The thing is, I know a lot about what goes on outside, even if it doesn’t happen in front of my peephole. I can’t see but I can hear and smell. So I know that at a certain time of day, a ted who smells like leather and clean skin goes along the street with his big brouhaha. He usually stops to pet it near our house. I don’t know what they look like as I haven’t actually seen them with my eyes, but judging by the smell the brouhaha is very ugly. The stink of it is like an old sock full of caca. I always hear the brouhaha writhing and whining, the jingle of its tags as it wriggles its butt. Cats’ souls live in their tails and teds keep their selves behind their big wet eyes. But brouhahas keep their deepest feelings in their butts.

The ted talks to it like it can understand. “Hey, Champ. You a good boy? Yes, yes you are, yes you are, oh yes, you big dumb lunk.” Only, often he doesn’t say lunk. I hear the slopping of the brouhaha’s tongue, smell the love coming out of its skin. This just proves the ted’s point. Brouhahas really are big dumb ahem-ahems. Champ wants nothing more than to kill me. The old knowledge told me, the kind that is in our bodies. Teds don’t have a lot of that knowledge left but cats have tons.

I waited until I had the timings off by heart. Ted goes to get candy and beer at a certain time each day. As he’s coming up the steps, the brouhaha and the ted are sometimes passing in front of the house. Sometimes the ted says hi, and Ted kind of grunts back.

Today was the day and my heart was whirring like a hummingbird, but I knew it was going to work, I just knew it.

At this point, I was not yet very tall. I could still walk right under the couch, and the tips of my ears would not even graze the underside. So I hid myself in the umbrella stand in the hall. What a useless thing! How many umbrellas does Ted think he has? Anyway it is a good place to hide.

I heard Ted’s footfall, the tinkle and crack of tiny pieces of the world breaking beneath his boot. He had started early, I could tell. This was also good. Ted would be slow. (There is a shuffling rhythm to his walk when he drinks. It is almost like a very simple dance—a square dance, maybe.) I crouched, my tail lashed. The cord stretched out in the air behind me. It was a burned shade of orange that day, and it crackled like fire in a hearth as I moved.