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The cat had
wide ochre eyes and delicate white whiskers. She also had wide ears that
twitched this way and that. Her bushy tail swished above the mattress, like
that of a little
girl’s pendulous ponytail that swings when she’s skipping. She devoured her
biscuit breakfast
with as much finesse as she could, though it was easy to tell that she’d been hungry for a
while. After she devoured one biscuit, she immediately pawed out another one from the
bag and nibbled until the crumbs scattered about her. Then she lapped up the crumbs,
leaving the coverlet spotless.
“I bet you
won’t be able to walk after you eat that much!” Sidiro joked. The exasperated
cat looked at him, and then resumed her meal in silence.
It was
strange. The jaguarondi seemed to understand what he was saying, but did little to
nothing to acknowledge that she just heard. And why wasn’t she shifting? Surely she knew he
could be trusted by now. Maybe…
The phone on
the bedside table rang, causing the cat to stare wide-eyed at the contraption,
before darting to her feet and to the corner of the room. In all of Sidiro’s
life he had never
seen a cat cower because of a phone before. This animal seemed to be afraid of
almost everything, from doors to phones to kind people. But then again, she was a
jinniyah. And she may not be well adapted to the human world yet.
Sidiro moved
to the edge of the bed. “It’s all right, cubby. It’s just a phone, see? Can’t harm
you or anything else.”
The caller
ID identified Jeremy as the reason for
this early morning disturbance.
“Hey Sid, how’s it going?”
“Nothing
wrong here,” Sidiro said. “Just a cat with a biscuit addiction.”
“Speaking of
that cat, Aisha and I hunted about downtown
yesterday.”
“Did you
find anything?” Sidiro strode to the front of his mirror and tried his best to hand-comb
his short hair.
