Now I feel terrible because actually I only had one option. That’s the end of the list.

“It’s not your fault.” Lauren is trying to comfort me, and somehow that makes my tail hurt most of all. “It’s not so bad, sometimes,” she says. “I like my pink bike and I can ride it around the house. There’s TV. He gives me food unless he’s angry.” Lauren giggles. “Sometimes he lets me look at the internet, even. If I am ‘supervised.’”

The feelings in my throat and tail are worse than a hairball. What can I do? I row miserably. I was always so happy to be a cat but now I’m not sure. If I had hands I could get you out, I say.

“If I still had feet I could get myself out,” Lauren says. “But you can help, Olivia. You just have to do one thing.”

Anything, I tell her.

“Make him turn down the music,” Lauren breathes. “That’s all you have to do. I can’t do anything with the music on. He made sure of that, long ago. You hear? It has to be off, or at least so low I can barely hear it.”

OK! What happens then?

Piles of lead weights and counterweights are stacked on top, like abandoned castles in a bad land.

“You can get me out, Olivia. Just do what you do with the Bible.”

It would be good to record all this in case something happens to me. But I don’t dare.

Ted watches cars screaming through the dirt on the TV and the level of the bourbon bottle dips steadily. He leaves the record player on while he watches. Under the roar of engines there is a banjo playing and the woman sings about bars and love. He is fading. Bourbon and exhaustion twine their arms about him, pulling him earthwards.

I prrp and go to him. But then I stop and my tail blows out. I become a tall arch. When the banjo strikes, I yow.

“What’s up?” He reaches for me.

The banjo tinkles and I speed beneath the couch.

“You’re such a dumdum,” he says. He changes the song; it becomes something mournful sung by that pretty voice. I cry along to the music, as loud as I can.

“You dumb kitten,” he says. The banjo twangs and I row with it, a long note.

“Oh man, really?” He turns the record down so that the piano and the woman are ghosts of themselves, whispering into the air.

I row. I don’t come out.

“Hey, Olivia,” he says, exasperated, “what am I? Your butler?” But he turns it down even further. I think this is as good as it’s going to get.

I emerge from under the couch.

“Oh,” he says warmly. “There you are. Decided to honor us, did you?”