Over the phone tonight, my boyfriend casually mentioned that he had a full-sized replica of a carousel cat sitting in storage, something his parents got as a gift when they owned a magazine about pets, and would like to bring it into our apartment. The carousel cat has a fish in its mouth. The cat comes with its own carousel pole, as you can plainly see in the photo.
I’m going to live with a man who has a carousel cat.
I mean, LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING EYES. Maybe it’s the photo, but no matter where I stand in the room it looks like those yellow eyes are staring at me. I close my eyes and try to imagine where the cat would go. In the bathroom? Not really. Across from the sofas so we could engage in evening-long staring contests? Nope.
“Ernie,” the cat would stare at me as I wake up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water. “Join me to the dark side, where we will conquer the underworld together. Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want some… FISH?”
“Not now, Merry-go-round cat,” I would reply back, walking past him and turning off the lights, two yellow saucers glowing in the dark for the rest of the night.
I shake off my overactive imagination. “Babe, I’m not sure if this cat will go with any of the other stuff we have,” I tell my boyfriend over the telephone.
“We could work around that,” he says in a deadpan voice. “We could always just make our living room circus-themed.”
He does have a point; people could always use the cat as extra seating space.
Everything will be okay. Provided that circus carousel cat doesn’t eat my soul.
