Page 25 of People Skills

I stand there and wait for him to say something about the cat. He is watching me, clearly trying to gauge my reaction, and apparently he’s waiting for me to ask. I walk to the kitchen to get water, fill a glass, and take a long drink. He’s picked the wrong person to play chicken with. He brought the cat here, now he needs to explain it.

I stay in the kitchen, refill the glass, and drink more slowly this time.

Still nothing. I put the glass in the sink with a clunk.

‘So, um, are you a cat person?’ he calls out to me.

I grew up with two cats and I do consider myself a cat person, or a former one, but I’m not going to make this easy for him.

‘I’m more of a dog person,’ I say, walking back out to the lounge room, pushing my sweaty hair off my face. The cat is curled up, happily asleep on Xavier’s lap. It looks like a Burmese.

‘A dog person is halfway to becoming a cat person,’ he says. ‘You just need to meet the right cat.’

I look at him, unmoved, and he breaks.

‘Okay, so, I had to go and rescue my cat from Lana this morning—’

‘He’s yours?’ I got the impression from Lana’s essays that the cat was hers.

‘Well, technically no, but Lana got him about a week before we got together and he and I bonded from the beginning. He’s half-mine. Sort of. I’m like his uncle. Or his brother.’

‘His brother.’

‘Symbolically,’ Xavier says. ‘We’re family, is what I’m trying to say.’

‘And she knows you have him?’ I ask. I don’t want to be part of a felony.

‘Yes. God. I didn’t steal him. She wrote this essay—’

‘I read it.’

‘Right. Well, clearly she’s not in a place to be looking after him. I told her I would take him for a few weeks. And she’s booked a last-minute girls’ trip away.’

‘What’s his name?’ I ask.

‘Rex,’ Xavier says.

‘Hi, Rex,’ I say. He’s a beautiful cat, a rich chocolatey-brown. I bend down to pat him and his eyes flick open, a startlingly yellow-gold. He holds my gaze in a confrontational way and I withdraw my hand.

‘So I was wondering if, maybe, there’s any chance you would be open to Rex staying here for a while?’ Xavier says.

I raise my eyebrows and say nothing. He needs to do a harder sell than that.

‘He’s a really good cat, I promise. Not demanding at all, very well behaved,’ Xavier says.

Rex opens his eyes again at this, and stretches out a paw, extending his claws like a threat. I think back to Lana’s essays. I am sure she’s written about The Cat causing havoc. Destroying her curtains—that was definitely mentioned. And chewing through cables.

‘I can pay extra rent, and put his litterbox in the back corner of the laundry, and—’

It’s at this moment that Rex jumps out of Xavier’s lap and decides to use the side of my couch—my beautiful cerise-red velvet couch that I found after months of searching for the perfect one secondhand—as a scratching post, and we both watch as his claws shred the material.

I let out a squeak of horror, and Xavier lunges forward and grabs him.

‘I’m so sorry, he’s never done that before,’ he says. An obvious lie.

Rex looks triumphant and jumps out of Xavier’s hands to go prowling, and Xavier examines the couch. ‘It’s not too bad. If I just snip a few threads, it won’t be noticeable.’

‘Until he does it again,’ I say.