Friday, 03 December 2004 | Grounded

When I got home last night, the free-standing countertop in the kitchen had been shoved to the side and had fallen off its blocks, my DVDs were scattered on the floor, and the spare blankets had been tossed out of the bottom shelf of the cabinet. I couldn't find my cat anywhere. For a moment, it occurred to me that someone might've broken into my apartment, but nothing seemed to be missing (other than Jane), and the locks on the front door were undisturbed.

I called her name and quietly listened for a response. I could hear faint scratching sounds coming from the kitchen, the sort you might hear at the beginning of a trite ghost story. But rather than discovering a man with a hook for a hand hiding underneath the sink, I found my cat wedged between the refrigerator and wall, pawing at the empty white paint with her pointed nails. She didn't seem to notice (or care) that I'd returned, and continued sniffing and feeling around, as if she were trying to escape. Through the wall.

I pulled her out the only way I could (by the scruff of the neck) and watched her nervously walk the perimeter of the room, surveying the walls with wild, dilated eyes. Her body seemed weak and stiff, but she was in constant motion, walking low to the ground. The whites of her eyes had turned pink, the tips of her ears were warm, and her heart raced like a purring chainsaw. She seemed to have gone insane, and reminded me a lot of the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper. I imagine she was having similar thoughts, with regard to the white paint:

"Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!"

I noticed that the food I'd poured for her in the morning was untouched, which is odd, because my cat normally sucks down food ferociously. Also, her depth perception seemed to have abandoned her.

At one point, she lay on her back—limbs spread open, and head cocked to the side—with her tongue sticking out. Please don't die, Jane.

The emergency vet in Bay Ridge determined nothing, other than that I owed them a lot of money. They agreed that she was acting strangely (she even defecated for them, right in the middle of their dirty tile floor—way to go, Jane!), but they couldn't figure out what was causing her behavior: there were no apparent complications with diabetes, she wasn't running a temperature, and there are no poisons or exotic plants in my place that she could've ingested.

After we'd returned home via car service (around 3:30 a.m.), I got her to lie still on my bed, and I slept beside her, sideways.

This morning she seemed much closer to normal, albeit a little hung over. You know what? I think maybe Jane and her delinquent cat friends have been experimenting with LSD. I didn't know she ever sneaked outside, or even that she had a rebellious streak, but that's the only conclusion that seems reasonable. She's grounded for, like, the rest of her life.