Matchmaker Cat (A Romantic Comedy Short Story) Read online

  MATCHMAKER CAT

  by

  Elizabeth Kyne

  Published by

  Elly Books

  Copyright Elizabeth Kyne 2011

  Smashwords edition

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  Chester looked at me with wide, disapproving feline eyes.

  ‘What?’ I asked as I closed the front door behind me.

  He continued to sit in the middle of the hallway; his ginger tabby fur sleek and neat with his nose pointing into the air like the lord of the manor. He leaned out to the side as if peering at something behind me. Even though I knew there was nothing there, I turned my head too, and saw only the scratched paint of the wooden door.

  ‘Sorry Chester,’ I said. ‘I didn’t bring anyone home with me today.’

  He actually seemed to be disappointed. The line of his mouth pointed downwards and there was a sense of loneliness in his eyes. Then the almost-human emotion disappeared from his face. He stood up and walked off towards the kitchen: holding his tail high in the air so I had the perfect view of his bum hole.

  ‘Stupid cat.’

  I put my handbag on the first of a row of coathooks that were held to the wall by a couple of wobbly screws, took off my coat and hung it on top. I made my way to the kitchen, but hadn’t quite left enough space between me and the bicycle which I kept in the hallway, and whacked my ankle on the pedal.

  ‘Ow!’ I glared at it, like the infernal machine had stuck out its pedal on purpose. ‘Bloody thing.’ I hobbled down the hall with a stinging big toe.

  I live in a two-storey terrace house which dates back to the Victorian era, when they evidently had a peculiar idea of how to arrange living space. The corridors and stairs are so narrow they leave precious little room for actual human beings - always embarrassing when having fat friends to stay - while the rooms themselves have ceilings tall enough to dwarf even my six-and-a-half foot brother. I know it’s because the house was designed in a time of coal fires when grey smoke would hang at the top of the room, allowing the people living below to breathe clean air, but that’s of little consolation to my central heating bill.

  The Victorians also didn’t have microwaves, fridge freezers, washing machines and dishwashers, which goes a little to explain why my kitchen is as cramped as it is. It’s one of those long thin ones where there’s no room to swing a cat (not as if I would swing a cat, you understand - although, with Chester, I’ve been tempted on occasions). A lot of the cupboard space got hi-jacked to put in modern appliances, so many of my kitchen implements live on the counter - mugs on mug trees, utensils on racks, pans hanging from hooks. Even so, I try to keep it relatively tidy.

  Chester was waiting for me when I walked in, sitting forlornly by his bowl as if I were a cruel mistress who’d kept him starving all day. This was not true, as the bowl still had half the dried food I’d left out for him that morning.

  ‘Honestly, Chester, anyone would think I should be reported to the RSPCA.’

  Chester, rather than speaking up in my defence, continued to wear a deprived look. He even let out a pitiful meow.

  I looked through the cupboard of moist, meaty cat food that left a dent in my credit card every month. ‘I bet you’re going to get more enjoyment out of this meal than I got out of mine tonight,’ I said as I chose a pouch of rabbit in gravy and wondered, not for the first time, how gravy had any relation to what a cat might eat in the wild.

  Chester stretched himself as tall as he could while sitting down, full of anticipation. I know it was because of the food, but in my head, I decided it was really a sign he wanted to hear more about my disastrous date with Derek.

  ‘I’m telling you, Chester, I had an uncomfortable feeling about him as soon as I walked into the restaurant.’

  A friend of a friend had persuaded me to meet with Derek. He felt sorry for me and said Derek could do with company because ‘he’s so lonely’. Having met the man, I understood why.

  ‘He was wearing a tie,’ I explained. ‘You have to give the guy credit for making an effort - but he looked as uncomfortable as a young kid at his first job interview. He kept fiddling with it and running his finger between his neck and collar like it was strangling him. I’ve never seen a man fidget so much.’ I ripped open the pouch and got a whiff of catty gravy. ‘I know he was nervous, and you can’t blame the man, but the only things he seemed to want to talk about were the weather and house prices. I nearly fell asleep in my soup.

  ‘The thing that finally did it was he picked his nose - honestly, Chester, even you would have been disgusted. He thought he’d done it behind his napkin, but I saw what he was up to. Then he used the same hand to eat his bread roll.’ The memory of it turned my stomach. ‘And that was the end of another pathetic attempt at me having a relationship.’

  I bent down and squeezed rabbity gloop from the pouch into Chester’s bowl. He stood beside it, leaning forward like an athlete on the starting line. When I stood up, I half expected him to pounce on his dinner like a lion upon a gazelle. But Chester isn’t one to do what people expect. Instead, he looked at the pile of easy-to-chew rabbit and nudged his nose forward to give it a gentle sniff. He paused, as if considering. Then he turned away from the bowl and walked out of the kitchen with a superior air, leaving me standing with a half empty pouch in my hand.

  ‘Chester!’ I called after him. But he was gone.

  As I put the kettle on, I wondered which beast was the more unfathomable - men or cats.

  I made myself a mug of tea and took it into the lounge.

  I stopped at the doorway because the soft glow from my computer screen illuminated the room. Not unusual in itself, but I could swear I hadn’t turned it on that morning. Even if I had, after half an hour of being left idle it’s programmed to go into sleep mode.

  I flicked the lightswitch and the one weak energy-saving lightbulb at the centre of my ceiling struggled to cast an orange-tinged light across the lounge. Chester let out a startled meow and leapt from the computer table onto the floor.

  ‘Chester!’

  There was my answer to how the computer happened to be on: Chester had somehow woken it up.

  My cat tried to pretend he hadn’t been lurking anywhere he shouldn’t and wandered over to the coffee table where he rubbed his side against one of the legs. It was this sort of behaviour that had left a thin film of cat hair on my carpet and upholstery. The place was overdue a hoover. It was overdue a tidy and a dust as well, but with so many bookshelves over-filled with dust-attracting volumes and a saggy past-its-use-by-date, faded red sofa taking up most of the space, there was little incentive to make the effort.

  I took my tea over to the computer table and put it on top of the pile of credit card and utility bills I’d left to deal with later. My first thought was to turn the machine off, but then I figured I might as well check my email.

  The web-browser was running. It was open at a page with a large photo of a smiling man in his forties and, alongside, a bunch of paragraphs about him.

  I turned to my cat. ‘Have you been playing with the mouse again?’ He stopped abusing the leg of the coffee table and looked back at me like he didn’t understand my human words.

  I decided to ignore the stupid cat and turned back to the monitor. I wa
s about to close down the website and open up my email account, when the first paragraph caught my eye.

  ‘Looking to meet a woman in her late thirties / early forties for walks in the woods, trips to the cinema and romantic evenings at home with a bottle of wine.’

  As I read, the man seemed to be smiling at me from the screen. His eyes drew me in, as if he were speaking the words directly to me. I read further.

  ‘I never thought I’d turn to a dating website, but after years of living alone, I think this could be a great way to meet people.’

  I’d never turn to a dating website either - I was desperate, but not that desperate - which made me wonder how on earth the page had ended up on my computer. I must have Googled something obscure and pulled it up by mistake, like the time I searched for a pantomime script of Babes in the Wood for my neighbour’s school and ended up looking at entirely the wrong sort of babes.

  I felt the brush of warm fur at my ankle. Chester was suddenly at my feet. ‘Hello, what are you after?’ I stroked him on the top of his head; he seemed to like that.

  This was all very well, but it wasn’t getting my email read. As I reached for the mouse, Chester jumped onto my lap and knocked my arm away. ‘You’re such an attention seeker!’ I stroked his fur with my mouse-hand and felt the rumble of his purr as he arched his back.

  As soon as I took my hand away, he demanded my attention again by jumping up onto the computer table. ‘Chester!’

  He walked along it, his tail dangling perilously close to my tea. ‘Come on, get off of there! You know you’re not allowed on the furniture.’

  I was about to cup my hands over his furry body and lift him back onto the floor, when he sat right on the middle of the mousemat and placed his front paws on the mouse buttons. On the screen, a window popped up over the image of the smiling man.

  Yes, I would like to meet this man, it said along the top of the window. Underneath, it had a box to tick and space to fill in my details.

  I looked at Chester - with his paws sitting on the mouse - then I looked back at the screen. I looked at Chester again, his eyes blinking innocently in the glow from the webpage. It was impossible for the two things to be linked, and yet they seemed to be. An eerie feeling came over me, like a ghost was leaning over my shoulder.

  One of the man’s eyes in the photograph peeked out from behind the pop-up window with a warmth that seemed to chase the ghost away. Almost as if he were inviting me to fill in my details. Without stopping to think about it, I typed in my name - Rosemary Woodvine - and my email address, and hit the enter button.

  *

  The smiling man in the photograph was called Horace, a name he was embarrassed about and always shortened to Riss. He told me he’d been teased rotten at school and called Horrible Horace and other, less gracious, names. It had knocked his confidence for six and, while friends of his were busy going out with girls and kissing behind the bike sheds, he was on his own reading books or building train sets.

  By saying that, it’s probably obvious that my request to connect with Riss was accepted. We exchanged emails for a few days, finding out little bits about each other and generally chatting, until he finally invited me out for a meal. Of course, I said yes.

  He had the same smiling eyes in person as he had in the photograph. In fact, he looked exactly the same, a forty-two year-old face with an amazing amount of confidence for a man once known as Horrible Horrace. He was dressed in a smart shirt and lived-in jeans; like he’d made an effort, but hadn’t tried too hard. He made our meeting relaxed and comfortable without the pressure that often comes with a first date.

  We talked and talked over our meals of pollo farcito and salmone paradiso at the Italian restaurant in the centre of town. It was a nice place, not too posh to be intimidating, and not too scummy either. We spent two hours together and had gone through starter, main course and dessert, before I even thought to look at my watch.

  ‘How are you getting home, Rosemary?’ he asked as the waiter went to fetch the bill.

  ‘I’ll take a taxi.’ I’d got there by bus, which was fine in the early evening, but not so pleasant late at night.

  ‘Want to share?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, it’s all right.’

  ‘It’s not much out of my way, and it’ll save you a few bob.’

  He looked at me with those smiling eyes and I just had to say yes. Anyway, it was an excuse to spend a little more time in his company.

  It was, maybe, presumptuous of me to invite him in for a drink when the cab stopped outside my house, but as soon as the question was out of my mouth, I felt it was the right thing to do.

  I led him up the stone steps towards the front door of my Victorian terrace. ‘Watch out for the bike in the hallway,’ I said as I turned the key in the lock and stepped inside. Out of habit, I put my handbag on the coathook before following it with my jacket and reaching over for the lightswitch.

  ‘Ow!’ Riss exclaimed.

  The light came on to reveal Riss in the hallway, standing by my bike and rubbing his ankle.

  I hid my smile behind my hand. ‘I did warn you.’

  ‘The pedal was sticking out.’ He rubbed his ankle still further.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Why don’t I put the kettle on and you can rest your foot in the lounge? It’s the door on the left.’

  He walked over to the door as I suggested, exaggerating his limp like Quasimodo.

  As the kettle boiled and I put two teaspoons of instant coffee granules into two mugs, I thought about the evening we had had together and I couldn’t stop the smile from breaking out on my face. A week ago, I couldn’t have imagined meeting a man like him - let alone inviting him back to my house. And yet, there he was, with just one thin Victorian wall between us.

  I took the two steaming mugs into the lounge. He’d made himself comfortable on the sofa, sinking into its aged cushions with his feet stretched out in front of him. I was about to ask him something about taking sugar in his coffee when I stopped short.

  My saggy red sofa is a two-seater. The idea is; one human being sits on the seat to the right and the second human being sits on the seat to the left. And, if the two human beings are so inclined, they get a little closer and end up snuggling somewhere in the middle. But, on this occasion, Riss was sitting on the right-hand cushion - and so was my cat!

  I cleared my through as I handed Riss his coffee. ‘I don’t usually let Chester onto the furniture.’

  ‘Oh, Chester’s all right,’ said Riss, stroking the white patch of fur under Chester’s chin with his index finger, causing my cat to squint in ecstasy. ‘Aren’t you Chester?’ Chester purred.

  I sighed. The two of them looked so comfortable that I decided to bite my lip. I sat down on the left-hand cushion, with Chester between us.

  Riss moved to drink his coffee.

  ‘There’s no sugar in it, I hope that’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Just how I like it.’ He took a sip, even though it was near-scalding hot.

  I went to sip my own, but the heat coming off the top of the coffee was enough to warn me off and I lowered it towards my lap to cool.

  Riss continued to stroke Chester, who continued to grin in that serene way cats have when they’re being fussed over. ‘I love cats,’ he said. ‘They’re so less demanding than a dog and yet they love you all the same.’

  ‘Or they love that you feed them,’ I said.

  Riss chuckled. ‘Indeed. My cat, Lindy, rushes up to me as soon as I get home like she’s really pleased to see me, but I often wonder if she’s just pleased to see the man who can use a tin opener.’

  ‘You didn’t mention you had a cat,’ I said.

  ‘It’s in my profile,’ said Riss.

  ‘Oh yes.’ I’d forgotten. It had been so long since I’d read his profile on the dating website, that some of the details had drifted from my brain. His emails had been much more personal and, in them, we’d talked more about our favourite movies and music.

/>   ‘So, how come you chose my profile over all the other men out there?’ said Riss.

  ‘Well, it’s funny,’ I said. ‘I didn’t really choose you, I sort of happened upon you by accident.’ As I told him about that day I found his picture on my computer, I looked at Chester sitting like King of the Sofa between us, and I started to wonder…

  *

  A couple of weeks later, I woke in my bed on Sunday morning to find Chester asleep on the pillow next to me. He knew he wasn’t allowed in the bedroom, let alone on the bed, but since Riss had been coming round, that rule had kind of been got forgotten. The other pillow on my bed was propped up against the headboard and Riss was leaning against it, his naked chest with its mix of grey and dark hairs, looking amazingly sexy. He was perusing his phone with a disgruntled expression.

  ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ I said, surprising myself with the use of the word ‘darling’.

  ‘Looks like I might have to go to Germany for more than a few days,’ said Riss.

  ‘Oh.’ There was something going on with the German parent company where he worked. Something, apparently, that needed more than a conference call.

  ‘Might be as long as a month,’ he said.

  ‘A month!’ That woke me up properly and I propped myself on an elbow so I could look Riss in the eye. It startled Chester, who let out a drowsy meow and shifted his position on the pillow.

  ‘Misha just sent me a text.’

  ‘Why’s your boss texting you on a Sunday morning?’

  ‘He worries,’ said Riss. ‘It’s better than calling me.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘What am I going to do about my flat?’

  ‘I’m sure it can survive without you for a month. Better than I can.’ I reached over my cat - feeling his soft warm fur on my naked breast - to kiss Riss on the cheek.

  ‘The tenancy agreement says I’m not allowed any pets,’ he said.

  ‘But you have a cat.’

  ‘Yes. When there’s an inspection, I clear away all her cat things and get a friend to look after Lindy for a few hours. My landlord doesn’t know.’