Tuesday, March 3, 2009
DIARY OF MY CAT, KIKI - #2
Dear Diary,
Sometimes I feel I have a cold heart. I know that the Man and Woman, and their Sons do their best to please me, but I generally look at them with contempt, except of course when I am hungry and have to suck up to them. But in general I use them. It's a fair trade: they feed me, and I'm cute.
I didn't always belong to the Man and Woman, but belonged to their oldest Son. I heard them talking once that I was the runt in my family, and the Son got me when I was very young and weak. He bottle fed me. Life was all right then although it was boring because he'd leave me at home all day. Then one day, he whisked me up and put me in a box and brought me to the Man and Woman's house. I was to stay there. It didn't seem too bad of a place - they had the room, they had a garden, and they even had a cat door so I could come and go. The problem was that they had this old dour white cat who hated me. I simply could not understand how she could be so mean to me; she should have mothered me. I was so cute. Then I understood that she was jealous of me - it was as simple as that. She hissed when I was near her, and she whacked me with her paws. In the beginning she frightened me very much and I used to cower under the chairs and tables. The Woman would pick me up and console me, and better yet, she would spank the white cat for being mean to me.
Later I realized that the white cat was old and slow. I learned to come up behind her and quick hit her with my right paw, then run fast so she didn't even know what hit her. I got my revenge this way.
This white cat was my nemesis. It gave me pleasure to see her punished for being cruel to me. Then one day they brought her to the cat-doctor and she had to have her ears cut. She had growths or something. And the worse part was that the Man and Woman moved her to their upstairs bedroom and I was forbidden to go up there. This was the lowest point of my life. I learned about bitterness and anger and my heart turned so icy and brittle I thought it'd crack.
I snubbed them. I went out all day. I found neighbors to feed me. They thought I was abandoned, and they gave me food and water and I could even sleep in their patio. But in the evening I returned to remind the Man and Woman that I was still alive and that I hated them. On several occasions I pissed on the carpet, but the Man caught me and rubbed my nose on the pee-stain and threw me out of the house - so I decided that wasn't the best tactic.
It was really best to be cool and calculating, to use them and never to kowtow to them. That's how I acquired my cold heart.
Remembering all this is upsetting to me so this is all I'll say about this matter. Oh - the white cat, she died one day and things got better for me, but I still feel resentment now and then.
Kiki
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books..
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment