Writing Exercise # 4 - Jenni Moody

She forgave the cat for the doors he made in the window-blinds, the red parenthesis on her skin, and the hair elastics regurgitated in the night on the clean-swept floor; for he was a cat that begged like a dog (paws on her jean-thigh) to be picked-up, who smudged the ink of the pen with his wet nose as she wrote. There were no mice and no bugs for him to catch. The cold and her compulsive cleaning had taken away his playthings. As she read at her desk she could hear the cat chirping on the other side of the blinds and wondered what could be alive and moving outside in the snow. Only the ravens came this close to the road. The door to the world opened and shut, but she did not get up. Her husband stood in the doorway, I think it is time the cat found a new home.