instinct

She gets up in the morning and she stands at the sink while she flosses and brushes her teeth, and sometimes she frowns or she sighs. I watch her pace to the closet and rattle plastic hangers above my head, then walk from room to room as her tall black shoes make tiny clicking sounds on the tile. The way she moves is quick and impatient and choppy. It gives me an unsettled feeling, just seeing her stalk around like that, hurrying down the hall looking for keys or an umbrella or a jacket; loading the dishwasher and tugging open the blinds; speaking in short staccato sentences as she gets ready to head off to work. At times like this, I usually go behind the couch. 

I like to lie down back there. It’s shady and quiet, and the carpet is soft, and I can put my nose up close to the air-conditioning vent. Once in awhile when nobody’s looking, I might knock a throw pillow down on the floor and prop my head beside it. Sometimes I’ll nibble an edge or a corner, just a little bit, but the minute my name is hollered I know enough to stop. I curl my tail behind me, and feel the morning sun against my face; and I sigh, and think about how much I like chicken. 

I think about other things too, most days: the way the wind chimes ring outside when the house is hushed and still; the way the grass smells in the evening when I go out for my walk after dinner; the way my favorite chew toy would squeak, and squeak, and squeak, so that I would hold it between my paws to make it squeak and then squeak some more, until one day it began to make raspy wheezing noises and had to be sewn back together with two different kinds of thread.

I think about how nice it is, each night, to sit in the living room with my family; and to sleep on my round quilted bed that’s cushioned and clean and dry. It’s the place I feel safest, really deep down, except for when I hear thunder coming and try to crawl beneath the nightstand or the big brown maple dresser. Every day I wake up and find something good to eat in my bowl, and nobody ever tries to take it away, or to bother me while I’m eating it; and sometimes, not very often but once in awhile, it turns out to be chicken.

I think about her as well. I wonder if she ever has feelings like mine when she’s rushing all around, or talking in that tense and rigid way, or resting her chin on her hands and looking scared or sad. I wonder if she thinks about what it’s really like here. It’s bright in the summer and warm in the winter. There’s enough room to walk around and even, sometimes, to run; and I can sit on the back of the loveseat and look at the trees out the window; at the way their leaves and branches dip and shift in the wind; and at that gray squirrel who always rests on the biggest branch and twitches his tail while staring back methodically. If something on the countertop is waving around in an interesting way, and I jump on a chair to look, nobody stays mad for too long. And if I need to have a bath, I get a treat.

Sometimes she presses a button on the table and we hear all kinds of beautiful music, or she reaches beneath a lampshade and there is soothing light, or she turns a knob on the stove and the house is filled with wonderful smells. Today the neighbor’s tortoiseshell cat sat cleaning its paws by the screen door all morning long, and I got to bark and growl and dance around, even though the cat didn’t seem to notice very much, or care. 

It was a good day.

I don’t really understand her fear and anger. I stay nearby and try to make things better, though it doesn’t always seem to help a lot. She talks about things that might happen in a week or a month, and her eyes look large and worried. She mentions things that took place a long time ago, way back before I can even remember, and she looks stricken and ashamed. 

It’s clear to me that somebody cares for us here. I can’t make out a lot of the words she uses, but maybe she doesn’t believe this. Maybe she doesn’t realize that I would fight to keep us all safe, if that’s what it truly came down to. I’m not sure it would make much difference though, because I don’t think she always feels secure or protected, at least not really deep-down. I watch her when she sits in the chair by herself, and she looks at the floor and she sighs, and the mood that surrounds her is dark and heavy and filled with dread.

But then each day, every day, before she opens the door and leaves the house in the morning, there is one thing more that she does. On the wall in the foyer is a small object made out of wood: two simple brown sticks, one sitting crosswise over the other. She pauses for a moment, and stands very still, and murmurs quiet words or simple phrases, and touches her fingers to this object before going out.

It seems pretty obvious that it’s meant to open something.