#26

On the Cat as the Artist's Muse

Into the sea, you and me

Angel, I return in earnest, tucked deep beneath baby-pink bed covers. A fur-ridden, feral girl sits beside me, her mud-matted paws kneading the mattress.

Within the month of April, babe, I’d promised myself to write to you about Layla, with good intention. Layla, love of my life, a marshmallow-fluff tuft of silken fur who sinks and sleeps beneath my feet each and every evening. As day breaks, I wake to her, a soft black-and-white ball bumbling toward me, her little pink nose niggling at my cheek.

A fur-sodden rock, my guiding light.

Eartha Kitt as Catwoman in The Funny Feline Felonies, Season 3, Episode 17 of Batman (1966 - 68) dir. Oscar Rudolph.

Every day I’ve sat solitary hidden behind my desktop, bound by boredom, with the intention of writing in detail on ‘the cat as the artist’s muse’. Carolee Schneemann, Claude Cahun, Louis Wain and the like. The cat as an omniscient force and stoic source of inspiration. I look to her and wonder: What’s going on in that little head of yours? What are you thinking? Can you talk to me?

She flutters those long lashes and shuts her little eyes.

I’m in a peculiar place as of late, dear reader, and that impatient ache, agitation, fate, has again returned. Each day I drive the same route, the same distance, at the same time, to the same place. I return home as the sun sets, idle away a few hours and find myself in bed again, with Layla at my side – eyes darting to the darkness in search of foxes.

I think, very often, of wasting time or, rather, the fear of wasting time. Stephen chants from the front room, with a Brando-at-his-best affectation, “I could have been someone, I could have been a contender.”

I love you Dad, but you’re killing me here.

A few weeks ago, I’d sat in the silence of the studio nursing a green tea, in wait of two people who I’d wanted to speak to for a very long while. It was, angel, the first time I’d truly inhabited the studio in months. I feel this constant guilt for not painting, for moving onto print, stone, Prayer Room and Tentative Press, as though those things are in any way less worthy or valuable.

Kim Novak and ‘Pyewacket’ in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) dir. Richard Quine.

I felt so overcome by this guilt, babe, this seeming lack of ambition, that in advance of their visit I’d hastily tidied the entirety of the studio. I’d tacked Valentine and Private View up onto the walls, laid out my research perfectly and propped Outbursts upright, for all to see. We spoke of the Royal Academy, in part, and my desire to be there, live it, feel it with urgency.

“What is it about the Royal Academy?”, he asks.

“My Dad-”

I feel absurd, reader.

After all this time, all these months and years, reader, the bedsheets, the bloodstains, the paper tacked above the bed, I feel the need to right his wrongs, to achieve all that he was never able to do. I could have been someone, I could have been a contender. I’ve realised in writing this letter to you, babe, on how she wraps herself around my ankles, how I hug and hold her every single morning as a strange hot water bottle, and her ears – those ears – silver wisps of curled fur protruding...

I love her, I’m obsessed with her, because she fills that vacant space within my heart.

That loss, that longing.

I hurry home and run to her, cradle her in my arms and kiss that little, round forehead of hers.

Audrey Hepburn and Orangey in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) dir. Blake Edwards.

She is a feral, furry little sister that I must protect from harm. All calls for morphine are gone and it’s just her; her curdled wail at the foot of the stairs, glassy green eyes sparkling in the dark. The hurried drum of footsteps up to my bed. That flurried, black bushel of a tail. Her sullied little nose, muddied by dinner.

I gently run my thumb along her paws, tufts of fur caught between the toes, and softly press against the little, pink pads that cushion her every step. I can’t believe I’m this girl, reader. This girl that can’t be done with it all. Stood outside that service, empty, still.

My Mother is in the living room, doing aerobics in her dressing gown. I scour the pantry for dates and grapes and strawberries while Layla flutters at my feet, and this home begins to feel whole again.

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