This is Life by Rhodes Dan

Author:Rhodes, Dan [Rhodes, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780857862471
Publisher: Canongate Books

SAMEDI

XIX

In July, Natsuki Kobayashi had bought a cat. He was not a pleasant cat. He had mean, narrow eyes and a sour, arrogant nature, and she had named him Makoto.

Toshiro Akiyama had not found out about Makoto Kobayashi until he had gone to visit Natsuki’s apartment and been hissed at the moment he walked in. It was a hiss both aggressive and disdainful.

‘He’s just getting used to you,’ Natsuki had said, but this hissing had continued all evening, and started up again the moment he stepped out of her bedroom the next morning, and it had not abated since. Natsuki seemed to love Makoto though, and the cat tolerated her in return. She spent a lot of time tickling his belly, and making him small hats, helmets and headdresses, and posting photographs of him wearing them on the Internet. In each of these photographs Makoto had an unpleasant look in his eye, and even the people of the Internet, so many of whom love nothing more than commenting favourably on photographs of hat-wearing cats from around the world, were reticent in their praise. Each picture received only two or three hundred responses, and though they were always positive they seemed only ever to come from people who had specifically set out to find pictures of sinister-looking felines in unorthodox handcrafted headgear. The rest of the Internet maintained a diplomatic silence on the subject of Makoto Kobayashi.

One evening, after weeks of this, Toshiro was at Natsu-ki’s place and the cat had scratched him through his trousers, drawing blood yet again. Finally, he asked the question he had been holding in for such a long time. ‘Natsuki,’ he said, at last, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were going to get a cat?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t have to tell you everything.’

‘No, of course you don’t, but things are pretty serious between us, and it’s a big deal.’

‘Since when was getting a cat a big deal? It’s just normal. And anyway, it doesn’t matter how serious we are, I don’t need to ask your permission if I want a pet.’

‘But we’ve already agreed that at some point we’ll be living together. What happens to the cat then?’

‘He’ll live with us. Anyway, we’re not even engaged. I’m still an independent woman and I can do what I want. And if you love me you’ll love my cat.’

‘I’m never sharing a home with that thing. He’s mean. This is something we should have talked through together. He could live for another twenty years.’

‘I hope he does.’

‘But I don’t want to spend the next twenty years of my life being hissed at by a furry ball of negativity. I work from home, so when you’re out all day I’ll be stuck in the apartment with him. And I’ve noticed that since you got him you don’t come to mine so much because you don’t want to leave him alone, and to be honest I haven’t looked forward to coming round here as much as I used to.

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