Morris Buckwheat

A short story about expectations.

True to my “idle parenting” philosophy, I succumbed to my children’s pleas, and we adopted a cat about two months ago. His name was Suris (Sour, in Swedish), which I find, in retrospect, very fitting. However, I single-handedly decided to rebaptise the creature to something more humane. Thus, Morris Buckwheat became the sixth planet in the galaxy of our home on a sunny early September afternoon.

I grew up wanting a pet so badly that my brain hurt from thinking about it. I really wanted a dog, but would have settled for anything to cuddle. My mother would hear none of that. She fears dogs, thinks cats are eerie, is of the opinion that hamsters are too much like rats, and rabbits were completely out of the question because they smell too much. She had the perfect counter-argument to all my reasonings.

I settled for a canary, which does not sub-classify as “cuddly” in the general pet taxonomy, but I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

It died of what seemed a cold after 6 months. I did not cry.

The following “pet” I was allowed to have was a bunch of goldfish swimming in a small pond in the back garden of our UK house. I am deliberately being vague about the location in the UK here since I do not want anyone to identify me as the killer of their fish since they technically belonged to the owners of the house we had rented. I was the proud surrogate mother of these fish, in charge of feeding them, and I even talked to them on occasion. I forgot to feed them for seven days in a row, so I am not sure why I was so surprised when I found them floating on the water's surface.

What a shock. Once the impression passed, I had no time for mourning.

By now, some of my readers may have started profiling me as a psychopath. Rest assured, I scored very low on those tests. But one must agree that neither canaries nor goldfish make excellent companions; hence, my empathy was not really challenged by their deaths.

Then, there was no one else until Morris. I was really looking forward to having a pet at home. I envisioned cuddling up with it while watching a film, having it approach one of us when needing a scratch behind the ears, you know, the expected pet stuff. But now it feels like this cat does not really care for family life. Try as I might, he just does not like me. What I would describe as “his evil stare” makes me nervous. Also, whenever I try to pet the beast in an attempt to make peace and establish a relationship of sorts, he either scratches my hand or walks away, oozing disdain. I once woke up to find him next to me on my nightstand, staring, possibly thinking about the fastest and most efficient way to scratch my eyes out.

He likes my husband, though, quite insulting, really, since I was the one who found him a home.

I have nothing against pets in general, but this particular animal incites low-level animosity in me. I expect that when I am old, the police will find my lifeless body with a half-eaten face after I failed to answer my children’s calls for a week, and they will also find Morris there, next to me, licking his mouth with satisfaction.