On a diet of soup and liquorice Dala left the kitchen post-haste following the end of her conversation with her Intense Cat and under a cloud of her own blonde hair she made her way like a toad to the Flagship Burberry store, across Knightsbridge Road, on her rainy Sunday.
'You're looking big today' said the Man Who Stood at the Counter Whom She Knew. 'You're looking very fluffy today Dala?'.
'I left in a flurry and I am covered in cat hairs can't you see? I feel very sure that I will never return home! My heart has been turned upside down by my Intense Cat because my Intense Cat's head was upside down to begin with! I can’t see him normally anymore, don’t you see?'
'No'
'He is an Embarrassed Cat and there is no sight more made for no-one to see than the sight of an Embarrassed Cat! Don't you agree? He cannot turn back into loving me shamelessly. He has lied to me, insanely.
'That's what cats do Dala. They lie.'
'But not to me! That's what so scary.'
Dala's cat had committed an ill-timed indiscretion that had shattered all the trust in the house.
'He cannot turn back into loving me shamelessly'. She cried. 'Don't you see? It's over.'
'That's what cats do, Dala.'
'That's what desperate people do! Not cats! Cats should have elegance, cats should feel at home walking stride dilly into a shop like Burberry but he won't follow me in here because he gets ignored in these stores.'
'Would you like some Lapsang Souchong, Dala?'
'Some Darjeeling without the cream. I'm in a dream, sorry.'
So Dala and the Man At The Counter Whom She Knew left the counter only for Dala to intentionally lose him behind the coats and go and sit in the tree outside her home and count her breaths down from a 1000 before facing her Intense Cat on the lawn again.
'I said, I wanted you gone before I came home'.
The Intense Cat, with his detachable ears and detachable eyes, lay alone in the vesper room, his favourite day room. 'Out you impenetrable cat, Rat in a Fur!’ Dala cried when she spied him and his unfeeling hide, ‘I want peace from your lies and dirty alibis. I don't love feeble animals that cannot live inside well thought-out parameters their humans have set for them. You are a bad cat. Go and breathe vespers of smoke in another room in another house with another girl who will accept a small room in your heart.' And with the indiscretion toward her feelings that he had always shown, the Intense Cat pawed his way hardly noticeably out of the room, across the lawn and passed the begonias and then he was gone and beyond and beyond. Dala lay on the couch, breathing fast and furiously at what had played out. 'Am I ever going to calm down?' She tore around the garden trying, ‘OH!’ and oh trying to calm herself with the breathing of her own soft sound. 'Why am I so upside down! Why has this cat spun me upside down! Did he frown at me the wrong way round? Or is it the idea of a Betrayal happening on my own solid ground shaken in me a tail I never knew I had? Am I growing up or growing sad? Am I alright? Am I bad? Am I going mad all because of the nocturnal activities of an intensely bad side to my cat? ‘What rocks me so hardly and so loudly is that the Intense Cat is out there walking around so proudly and while my heart is left all cowardly! Why am I left to think anxiously about what is happening to me? Why am I waiting to be loved safely?
The Intense Cat was nowhere to be seen nor heard from for weeks on end. Dala missed her best friend and wondered what to think and feel now he wasn't around. But his cat's lesson to her like his cat's lick still drowned her thinking and made her realise that she must let go of her own interpretation of him and accept that immorality can exist quite happily outside of her own comprehension. She had to let go of the tail of her Intense Cat's betrayal specifically.
That morning, Dala's hands tapped out a melody against the sound of the beat of the clock on the shelf in the kitchen where she stood bathing in the sun, as it jumped through the trees and back over her shiny skin like the opportunist cat who sat opposite her, who liked to sin then come back in. Dala watched the Intense Cat who went out of his way to act like all was forgotten and remarked pleasantly,
'It's great to be alive today. Let's play.'
Dala watched the Intense Cat's head turn upside down again and knew it was time to put it straight. She reached over to the Intense Cat's head and cupped her hands over his eyes and said, 'Count to 100 while I hide inside the house. You count this time, I'll hide, and so move your hide!'
So Dala ran upstairs and hid inside a huge fur overcoat that lay inside the old oak wardrobe, flanking her on both sides. And in her enclosure Dala retraced the details of the night before until she could breathe no more inside the fur that took her over like the Cat's indiscretion itself. Breathing so deeply inside that fur overcoat until she became the Cat and in her heart she began to choke, she cried, 'Get me out of here', she ran, wide-eyed and tired and beaming and ran downstairs with all her own energy that the Intense Cat had been stealing from her behind her back, 'I can't agree with you Cat! You are a bad cat. You cannot hide behind your beautiful fur and expect me to be happy about where you spent last night. You are an Insane Cat. You are not warm inside. I felt so alone hiding in my empty fur, why do you not? Don’t you feel lonely when you leave your heart in a fur coat at home and go off looking for another girl’s warmth? Don't you feel scared that you’ll never find your heart again?'
And Dala stared at her Cat with its detachable heart, its detachable eyes and detachable stare, and thought 'My goodness, he doesn't even know I'm there.' And with that knowledge safe in her own skin under her little vest, she left the Insane Cat to its ignorance and decided with a courage that she would not let desert her that trying to teach her cat to be a better moralist was like trying to run away from herself because, oppositely, in her own way she was still hiding inside her own fur the secret that all she wanted was to let a man inside her skin, but didn't know where to begin her own story at all.
