The Cat’s Meow

“I can’t find the words,” she hollered, throwing her pen at an unseen enemy hiding behind her notebook.

“They’re lost.  They’re missing.  They’re hiding from me as the gnomes and fairies do,” she shouted at no one in particular.

She would have continued with her rampage, but the image of mischievous words peeking from behind the corners of the pages made her smirk.  Funny how the strangest things make me grin.  Funny how, in a fit of rage, I’m liable to say something stupid that will make me laugh.  It’s no use being angry, I’ll only laugh myself to pieces.

There.  Being angry doesn’t suit me. It reminded her of the time when, in a fit of frustration, she had ripped off the thin plastic door from a hidden compartment in her Corolla.  It wouldn’t shut right, and was already on the verge of cracking its tiny rings that held it together.  So she ripped it off its hinges, and with the cracked plastic door in her hands, she looked down to see that it definitely would never close again now that it was broken off, flopping like a dying animal in her hands.   What a silly thing to do.  I just ripped the stupid door off its hinges because it wouldn’t shut. She giggled, shaking her head at herself.

Sometimes, those fits of rage were exactly what she needed to calm herself down.  Frustration was a very selective motivator, and it was those rare instances where she allowed it to overtake her that reminded her of how insignificant the things were that caught the brunt of her irritation.

Nothing like a little good old-fashioned rage to make things less appealing than they were when she started. Such were the follies of her life.  Yet those life lessons were irreplaceable moments that allowed her to fit her impatience into a compartmentalized box of minor inconveniences; none of these things worth the consequences of her spurts of anger that always seemed to fall into her lap at the right moment.

“So where were we?”  she asked aloud.  The cat, thinking she was murmuring love songs to him, serenaded her back with a purr.  She reached down, running her fingertips through his silky fur.  “Yes, what was I saying, Little One?  Something about the words not coming our right,” she paused, “Dare I tell you what I was working on?”

The cat nodded as though in understanding, letting out a lazy long, “Meeeew.”

“Well, Little One, it was this story about this girl.   She was neurotic and loved books.  Sort of like your mummy.”   The cat sprung onto her lap and kneaded her belly.  “Yes.  She was just like your mummy, but she worked in a library, not at a hospital.  Wouldn’t that be a lovely life?”  She scratched him behind the ears.  He laid down across her thighs as in consolation.

“She has nightmares, Little One.  Ones that wake her at the same time every morning.  I want her to learn how to control her dreams.  What do you think about that?”  He purred in acquiescence to her story line.

“But how do I get her to go from the nightmares to learning how to control them?  What could possibly happen in her life that reminds her that she has full control over the things that happen to her?  Especially something as uncontrollable as her dreams?”

She snatched her pen up from the table.   The cat sleepily slunk off her lap, obviously bored with the dilemma.  Without another moment’s delay, she scribbled her ideas onto her pad of paper.

If you were the cat, what would you have said to her?