The duo

Bob and Daryl stood atop the cliff and scanned the empty valley.

“Meow”!

She wasn’t happy. She had made that very clear.

“Meow!”. Her voice growing louder in my head.

“It’s not my fault”, I try to save face, but she was not wrong. I don’t know what it is with cats; they could tell when they are.

“I was comfortable and I was content, but No!! Mr samurai and his honor”, the cat said, in her usual snark.

“I was hungry”

“You should’ve eaten the rat I got you”

“I don’t eat rats”

“Yes, you can. I can eat them. They are mostly cartilage and even if they have bones, they are soft and easy to crunch”

“Eww”, I made a face in disgust, being careful not for her to see, “I don’t want you describing what a rat tastes like; and I said, I don’t, not that I can’t. And for your information, I have eaten a rat. They are not cartilage. They have more bones that a human being”

“Potato. Potahto”, said the cat, referencing her favorite Phoebe moment. “When have you eaten a rat?” she added. That piece of information didn’t sit well with her, as if I had challenged her very sharp recollection of things.

“In the past.”

“Oh! In the past. I should’ve checked there”. Her snark is reaching new crescendos.

“Don’t do that”. Stupid cat.

“In my 7 years with you, I’ve never seen you eat a rat”

“It was before that, when i was younger. You seemed to have forgotten that humans live longer than cats”

“Yeah, my ignorance fails me yet again”. Oh God! I hated her so much. There were only things I hated about her. This was the first.

She stops, looks around, as if deep in meditation and then proceeds to lick herself. I watch her finish her compulsive ablutions. “Why do i do it?!”, she says to no one in particular.

“Why do you have to live more than 14 years anyways? I’m 7 years old and I’m already sick of it. It’s wet and it’s dirty and the food is hard to find.”

“Yes, i have noticed the rain”. That was a good one, i thought. Sometimes I promise I can be as snarky as her.

“I can’t understand why you won’t eat rats anymore, if you have in the past”

“I guess that is part of my backstory that I’ll refer somewhere later in this story”. I never liked cats even when they couldn’t talk. Dogs were more my speed. They loved me, and I loved them. I loved goldens, doodles, huskies, mastiffs, and jack russells. I still remembered “Moose” from Frasier. He was the star of that show and I won’t let anyone convince me otherwise.

“I found them”, she did her sudden revelation meow. We had come across the end of our little journey, or was it the beginning? We’ll soon find out.

“Let’s get this show on the road”, meowed Daryl, the cat; just in case there was any confusion who was the cat among Daryl and Bob. That was the second thing I hated, my name, because statistically everyone reading this story, thought Bob was the cat.