out for him.

He turns up the TV.

“Actually, I kinda have a rule; TV volume never goes up over thirty...” Madeline says.

She takes the remote from him.

thanks for reading this story about following instructions. even if you didn’t like it, maybe click the little heart button so that people who might will find it.

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BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS:

The story comments on generational attitudes toward work, relationships, and responsibility. Do you think it’s an accurate depiction of current societal norms?

How do you interpret Steven and Madeline’s relationship? Do you think their dynamic is sustainable in the long run?

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