My Life as a Cat

by Carlie Sorosiak

  I thought I’d envy them. I thought my stomach would lurch at the sight of their glittering badges. Shouldn’t I be jealous of all that they are? Of everything I didn’t become? Look, I tell myself. Look at them with their pockets! Look at them with their Swiss army knives, their human hands, their variety of pens for writing.

  I do look.

  And I realise that even though I’ve lived in a different body, I have really and truly lived.

  Now, the hive says. You must run now.

  A greyish vapour begins streaming from the geyser in puffs; the earth shivers, little tremors up my forelegs. All my strength curls within me, and I push it out, out into the world. Sprinting. Darting across the land. Swishing through the crowd. And the rangers – they’re running after me. Why? Why are they doing that? Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a chase. What’s one rogue cat in the middle of all this commotion? In the middle of tourists and summer, with the geyser about to blow?

  I misjudged the attention I would draw, rushing towards a steaming pool of water, my back legs skittering under me. I’m very impressed with the rangers’ physical fitness! Look how quickly they’re flying!

  “Clear back!” one of them yells.

  “Everyone move!” another shouts. “He might be rabid!”

  Rabid? They think I have rabies? Of all the assumptions to make, why would they jump there? Just because I’m foaming at the mouth, spittle flecking my chin, mad-dashing towards this geyser…

  Tourists scatter.

  A few of them scream.

  Then I hear it. Her voice, piercing the crowd: “Leonard!”

  I skid to a stop. I whip around.

  Olive.

  Olive on crutches – with Norma, Q and Stanley by her side. All of them are slipping through the fleeing crowd.

  Time is running out.

  “Your … letter!” Olive is still yelling, heavily out of breath. “I need to talk to you about your letter!”

  Wait, I tell the hive, the rangers right on my tail. I want to hear what she has to say.

  No. Go now. Run.

  Olive hobbles forward, out of the crowd – ten feet away from me. “You said ‘thank you for introducing me to your family’. But it’s not just my family. It’s yours, too.”

  My chest constricts.

  “And I need you to know that! I really need you to know that. How much you mean to me. To all of us.”

  Three rangers crash into our little circle. One of them – the man with gloves – grabs me squarely by the scruff of the neck, lifting me high into the air.

  Bite him, the hive says. Bite him and run.

  “We’re a family!” Olive gasps. “Leonard, you are my family!”

  I blink at her, thinking.

  When I was writing my ideas for human lessons, I left one important thing off the list, one thing I didn’t dare hope for. Become part of a family. I wanted to be in a Christmas photo, for someone to dress me up in a ribbon, posing me by a tree. I wanted a stocking of my own, hung next to Olive’s – and I wanted to see her, every day. Every year. Because my bucket list no longer includes things I want to do as a human. Just things I wish to do with Olive by my side.

  I realise that as she limps another step towards me. This girl. This human girl – who saved me from a flood, who just rushed a geyser, who loves me. Love. I can feel this, too. Half of the poetry on Earth focuses on love, and yet I didn’t truly understand it until now. There is a reason that cats only purr to their humans – no one else, not even other cats.

  Olive is my family. Norma, Q, and Stanley are my family. Every one of them feels like home.

  Bite the ranger! Bite him now!

  Norma is wiping tears from her cheeks – because I think she might know. About me. About everything. Q looks ash-stricken as Stanley yelps.

  “Young lady?” the ranger says, his grip still firmly on my neck. “Is this your cat?”

  YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS! NINE. EIGHT.

  Family.

  SEVEN.

  She is my family.

  SIX.

  “I’m his human,” Olive says. “And he does not have rabies!”

  FIVE.

  I’m staying.

  YOU WILL – FOUR – BECOME MORTAL – THREE.

  Yes.

  YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE— TWO.

  I do.

  ONE. I’m home.

  35

  Maybe one day I’ll be human. Maybe I’ll return, after I’ve shed this body – after I’ve lived my life fully as a cat. I can still picture myself with human hands, reaching out for books, cutting the crust from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (I might like those even more than cheese). But in this life, I’ve embraced myself for who I am.

  “One heck of a cat,” said a Yellowstone ranger, as Norma was writing him a check. We paid an enormous fine after the geyser incident: every cent in Olive’s piggy bank and more.

  “I guess it’s worth it,” Olive said, “to see the inside of a rangers’ station.”

  I told her it was worth it to stay, here on Earth with her. With everyone.

  You don’t have to be born into a family to call it your own.

  Now, it’s three days later, and cornfields are flicking by. We’re somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Stanley’s head is firmly out the window, his fur flapping in the wind. Norma’s behind the wheel, humming along with the radio. In the hospital, she started to figure it out herself – that Q and Olive weren’t making a fuss over just any cat. Olive broke the news gently over the course of an hour. Norma had to sit down for a long moment. Then she got right back up again.

  Apparently, if you have to recalibrate your whole way of thinking, who better to do it for than a granddaughter?

  “Did you see this?” Olive says, smiling as she plunks down a newspaper. I examine the headline with powerful concentration.

  HOUSE CAT (FIRST ASSUMED RABID) CHASED BY YELLOWSTONE RANGERS AFTER ATTEMPTING TO JUMP INTO OLD FAITHFUL

  “Man, Leonard,” Q says, plopping on the couch beside me. His coffee mug reads America’s First National Park, and he takes a sip from it slowly, swishing the liquid around his mouth. “When you vacation, you vacation hard. I’m thinking that next time we do Disneyworld. Get you some Mickey Mouse ears. Maybe a snow globe.”

  Both of us squint at the image beneath the headline, and there I am, caught midstride in a tourist’s photo. My eyes have never looked bigger; my ears are back as far as they can go. The cat in that picture, he’s wild, possessed. I wish they’d got my better side.

  “At least they got your good side,” Q says.

  Olive delicately folds the paper on her lap. “When we get back, I’ll have this framed. Or we can put it in a scrapbook – that way we can fill the rest of it up with all of our adventures. Because there will be more, I’m sure of it.”

  “Just as long as they don’t involve geysers,” Norma pipes in. “I think we’ve had enough water rescues for one summer. Not that you’re not worth it, Leonard. You are.”

  “You are,” Olive repeats.

  “You really are,” Q says.

  I know the truth now. Sometimes you need to lose yourself to find yourself, even if where you find yourself is on another planet, in a strange body, with a seemingly unlimited supply of fur. I wasn’t just dropped into these people’s lives. I was placed here, just as they were placed into mine.

  “Bowling!” Norma suddenly says, pulling into a parking lot.

  My head whips towards the sound of her voice.

  “What?” Olive says, genuinely confused.

  “Didn’t you say that Leonard wanted to bowl? Well, I plugged it into the GPS, and ta-da. I’m not sure this place allows cats, but I think we can make it work.”

  “This isn’t just any cat,” Q says, perfecting the line. “This is Leonard, Champion of Geysers, Wearer of Raincoats, Best Cat of the Aquarium. You ready, kid?”

  And we are.

  I’m surprised to learn that bowling lanes are delightfully slick. I like t
he noises, the smell of popcorn in the background. I like that when I glance up, after watching my ball teeter down the lane, my humans are there. My family is there.

  Olive isn’t even embarrassed to bring in her cat on a leash.

  “Maybe it is weird,” she tells me, scratching right behind my ears. “Maybe I’m weird, but that’s OK. You taught me that.”

  Then she touches her dry nose to mine.

  I have been thinking lately about the idea of soulmates – identifying your soul in another. How we may not be made of the same materials, of fur and air, but we can recognise each other across a crowded room. When we catch each other’s glance, our souls will say, Yes, I know you, and Yes, this feels like home. I understand what it feels like now, to know a place. To give yourself up to gravity.

  To rescue someone – just as much as they rescue you.

  36

  After everything – after the road trip, and Yellowstone, and summer – there is snow. It spills over the backyard in magnificent clumps, falling gently from the sky. This is Maine. This is our house, a few miles from the ocean; we can see the water from Olive’s bedroom – our bedroom, which we’ve painted yellow like our raincoats.

  “Leonard!” Olive calls from the foyer. “You coming?”

  Downstairs in the kitchen, eggs are frying. Lifting my nose to the air, I can smell them: the pancakes, too. Olive says that her mom always makes pancakes at Christmas. “Sometimes she puts strawberries in them.” Whatever they taste like, I’m thrilled just to be here, on a human holiday, with my human family. Because this is my family – each one of them. Olive’s mother, with her denim dresses and kind smile. Norma, who learned how to scratch underneath my chin, in exactly the way I like. And Olive, who finally told her mother about Frank. About what he said.

  Now, Frank is back in Florida. Frank is staying in Florida, alone, without Olive’s mother.

  And we are staying here.

  I stretch on the windowsill, a full arch in my back, then pitter-patter downstairs – where Olive is waiting, black boots laced to her knees. She’s dressed in layers: fleece under her overalls, hat over her daisy barrettes. My fur coat has grown thick, thicker than I imagined it could, which comes in handy for the outdoors. Olive’s mom has installed a small cat door that latches at night, so during the day I may come and go as I please; there are chipmunks to chase and trees to climb (I have figured out, now, how to make my way down).

  “Follow me for a second,” Olive says, using the human door. I trail her on to the porch, icy air nipping at my paws. We shouldn’t stay out for too long, not in this weather, but we love watching the snow fall together. Another human thing. Another way I’m experiencing the world. Before us are snow-covered trees. Maine is like Yellowstone in so many ways: the green of the land, the way forests unfold like a human opening their hands. And I wonder, in all the time I was trying to get to Yellowstone, if I was actually trying to get here instead.

  Olive’s breath clouds in the cold. “I can’t believe it’s already Christmas.”

  Neither can I. Olive returned to school in September, which was difficult in some ways, but she’s made so many friends this year – human friends. Friends that can properly digest cheese sandwiches, that can go to the movies without being stuffed in a jacket. It’s brought us even closer; she can return home, fix a snack for the two of us, and tell me all about her day.

  We have so many days left, so much time to flip through the pages of books and watch I Love Lucy and camp together under incredibly blue skies. I’m sure when it’s all over, I’ll wish for more time. Just another month, or a day, or an hour. I will grasp on to life because I know nothing else. But then another thought will come: that I have lived. That I’ve been given the privilege of existing in this form, on this Earth, with these people – this family who has loved me for everything that I am.

  I am Leonard. Her Leonard. Just as she is my Olive.

  “Norma knitted you a scarf,” she says, tucking her hands into her enormous pockets. “I mean, Gran knitted you a scarf. She said I can call her Gran, if I want. Anyway, it took her a really, really long time – which is why I’m telling you now. Give her extra headbutts, OK? Now close your eyes. I mean it, Leonard, close them!”

  So I do, and when I open them again, when I look up, there is a perfectly circular umbrella suspended above our heads.

  “Do you like it?” Olive says. “I thought you should have your very own.” She leans down to me, petting my coat – and I couldn’t have asked for any more than this. Olive is still rescuing me, bit by bit, even now.

  You should hear this, if you’re still listening. I don’t understand everything about being human, but I do know a great deal about the soul: how it travels, and travels, until it finds someone that feels like home. I’m home now. I’m never letting go.

  Olive places the umbrella handle into my paw, helping me grasp it. “Hold on tight,” she says – and to all of it, to every moment, I do.

  Acknowledgements

  People say that writing a book “takes a village,” but since this novel is alien themed, I guess I’ll rephrase: it takes a galaxy.

  First, thank you to my family, who’ve encouraged and supported me – and didn’t bat a single eyelid when I said, very calmly and professionally, that I was pitching a book about an alien cat. To my husband, Jago, for tea and copious TV breaks; you are the penguin to my penguin guard. To Dad, for steadily talking me down on a weekly basis, and for just being there. I appreciate you. And to Mom, for everything else; this book would not exist without your wisdom, energy, and obscure scientific knowledge.

  Huge thanks to my agent, Claire Wilson. Your unwavering support of this book was a life raft in a hurricane. Everyone at RCW, including Miriam Tobin, has been incredible. And, of course, I’ve had the privilege of working with the brilliant Tom Bonnick, whose careful attention has made this book immeasurably kinder, braver – and just, well, better. Thank you to the inimitable Susan Van Metre for her guidance and belief in Leonard. You are all such bright stars.

  Everyone at Nosy Crow and Walker Books – you launched my middle grade career with the greatest care; I couldn’t ask for more wonderful publishers. To the booksellers, teachers, reviewers, and readers who helped I, Cosmo into the world: you’re magical. Thank you to Waterstones, for giving me a one-in-a-million chance, and to Ben Mantle, for his stunning artwork.

  There are a number of people who’ve been there since the very beginning, and a number who came after. I honestly adore each and every one of you. Grandma Pat, the staff at McIntyre’s, Ellen Locke, Sandy Johnson, Miss Kim, Erin Cotter: three cheers for everyone! Big thanks to the real Q, for the Myrtle Beach memories, and for the name.

  Now, are you ready? Here are all the cats. Bella, Duncan, Mini Me, Bailey, Sooty, Moonlight, Bert, Mister Smitty, Whiskers, Miss Kitty, Charlie, Abby Cat, that orange cat I used to pet in Camden, Cyrano, and Snowball: I love you, I love you, I love you.

  You may be asking: Where can I find a cat like Leonard? You’re in luck! Almost every shelter has excellent kitties waiting for good homes. (These cats might not be aliens – but they’re still filled with love.)

  And finally, “Leonard” really is a family name. Pop, I miss you. Charlie would be so proud.

  Copyright

  First published in the UK in 2020 by Nosy Crow Ltd

  The Crow’s Nest, 14 Baden Place

  Crosby Row, London, SE1 1YW

  www.nosycrow.com

  ISBN: 978 1 78800 608 8

  eISBN: 978 1 78800 609 5

  Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd.

  Text copyright © Carlie Sorosiak, 2020

  Cover artwork © Ben Mantle, 2020

  The right of Carlie Sorosiak to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or ot
herwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Nosy Crow Ltd.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

  Typeset by Tiger Media

  Papers used by Nosy Crow are made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

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