Leonard (My Life as a Cat)

by Carlie Sorosiak

  “I haven’t gone to the beach at all this summer,” Olive said, holding my gaze at the bottom of the steps. Gently, she slipped the harness over my head, clicked the buckle, and attached a leash. “I’m not really a beach person, but it just seems kind of silly to be so close to the water and not go. You sure you’d like to come?”

  I didn’t know how to convey it: that I wanted her to rush back upstairs and read my message. What if someone else found it first? There was always the possibility that other members of my species were correct about humans. That if humans discovered us, our lives would change for the worse.

  I was curious about the beach, though—despite the danger of the ocean. You could just glimpse the sea from the porch, a wavy line of pure blue. On Earth, everything is water this, water that. Have you drunk enough water? Have you released enough water? Did you clean yourself with water this morning?

  “Watch out for cars,” Olive said. “And for Norma. This is definitely not on the schedule, but she’s working on her motorcycle today—and I didn’t want to bother her by asking.”

  None of this reassured me.

  The concrete was warm beneath my paws, a harsh breeze ruffling my bib. We ambled along a sidewalk edged by palm trees, other humans passing us in small motorized vehicles—golf carts, someone called them. Danger mobiles, I renamed them; they made a dull whirring noise as they zipped by ice cream shops, restaurants, and a store that advertised “boogie boards.” I couldn’t imagine what those were, but they sounded so festive, so delightfully human.

  The sun was yellowish as we reached the shore, and my eyes were everywhere at once: on a wooden pier with spindly legs, casting itself out to sea; on the millions and millions of specks of sand; on the humans playing ball sports, laughing and sunning themselves by the water. A part of me expected to join them. We’d brought a beach towel, hadn’t we? From what I’d detected, we were supposed to splay ourselves atop this towel, and rotate our bodies as the sun hit. But that was not what we did. We stayed back. We observed.

  The truth is, we hid.

  At the base of a sand dune, Olive wrapped my leash around her wrist, and then tucked herself in front of the tall grasses, her knees to her chest. She was wearing her faded-blue overalls and a pair of tinted sunglasses; I could see my reflection in the lenses, staring up at her with a question: This is what we do?

  “Maybe I’ll just read,” Olive said, opening her book to the middle. She didn’t read, though. And she didn’t talk to me much after that. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence—not exactly. But over the last couple of days I’d gotten used to her voice. She’d told me interesting facts: Did you know that three percent of Antarctic ice is penguin urine? She’d told me she wanted to be a veterinarian. Or a zookeeper. Or a wildlife biologist. She’d told me things confidently, like I understood. Now her body language was changing—back hunching, bare feet digging into the sand.

  And it kept coming in flashes: what I’d written on Olive’s bedroom wall.

  Soon, she’d know.

  I batted a few blades of grass with my paws, examining the beach. Families—so many families here: parents passing out bags of food, children slapping the water in their inflatable wings. I couldn’t look at them for long. It’s difficult to see something and think, That will never be me. Our species isn’t born; we’re created: a collision of particles, a rearrangement of matter. No parents. No siblings.

  I snapped my attention elsewhere. Not far away, a pod of young humans was thwacking a firm white ball over a net—back and forth, back and forth. Every once in a while, they peered in our direction, covering their mouths with their hands. They were laughing. The noise rattled in an unpleasant way, crawling into the depth of my belly.

  On this planet, every noise is two noises. Sometimes laughter is like Olive and Q, joking at the aquarium about stick horses and sharks named Steve and Martin; and sometimes laughter is like the spike of a stingray or the teeth of a leopard seal.

  Olive tensed.

  And I felt like panting. The weather was becoming unbearably hot, and I was counting down to our moment of return, when Olive would see the word ALIEN. Did cats pant? Maybe that was dogs, or—

  “Is she going to stop staring?” one of young humans snapped, just loud enough for us to hear. Like the rest of his clan, he was dressed in slick fabric, presumably used for bathing. “Did she . . . did she bring her cat to the beach?”

  I didn’t have much time to react. Olive just bolted, barely stopping to brush the sand off her overalls. Were overalls traditional beach attire? Human clothing was, for the most part, a mystery to me; I knew what I liked: Hawaiian shirts, vests with plenty of useful pockets. But I found it strange—the idea that there is a “right” kind of clothing. So you want to visit the beach in overalls? Or a turtleneck? Or a pair of green trousers with a matching scarf? What does it matter? How could it possibly impact anyone else?

  At the end of the boardwalk, Olive scooped me up. We were weaving through a crowd, through a sea of golf carts and frozen-lemonade stands. She was breathing rather heavily, an unnatural wheeze like I’d experienced right before the vet. There was water running down her face.

  No, tears—real human tears.

  And I had no idea how to help her.

  People have a terrible reputation in our galaxy. War, pollution, the treatment of whales—all of these are distinctly human. But there are also the smaller offenses: their drinking straws, their boxes within boxes. Why ship boxes inside further boxes, only to throw the outer box away? It is terribly wasteful.

  My point is, there was already a strong case against humans. That they suffered from greed and gluttony; that they were impulsive and easy to anger, while we were logical always. But I’d seen I Love Lucy. I’d seen pictures of human families, with their communal meals and their board games, and I knew—I just knew—there was more to them.

  Yet as we fled the beach, I wondered: Was I so entranced with their dinner forks and their television sets that I’d missed something? Had I misjudged them as a species?

  Back at the house, Olive slid me onto the kitchen countertop and poured herself a glass of orange juice, glugging it down. “I was at the beach with my cat,” she finally said, as if this clarified everything. “My cat. How can I fix being weird if I’m doing something weird and I don’t even know it?”

  Anxiously, I trailed her to the bedroom, where she pulled out a small computer from a dresser drawer. Patting the bed, she settled back into the pillows, and I sprang up beside her, pawing at her stomach: Look! Look at the wall! I am an alien.

  “Sometimes I wish I were a cat,” Olive said, opening her laptop. “I think I’d make a much better cat than a person.”

  Suddenly there was an empty bar on the computer screen, and she typed inside it: How to be normal. The words appeared in a miraculous, blinking flash. (This! This was so much easier than a crayon.) Other searches followed. How to make new friends. First day in California school. Signs you are hopelessly weird. And every result sunk her a little lower. It was hard to watch. By the fifth search, I’d almost stopped trying to direct her attention to the wall and started thinking about ways to tell her: You are a perfectly acceptable version of a human, exactly as you are.

  Eventually she sniffled and said, “Ah, I need a tissue. Be right back.”

  She left me alone with the laptop.

  She left me alone with an opportunity.

  I figured that I didn’t have much time—maybe a minute or less—so I made the most of it, selecting the appropriate keys with swift punches of my paws, my ears pulled back in panicked concentration. Human fingers would’ve been incredibly helpful, and much more accurate. Several times, I pressed too long, on three keys instead of one; the message turned from hello olive to hello olivehhhhhjjjjhhhhnnn, which just wouldn’t do. I erased. I typed faster, fear and courage welling up inside me.

  “Leonard, what are you . . .” Olive said, returning from the bathroom. There was a tissue bunched in the palm of h
er hand. “Are you trying to write on my keyboard?”

  Exactly! I thought at first, before realizing she was joking. I was a cat to her. Only a cat. Cats did not type perfectly intelligible messages inside Internet search bars. And yet—

  Olive rounded the corner of the bed, gazing down at the screen.

  And she saw.

  She stood there, unmoving, for so long, perhaps reading the words over and over, trying to draw meaning from them. hello olive, I’d typed. it is me leonard i am an alien do not be scared. Could I have phrased it better? Who knows. I did my best. And I just hoped that Olive would understand.

  Her head snapped to look at me then, her eyes wide, pupils enlarging. I could tell that her mouth was dry, because she swallowed three times in a row: big, gasping gulps. Physically, I wasn’t sure how to react. A small part of me was relieved for the secret to be out in the open. A far greater part was waiting for Olive to say something. Anything. For her to scream, shout, acknowledge me. Should I extend a paw, offer to shake her hand, now that we were being properly introduced? No, no, don’t be silly. Besides, I was too anxious to move.

  “This isn’t happening,” Olive finally said, as if trying to convince herself. “There’s . . . there’s no way.” Her voice was quivering, like a thin ripple on water.

  My assumption was that I should stay incredibly still—no sudden movements. Sudden movements might frighten her away. Slowly, I lowered myself onto my belly, paws folded beneath me, but then I realized: it looked like I was about to pounce. I abandoned the whole position.

  “This is not possible,” Olive said more firmly, but I could see the doubt sweeping in. Hadn’t she said it herself, that I was an exceptional cat? For a long moment, we held each other’s gaze; and then, eventually, she reached over—hand quaking—and deleted my words.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know how this can be real,” she said, sliding the laptop toward me. “But if it is real, if this is really happening, I’m going to need you to do that again. Please?”

  Would Olive have preferred a normal cat? Or was the possibility of something more—something like me—intriguing to her? Either way, I typed. I turned letters into words, my throat constricting from the stress of it all. I didn’t want to say the same thing over again—what purpose would that serve? Instead, I wrote: i am from another planet and need your help getting home, adding a please at the last moment, just as Olive had.

  She kept taking in deep breaths, only to push them dramatically out. She read the screen three or four times, looked at me—and then promptly fled the room, slamming the door behind her. Not the ideal reaction. I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt.

  On the other side of the wall, I could hear her pacing back and forth, mumbling to herself. String after string of words, all running together: “You’re not this weird, you’re imagining things, pull yourself together, come on, think, stop and just think.”

  My ears pointed back nervously, because I didn’t expect this. She wasn’t scared of me; she was scared of herself. And I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, if we could just talk this through. But I couldn’t open the door. I didn’t know how to dangle with that kind of precision. So I settled for a frenzied kneading of the blankets, my paws massaging the soft fabric. Oddly, this calmed some of my nerves.

  Until I heard her bolting down the stairs.

  Which panicked me again. Here I was, trapped inside the room. With water, yes. With food, yes. But time was moving very slowly. Time can do that on Earth. When Olive didn’t come back around lunchtime, I gave up kneading the blankets and jumped onto the windowsill, tucking myself behind the curtains. I could see the whole neighborhood from there: rows of greenery and houses on stilts, hydrangea bushes and golf carts. And Olive. Olive striding back and forth, hands gripping the sides of her hair, looking very much like she was about to fall apart.

  I felt terrible. Maybe that’s too simple a statement to encompass everything that was building inside me, but I’m not sure I can explain it any other way: an aching, hollow sensation that grows and grows. But why was I feeling so terrible? I began purring just to calm myself, and sat there, vibrating on the windowsill, my lungs fluttering wildly.

  It was almost three hours before Olive returned, opening the door, peeking inside. I’m not sure what she was expecting to see—if she thought she’d imagined me entirely. But there I was, paws-deep in blankets again.

  “Okay,” she said, still breathing in little gasps. “Please tell me this is real, because right now I’m thinking that I am by far the weirdest kid on the planet. I need confirmation that you are who you say you are, and it’s not just me.” Cautiously, she switched on the laptop again and gestured for me to type—if I wanted to, if I could. So I hunted and pecked at the letters, trying to get the message exactly right.

  you are not weird you are of this earth, I responded. what confirmation do you need.

  “I don’t know,” she said shakily. “I think it’s the computer. It needs to be more than the computer. What if someone’s playing a prank on me or something? I don’t know how they could get into my laptop, but maybe they did.”

  Quickly, I typed, look wall behind you, and she turned to see the scratching of a brown crayon, written thinly on the paint.

  “How did I miss that?” she said. “Alien. Okay. You’re an alien . . . I’m going to sit down.” Her knees buckled as she leaned back on the bed. There was a slight tremor in her hands. Earlier that week, I’d seen Stanley lick Olive’s fingers—a long slurp with his enormous tongue—but something told me that cats didn’t lick humans with the same frequency. My tongue felt like sandpaper, even to me. So I let my animal instincts guide me, moving onto Olive’s lap and headbutting her gently in the face.

  And I kept it there, my skull to her nose. Here’s what I was hoping to communicate: that I meant no harm, and that this wasn’t just in her head.

  “Your fur is going up my nose,” she said.

  I pulled back.

  “I’m still not sure if any of this is real. Can you give me some time?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you just nod?”

  I nodded again.

  And she told me, in a quiet way, “This is all very astonishing.”

  We stayed up incredibly late that night, talking and typing. At some point, Stanley scooted his way to the foot of the bed, splaying himself on the blue rug. And we built a tent around him, Olive grabbing a sheet from the linen closet and draping it across some chairs. In the light of the miniature turtle, the lint from the fabric looked like stars.

  “Tell me about it,” she said, still wary, but warming to me. “What’s it like, where you’re from?”

  beautiful, I wrote. safe. i am never alone.

  My forelegs were becoming sore from all the typing, all the careful pressing of letters, but I was aching to write. It felt like someone, for the first time, was really listening.

  Olive rested her chin in her hands, leaning cautiously closer. “What else? Tell me more.”

  my planet is made of helium.

  “Helium?” she asked. “I thought helium was just a gas, like for balloons and stuff.”

  humans have much to learn.

  “I bet we do. I bet we don’t even know half of what’s out there. I mean, people are still debating who built Stonehenge.”

  the venusians.

  Olive batted her eyes. “What?”

  that is who built stonehenge.

  “Oh,” Olive said, clearly stunned. “Wow. I’m guessing those are aliens? The ven-ooo-sians.” She pronounced it perfectly. “What’s your species called, then? I don’t even know the name of your planet.”

  it does not translate well.

  “Just try.”

  need paper and crayon.

  “That’s a funny name for a planet.”

  no I need them.

  “Oh, sorry! Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

  She handed me a piece of paper along with raw sienna, which had
rolled next to her nightstand. Carefully, with the crayon gripped in my mouth, I drew a spherical symbol, adding the strings—like ribbons fluttering around a balloon.

  “That’s the name?” Olive held the paper up to the turtle light. “It’s cool. If you squint, it kind of reminds me of a moon jellyfish.”

  what is moon jellyfish, I asked, and she told me in a rather animated way. She told me lots of things: not just what a moon jellyfish was, but also that her daisy barrettes were a gift from her father, when she was still very small; that Frank was charming with everyone else, just not with her; and that she’d do just about anything to have a conversation with a penguin. “Their flippers,” she said. “The way they waddle.” And every once in a while, I’d catch her peering at me intently, when she thought I wasn’t looking—studying me, as I’d studied her.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  300, I typed.

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s really old. Oh, I mean, no offense! I wish . . . I wish that everyone could live that long.”

  i am not offended, I said—then wondered, as Olive’s eyes misted at the corners, if she was thinking of her dad.

  “So are you . . . what’s the word?”

  immortal.

  “Yes, that.”

  not on this planet.

  Olive frowned. “Why would you risk it, then? Earth is dangerous.” Before I could respond, she added, “Are you always a cat? Like, are there just a bunch of cats, floating in space? Sorry, too many questions. It’s just all so much . . . But how does it work? I want to know everything.”

  I stretched my paws, flexing my toes. What I was about to write would require concentration, stamina, and punctuation. I still hadn’t figured out capital letters on the keyboard, but commas and periods, those were fine. My chest fluttered, because it was rather scary—getting the words right, putting your fate in someone else’s hands. As I clacked away, Olive read over my shoulder.