Kit Whitfield's Blog: #2024MakeAMonster Day 16, again: Bad Hair Day

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Wednesday, October 16, 2024

#2024MakeAMonster Day 16, again: Bad Hair Day

#2024MakeAMonster day 16 again; I wasn't happy with sending off something unfinished.

Bad Hair Day

She never did the dishes. She was always late with her share of the rent. She left her dirty laundry piled on the sofa. She left cups out so long they started to grow mould, grey clumps of fluff on top of old sweet coffee. But it was when she brought the cat home that I thought it was time to move out.

'Aw,' she said, 'how could you not love a little kitty?'

'I don't like cats,' I said. 'They move too fast.'

She said, 'I don't trust people who don't like animals,' and she said it like she was accepting an award.

'It's a phobia,' I said. 'Like spiders. One minute they're on the other side of the room and the next they're just there. They get from place to place like ghosts. Can't you take it to a shelter?'

'Don't listen to her, Furryboy,' she said, crooning into the cat's tufted pelt. She called him 'white', but that wasn't what he was: he was a nicotinish beige, the colour of a carpet stained over years and years of neglect. 'I couldn't leave you out in the cold, could I baby?'

She said he'd been sitting out on the doorstep, giving her a look she couldn't resist. He needed a home. Kitties needed someone to feed them, to shelter them, to love them, and he'd chosen her. How could she refuse?

He'd just popped up. And he was there whenever I came home, sitting on the sofa, kneading the spot where I sat with curved, transluscent claws. His eyes were yellow and they fixed on me.

I looked through 'flats vacant' every few days. So far I hadn't found anywhere I could afford, or not without going so far from work that I'd have no life at all.

This flat, I could get out of with a month's notice, I knew. She wasn't the landlord any more than I was. I cleaned as much as I could; there would need to be a tenant after me, and nobody would rent to the mess she left around. The edges of the taps were filigreed with mould. The space between the bath and the wall was so dank that I had to scrape tiny mushrooms out of it.

We'd sit on the sofa watching movies in the evening. Her choice. I'd lost any will to argue, and she said I was being so sweet. The cat, Furryboy, would start on her lap; she'd call him up there. But after a while he'd climb onto me.

'Go back to Mummy,' I'd say, pushing him as much as I dared. His claws would be kneading my chest; they primped little holes into my shirts and pulled threads loose from my jumpers, and if I didn't get a towel over me in time, they raked little red lines on my skin.

'Aw, don't be mean,' she'd say. 'Let him have his choice.'

It was the hairs that were the worst, though. He never sat in her spot on the sofa; it was mine he went for every time. She said it meant he loved his Auntie. My job was in a place where they said things like, 'We like to pride ourselves on our smart appearance in customer-facing roles.' They didn't pay enough to buy much that was elegant, so I had to make it up by playing minimalist: almost everything I owned was black. And every morning I'd leave for work, brush myself, rub tape over myself, pick over myself in increasing desperation - and every morning my boss would look at me and tut because I was straggled over with long, white hairs. Surrounded by the things.

'My flatmate has a cat,' I said. 'I'm trying to find another situation.'

My boss shook her head, because if I couldn't even live with a cat and keep clean, how much faith could they have in my competence?

I'd go home and take off my work clothes at once, put them in sealed bags. I took to changing in the office toilets as soon as I arrived. But the hairs kept coming.

On the sofa watching movies, Furryboy would appear. He'd come out of nowhere and I'd jump so hard my teeth rattled: a leap across the room and he'd crossed the space like it was nothing, like he could flick from place to place as if he wasn't real at all.

'Aw, look who's come to say hello,' she'd say, scratching his head. And he'd pad over to me. He hooked his claws into my skin and kneaded.

I found a flat I could just about afford and spent a weekend day going to view it. The windows leaked and the floors sagged, and the wallpaper was covered with gnarled flocking like lumpy fingers.

'No smoking, no loud music,' the landlord said, challenging me to take it or leave it. His eyes moved over me, my clothes mottled with white hairs thick as mycelium. 'No pets.'

I said: 'How soon can I move in?'

That night, sitting on the sofa with Furryboy fixing his claws on me, I said, 'I'm giving a month's notice. I'm moving somewhere else next month.'

'What?' she said, outraged. 'How could you do that to us?'

I tried to shrug, but Furryboy had my chest hooked. All of a sudden his claws dug in hard, and when I looked at him, his yellow eyes gazed straight into mine.

'I think,' I said, 'I'm allergic to cat hair.'

It was a month to last out. She was furious with me, wounded, betrayed by someone she'd offered nothing but adorable sweetness to and how could I throw it in her face? Every time I went into a room she'd turn her back, clattering about what she was doing and then leaving the room with her head held high.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw my hair was starting to grey. Little white streaks were appearing - not just on my scalp, but threaded through my eyebrows. I could hardly believe in; early greying didn't run in my family. I was stressed, I said to myself, with my shitty job and my annoying flatmate and this horrible cat scratching cuts onto me every night. Once I was out it would be better.

Furryboy sat on my lap every night. He'd taken to licking me, the hooks on his tongue raking my skin. When I stood up and walked away, he ran after me, winding around my ankles.

I went into my room and tried to pack. My clothes were all covered in white hair; the inside of my suitcase was infested with them. Once I got out, I told myself. Once I got out. I'd clean everything, I'd wash and I'd brush and there'd be no new source of them, and once I got out there would come a day, finally, when I'd be clean.

On the day I moved out I tried to say goodbye. I said I hoped she wouldn't have trouble finding another flatmate soon, and that I wished her all the best.

She looked at me. I'd always thought her eyes were brown, but they had a golden tinge as she said, 'Oh, you can go where you like. I'm sure we'll say hello.'

After that she blinked and I thought it must have been at trick of the light, but I was out of the door and into a cab and my new flat was damp and tatty and I'd be by myself. I could have some quiet. I could brush myself off and start anew.

It was a funny thing, I thought as I let myself in: there must have been spiders at work. Fine threads were spread across the carpet.

The next day I went to work. I changed into my clothes from their sealed bag; I dusted myself off; I went upstairs.

'Oh dear,' my boss said. 'This really won't do. You must go and look in a mirror.'

There were white hairs on my shirt.

I brushed myself off. I shook my head, and more white hairs fell down. I was going grey, white threads bursting out amidst the dark, and they were on my shirt.

'No,' I said aloud. 'No, it'll be fine.'

But when I went home that night, I wasn't really surprised to see the scattering as I walked across the carpet. I could feel it now: a toothed tongue, licking my skin, raking off little spores of hair that scattered around me. I stood in the middle of it: a fairy ring. A Furry ring. Right in the centre of where threads grew and mingled, mycelium spreading its net.

He just popped up, the cat Furryboy. That's what she said.

She never did keep the mould at bay.

Kitties needed someone to feed them, to shelter them, to love them, and they make their own choices. And he'd never had any trouble crossing the space to me.

Raking at the edges of my hearing with a toothed tongue, I heard the beginnings of a purr.

posted by Kit Whitfield # 4:18 pm

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Wednesday, October 16, 2024

#2024MakeAMonster Day 16, again: Bad Hair Day

#2024MakeAMonster day 16 again; I wasn't happy with sending off something unfinished.

Bad Hair Day

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