The Cats know Everything

Date: 11/21/2025

Somehow the universe has dragged us back together, though the air between us feels thick — like a decade’s worth of unspoken sentences has congealed into something you’d need a chisel to break. Kylie sits on her sofa, twiddling her thumbs in the exact anxious rhythm I remember. It’s oddly comforting in the way a childhood nightmare can be — still terrifying, but at least familiar. “Shall I make a cup of tea?” I ask. My thirst is irrelevant; I just need something to puncture the silence before it swallows us whole. Tea was always our ritual. Tea meant normalcy. Tea meant safety. Tea meant us. Her place looks… wrong. Too tidy. Too empty. Like someone has scooped out her personality with a melon baller. The semi-tacky trinkets — her crystal owls, her scattered crystals, her aggressively inspirational “LIVE LAUGH LOVE” plaques — are all gone, as if an interior designer with a personal vendetta staged a minimalist intervention. The walls are blank, white, severe. The kind of clean that feels accusatory. And then there are the cats. Jesus Christ, the cats. They’re everywhere. Perched on shelves, spilling off armchairs, lining the windowsill like silent, furry judges. It’s as if she’s collected every stray in the postcode. A house full of orphans and ghosts. I put the tray of tea down; she gives me the smallest nod. Permission granted. Sit, mortal. Three years without speaking. Three years of bitter silence and petty resentment marinating like a toxic broth. You’d think it would boil over now, but my mind’s blank. Completely empty. Not one question comes to me. Kylie blows across the top of her tea like she’s trying to cool the entire room, staring past me into some distant dimension where she’s definitely having a better time. Then a cat saunters over, lifts its tail, and parks its arse directly in front so close I can practically taste Whiskers. The universe has a sense of humour, apparently. I look up — and there it is. A smile. A flicker. The ghost of old Kylie bursting through. For one suspended second, we’re twenty again, mean and inseparable and stupid. And then she talks. God she talks. Three years of gossip and milestones and petty grievances gush from her like a ruptured dam. We drink tea. We belly-laugh. We roast people behind their backs with cruel enthusiasm. Cups empty, refill, empty again. Warmth returning to old bones. Until— “Get out.” At first I laugh, thinking it’s a prank. Something we’ll laugh about in thirty seconds. But her face is stone. Cold. Final. “You want me to leave?” My voice cracks on the last word. “I want you to fuck off.” There’s no crescendo, no explanation, no argument. Just a sentence hurled with surgical precision. I scramble over her army of cats — little furry landmines of judgement — and let myself out. I don’t ask questions. I don’t plead. Something in her tone makes it clear: the conversation is over. The era is over. We are over. As the door clicks shut, the scene glitches. Suddenly I’m at work. The depot buzzes with fluorescent misery, but something feels off. People stare. Whisper. Point. Laugh abruptly, then choke it back. My paranoia skyrockets. Do I have my hi-vis on inside out? Mismatched shoes again? Did someone slap a “LOSER” sign on my back? I hurry to the bathroom — and nearly scream. My hair. Neon orange. Retina-burning orange. Traffic cone. Orangeade. Halloween reject. My brain panics, spirals, rummages for solutions. Hood up? No — grim reaper vibes. Toilet roll? Mummy vibes. Styling it out? Absolutely impossible. It’s a lighthouse on my skull. So I do the only thing that makes sense: I crown myself with a metal wastebasket. Sweet, delusional Charlotte, bless her soul, compliments it. Everyone else calls me Bin head. The Big Boss arrives. “Take that bin off your head. You’re not a Trash-ional Treasure!” He chuckles too hard at his own joke, and then his face falls. “I’ve got a frame with your name on it!” Of course he does. He assigns me a route stacked with more parcels than the laws of physics should permit. I consider throwing myself into the nearest mailbag and letting the sorting machine finish me off, but instead I keep going. One parcel at a time. One humiliation at a time. Then I hear it. Snort. Snort. SNORT. The noise reverberates through the depot like a boar with a chest infection. “What the hell is that?” I whisper. “Don’t mind me,” comes a tiny voice. It’s Liz. Crouched under my frame like a gremlin, hoovering up a line of suspicious white powder long enough to qualify as a road marking. “Breakfast,” she says before continuing her uninterrupted symphony of nasal violence. SNORT. And that’s when I feel it. A cold draft curls around me, slipping straight through my clothes — straight through me. I’m back at Kylie’s door. The cats stare at me from the windowsill, eyes glowing like tiny lanterns. And I hear it. Snort. Snort. Snort. Except it’s not Liz. It’s one of the cats. The ugly one with the crumpled ear and the face only raw chicken could love. It snorts twice, coughs once, and then — swear to God — speaks. “Three years,” it rasps. “Same cycle. Same dream. Same tea. Same ending.” The world tilts. My breath staggers. “What?” The cat licks its paw, bored. She didn’t invite you. She never does. You invite yourself. Every night.” My heart hammers. “No… today was real.” The other cats stare in collective pity. The ugliest one flicks its tail. “Check your reflection.” I look into the window beside the door. My hair glows violently orange — so bright it casts light on the pavement. A metal wastebasket crowns my head like a ceremonial helmet. “I—this isn’t—” The cat interrupts. “You keep trying to fix what’s dead. But the universe already told you to fuck off.” The door slams shut on its own. And all the cats, in perfect harmony, say: “Now let it go.” Darkness drops. And I wake up— in my own bed— with cat hair on my pillow. And a faint smell of orangeade.