Pussywinks likes tasty dandelions and when she rolls them in her paws they fit neatly in her pockets. The Others sometimes sit lazy on the paved stoops and corners, but not her. Delicately she works the flowers and earns the eyes of a passerby. few stop to listen.
“I think there is a lot of confusion these days. When I ask you how you’re life has changed, how you’ve changed your life. You don’t know. The world’s wrapped together in paper tape, and I see no place for reflection…But kitties think differently I guess.”
She falls on deaf ears most times. The ones that stay usually humor her with smiles. She can’t return the gesture, only open her eyes as wide as they’ll go, arched high and low, so they know she understands.
It’s a little startling, well, when you’re the type accustomed to pleasantries, to see some cast glares at little Pussywinks while she talks and paws her flowers. But this is not a neighborhood, nor is it common ground. She sits on corners of the streets that play host to people who, without question, believe in their ownership of those streets and Pussywinks intrusion. Not snobs, not domineering, but only sure of their own place, cattle that stare at their hooves and not the pasture stretching to the horizon, just outside their pen. These people, hunched and fast, barreling down her sidewalk, pay little attention to dandelions or anything like that. So they don’t understand.
“But that’s just it and all I’ve said. You’ve let things get out of hand. Where do you go faster than the larks I chase sometimes over by the greenbelt? That’s just it. Nowhere important”
So Pussywinks finds herself on her corner, sweeping dust aside with her paw, to clear a place to sit. The rounded edge of the building she rests by gives good support for her back and sides. It's her favorite spot near the intersection. A place to sit all day, legs splayed, back curled, and arms relaxed by her sides.
Her building, a coffee shop, snares those that walk by. And they sit inside, talking, fingering the handles of their mugs, sipping.
And then some argue…
“Its not like I’m going out and spending it at bars or something. I’m trying the best I can.”
“You don’t understand” She was angry. “I’ve never once worried about paying rent, or buying groceries, or treating myself to a pair of fucking thirty dollar shoes. And now I’m living with you, and now I have to worry about it, and it’s driving me crazy.”
He squashed his reaction to think of the right words.
“Honey”
“Don’t give me that crap, I’m upset, I don’t want you calling me that. God, it’s so patronizing.”
“Well fuck, what do you want then. I’m sorry things are tight; I’m doing the best I can. I’ll do more, this doesn’t have to be a problem.”
She rose from her chair, pressing it back against the tile, screeching the legs like old breaks.
“When you figure things out, I’ll be at home?”
One step toward the door, and Pussywinks could hear it. Her ears pivot on flywheels, perked and scanning like radar dishes.
He followed with a step of his own.
Pussywinks reached in her pocket and withdrew her most beautiful dandelion. She placed it on her knee and unrolled it with her paws. She would have to be quick, but careful so the petals came out straight.
With both paws she gripped the flower and in an arc, like a morning stretch, tall and smooth, she lifted her body from the ground. With her legs balanced, her arms strained above her head, higher, to where the flower now rested well above the pavement. Her thin form rolled and swayed and she stepped paw to paw in slow circles on the sidewalk.
“Come on, don’t do this, wait…”
The man and the woman rounded the corner.
“Just leave me alone, I don’t want to…Oh my god, look at that.”
And there was Pussywinks, carving circles with her deliberate steps, wobbling from the shape of her shoulders and the structure of her hips. Holding a single flower above her ears. All the while her jaw shut, tense, and her eyes fixed ahead, stuck by focus and thoughtfulness.
“What’s it doing, that’s adorable, I’ve never seen anything like it before”
“I know honey, it’s amazing”
“It makes me want a little kitty for our place.”
“We can look in the classifieds when we get home.”
“We should, maybe we can find one that needs a good home.”
Pussywinks let her dandelion flop to the ground and let her paws relax. She raised her eyes arched fat and high to the people then gathered her dandelion, rolling it so it would again fit in her pocket.
“Now they’ll at least walk more slowly” She quipped, but no one seemed to notice.