Free A Cat Named Darwin by William Jordan

me. Scalp crawls. Mind coming online. Cat Jump—Cat Thump: Circuit shock ... Not in boat, inebriated, not drifting at rocks...
    Cat coming closer. Something presses on right thigh ... a paw. Two paws. Fifteen pounds on two small feet. Like high-heeled shoes, pressing sharply into flesh. Climbing onto both thighs, circles around, plops heavily on side atop me.
    I roll abruptly to the right under the sheets. Cat slides from my legs and lodges inertly against me. Am now groggily awake. We lie motionless for several moments, while I consider what to do.
    Here I am, flat on my back. I have broken through the barriers of my culture and my private feelings and accepted an animal into my circle of loved ones. I am jet-lagged. I am almost delirious with fatigue. Yes, I feel true affection for this little creature. No, I do not want to sleep with him.
    I reach out wearily and begin to stroke the furry lump, feeling very gingerly for the head and mouth. No reaction. No purring. The ball is in my court and Darwin, apparently, has every intention of keeping it there. I nudge him gently toward the edge of the bed. He relaxes and lies limp, letting his body bend to absorb my efforts without moving. I reach out with both hands and try to scoot him along. This works for about a foot and a half, when Darwin suddenly seems to gain about fifty pounds and cannot be budged. I push harder. No movement. What the...?
    I turn on the light and there he lies, ears laid back, claws hooked deep into the mattress with knuckles arched. He has no intention of abandoning our bed. What to do? I am in no shape to do anything, so I do the inevitable and doze off.
    Some time later, I think, a dream turns bad, I think. I lie on a Caribbean beach with marimba music and the scent of tropical flowers wafting on the breeze. The sun soaks into my skin and I savor the feel of the hot sand on my palms ... but the hot sand grows hotter ... hotter ... and becomes a stabbing pain in my left hand. At which point I wake up to find my hand clamped firmly in Darwin's mouth; I cannot
see
my hand—the lights are off—but I don't need lights. In my mind's eye I clearly see a hand sandwich.
    Yeow! I try to pull back, but Darwin won't let me off so easily. I jerk back with a terrified reflex and finally extract myself from his jaws. He must have moved while I slept and bedded down opposite my chest. In the course of dreaming, I laid my hand on Darwin's head, oblivious to the sin I was committing, and he is letting me know it was a mortal one.
    With expletives resonating through the flat, I run to the kitchen to check my hand for puncture wounds. I find only white marks, Darwin's way of reminding me it could have been much worse. Again I go back to bed and fall directly into a coma.
    The next morning I regain consciousness around nine o'clock. I lie on my back for a while, assembling the various pieces of my mind, and look over at Darwin, who lies next to me, stretched out full length. How relaxed he looks, how innocent in the privacy of sleep. My eyes run over his body, feeling his rich colors and lingering on his elegant markings, and I am struck by his size. From nose to tip of tail he looks about four feet long. He lies on his side with his legs reaching toward me as if wanting to embrace, and something in the curve of his wrists and the innocence in his slumbering sprawl summons up the fairer sex and memories of a few with whom I have shared intimacies. The thought occurs that these young women, too, have memories of the fouler sex, of which I am a shining example, in similar postures of affection and trust. At which point my inner voice roars out, "My God!!—you're in a relationship with a cat!!"
    Ah yes, the morning after. There I lie in the sinful aftermath of having slept with a beast, and I feel not a twinge of guilt. On the contrary, I am glowing with the warmth of a first-time husband, for my soul has been liberated and I have no more reservations. I intend