let lemons be angry

Love and Vomit.

I share my pillow every night with ET. I look at her compact body facing the wall with head cocked, and think that each moment must already be in Extra Time. I touch her and she becomes a vibrating engine, purring louder and louder and louder until I can feel it through the pillow we share.

But last night as I tumbled groggily into bed, I found her vomit splayed across my quilt, blanket and muji bolster. Mushed biscuit pieces on my bedsheet. Brown splats down the bed as she tried to jump off. Vomit, again, no big deal, but I was tired. Not in the mood for changing bedsheets at midnight and soaking off odor-remover with kitchen towels. I was a busy flurry of fury tearing off pillow cases, and then ET walked in, ready to share pillows for the night. I roared at her, "NO you get out!" She meowed, surprised, turned and went out. 

But she was just waiting outside the door. After I'd cleaned everything up and ascended my bed in a huff, she came in and sat on the floor. I wasn't ready to forgive her, and she knew it. When I looked at the floor again, she was gone. I left all the soiled sheets in the kitchen to wash in the morning.

Morning, and I was woken up by a meow-ET trying to come into my room and my parents pulling her out and shutting the door. When I came out of my room, I saw her shadowing me from a distance, hiding under chairs wherever I was. Went to the kitchen and found my sheets all washed and hanging to dry, kindness by my father before he left for work. 

Now ET is back on my bed, back in my good graces. That is trust I suppose, she believing me when I tell her I love her always, so that even when I roar at her, she knows she can come back to me. And I trusting that she probably will not vomit in my bed again any time soon. And willing to take that risk.

So tonight I told my mother all this, while cuddling the back-in-good-graces cat, and my mother said, "See? She knows how to manipulate you!"