Cat Shaver

by Tom W. Miller

“Why the heck is somebody going around shaving cats?” asked my father. He shoveled a forkful of meatloaf in his mouth without taking his eyes off the newspaper.

“What?” asked Mom, who was settling into her chair after placing a serving bowl full of tater tots on the table.

“It’s the front page story. Cats are walking around with wide strips of fur shaved from their backs.”

“Probably just some kids playing pranks, George.”

“No, Marge, it’s probably some sick and twisted individuals. It starts with innocent animals. Who’s next—law abiding citizens? Nobody’s giving me an inverse mohawk without my consent!”

I spooned a few tater tots onto my plate. A vein in my forehead throbbed as it usually did when Dad started to rant about his constitutional rights.

Mom nibbled around the edges of her meatloaf medallion. “It is odd.”

“It’s freaking bizarre,” said my father, who grabbed the tot bowl and upended most of its contents onto his plate. “Brian, you don’t have friends who would do something like this, do you?”

I swallowed my mouthful of shredded potatoes. “Definitely not, Dad.”  I could say this with certainty because I had no friends to speak of.

“That’s good to—” Dad stopped mid-sentence after he picked up a tot. “Marge, what the heck is this?”

Mom let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s your favorite dinner, George. Meatloaf and tater tots. Just trying to make you happy.”

My father held up a tater tot between thumb and forefinger. “Flaccid, Marge,” he said. “Absolutely flaccid.”  He squeezed the tot, and pale white flesh squirted from each side of the cylinder. “How many times have I told you? I like them extra crispy.”

“I left them in the oven for ten minutes longer than the instructions,” said Mom, who picked one up out of the bottom of the bowl and popped it in her mouth. “That’s a perfectly good tot for 99.9 percent of the population.”

“Put them back in the oven, Marge.”

“Put them back yourself, George. I might not have spent the day in the heat building houses, but I worked an eight-hour shift at the library and made you dinner. The least you could do is appreciate it.”

My vein was now pulsing like the beacon of an old lighthouse. I stood up. “I’ll throw the tots back in the oven,” I said. “I feel a headache coming on, so I need to go lie down anyway.”

“You sure have been getting a lot of headaches, Bri,” said Mom.

I scraped the tater tots from Dad’s plate back into the serving bowl and dumped the potatoes back on the cookie sheet. I could have explained that my headaches occurred in direct proportion to parental bickering, but that would only have prolonged my agony. I slid the cookie sheet in the oven and pushed a button to restart the bake. “Once I get this SAT behind me, I’m sure things will get better,” I said.

“I keep telling you, son, you don’t need to worry about it at all,” said George. “I didn’t go to college, and I’m doing just fine.  I could—”

Mom held up her hands to cut off her husband. “George.”

“What?”

“Just stop.”

“What? I’m sharing my experience.”

I walked down a hallway and closed my bedroom door, which reduced my parents’ argument to indistinct mutterings.

My phone pulsed against my hip at two in the morning. I turned off the alarm, laced up my sneakers and popped the screen on my bedroom window. After dropping a backpack through the opening, I boosted myself to the sill and wriggled out of the house. I slid the straps of the pack over my shoulders and blended into the night.

I raised the hood on my black windbreaker before cutting across the Flanagans’ backyard three doors down. Once in the woods, I turned on a penlight to navigate through the trees and down the hill to the main road. A low branch scraped my cheek. On previous excursions, I had traveled along concrete roads to the fish market at the subdivision entrance, where a gaggle of stray cats would always cluster around the dumpster behind the building. After the increased attention around the cat shavings, however, local law enforcement had staked out this obvious target.

Now, after a half-mile hike, I approached the community swimming pool. A thick chain wove around the poles of the ten-foot gate, but I did not have to get inside. Just outside the barrier, a tall wooden wall shrouded the dumpster where, during summer months, lifeguards deposited the detritus from the day’s sun worshippers.  The trash bag was still on the ground where I had placed it after school. Half a dozen cats had ripped holes in the plastic and were gorging on the open cans of tuna I had planted inside.

A couple of the cats looked up and went right back to their meals. I had long had the ability to put animals at ease, to establish a rapport with fauna that I could never achieve with people. Creatures seemed to sense my loneliness and accepted my presence without the skittish fear associated with human contact.

I set my duffle on the ground and removed the most important tool of my trade. Moonlight glinted off the two inches of polished steel at the business end of the heavy duty hair trimmer. Sleek feline bodies tensed when I flicked on the machine and a buzz interrupted the night’s silence, but the cats could not tear themselves away from their fishy feast. A bright green light at the base of the razor indicated a full charge.

I knelt next to the cat closest to me and got down to business. Starting between the ears, I ran the shaver down the cat’s back and watched as short, stiff hairs sprang into the air like popping popcorn. The blades, hand-sharpened before each excursion, moved like a tiger shark through a calm ocean. The cat never flinched. When I reached the base of the tail, I traded my razor for a whisk broom and a Ziploc sandwich bag. I gathered the loose hairs into a neat pile and swept them in the baggie. After picking up the last few strands with my fingers, I squeezed the air out of the bag and sealed it.

I repeated the process with two more felines when a glowing pair of eyes approached the dumpster. The long-haired Himalayan ambled toward the tuna, its gray coat like wispy smoke from the cigarette of a 1930s Hollywood starlet. As if in deference to a higher caste, the other cats parted to let the elegant new visitor join the feast.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said. I reached out and stroked the silken strands on the Himalayan’s head. I searched inside the duffle until I found the small plastic clipper attachment, which I snapped onto the bare blades.

“You just go right on eating.  This won’t hurt a bit.”

The razor buzzed, and I gently touched it to the animal. I had to proceed with short strokes, lifting the clippers up every couple inches to clear the blades and let the soft clumps fall to the ground.

I had almost completed the rare harvest when I ran into a knot. Clippers and cat screeched in succession, and the Himalayan fled. I was stuffing fur into a fresh Ziploc when I heard sudden footsteps behind him.

“Hey!”

I grabbed my duffle and was about to flee when I heard the voice again.

“Wait! It’s me!”

From out of the mist appeared a figure in faded blue jeans, topped with a white tee shirt advertising a craft beer. A pair of scars slashed across his left cheek and his skin seemed slick with sweat despite the cool night. I stood my ground, but the cats abruptly looked up from their gourmet repast. Some howled, some hissed, but they all scattered away from the dumpster like the components of the universe after the Big Bang.

“Eric,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to buy some product.”

“But what are you doing here? This isn’t the rendezvous place and time, and I didn’t tell anybody I was coming here.”

Eric shrugged. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”

Right, I thought. I didn’t peg Eric as the lucky type.

My four weeks of secret cat grooming had heightened my powers of observation and evasion. I had hidden during random police passes and dodged midnight dog walkers, all with one eye on the elderly insomniac across the street. She was mesmerized with HGTV but could discover my nefarious activities with a single glance out the window. If Eric had followed me, the man possessed the skill of a Soviet spy.

Eric’s gaze flicked to the Ziplocs. “Whatcha got?”

“Pretty good haul, but it would’ve been better if you hadn’t interrupted.”

Eric’s tongue slid across his lips. “Is that Himalayan Gray?” he asked.

I smiled despite my annoyance. When Eric had first approached me in the park a month ago, I had expected the rough-looking dude to hit me up for a couple of bucks. Instead, he was looking for someone to procure cat hair. I thought he’d been tripping on PCP.

“Why are you even asking?” I asked. “You know it is.” As I had learned, Eric would pay for any cat hair, but he preferred the shavings from long-haired breeds.

“Gimme.”

I stepped backwards to put some extra space between myself and Eric’s hungry look.  “You first.”

“Fine, fine,” said Eric. He reached into a pocket, pulled out his own plastic baggie containing four white, circular pills and passed it to me. A bead of sweat rolled down Eric’s cheek as he beckoned for the cat fur.

“For the Himalayan Gray, I should get some of the good stuff. I need it. I’m taking the SAT this weekend.”

Eric sighed impatiently and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever.” He reached into a different pocket and pulled out another bag containing two small red pills.

I held the bag in front of my face. I didn’t know what the tablets were, but I know what they did. Under their influence, it was as if the answer key to a test were right in front of me. They didn’t just sharpen my mind; they created knowledge where previously there was none, and did so without adverse side effects.

Eric whimpered with impatience as I gazed at the magic medication. I handed over the cat fur. Eric stuffed all the short hair bags into his pocket before opening the stash of Himalayan Gray and taking a long whiff. When he inhaled, the sweat disappeared from his skin and his pallid face filled with color.

Eric wandered off without saying goodbye or confirming the time for their next meeting. I was about to turn around, go home, and climb back into bed when I realized there was no school tomorrow. It was an in service day for the teachers, and I could sleep as late as I wanted. I had the time, and a possible opportunity, to discover why this odd man so yearned for cat fur.

As I followed Eric, I darted behind trees and cars, but I needn’t have bothered. The fur addict never looked behind him a single time. About once a minute, Eric would open the bag of Gray and inhale. The time between hits dwindled when Eric reached the back entrance to the subdivision and headed towards an all-night grocery. A hundred yards away from the store’s glowing sign, I took three steps off the shoulder and dropped to a knee. I crossed the street and crept through the trees until I was directly across the road from my clueless quarry.

Eric curled a thin square of paper into a U shape and held it steady in the fingers of his left hand. With his right he pinched some of the Himalayan Gray and sprinkled it on the paper. He tamped the hair down, rolled the paper between his thumbs and forefingers, licked one edge of the paper and sealed the tube.

Another move to a pocket, a flick, and a cone of flame appeared. Eric put the paper cylinder into his mouth and lit the cat hair cigarette. When he exhaled, Eric not only released the smoke, but also seemed to relinquish all of his inner tension.

After easing his craving, Eric sealed the Ziploc, stuffed the lighter and rolling paper back into his pocket, and continued his walk down the road. Fearing that the satiated man might now be more alert, I lagged behind my target a bit more than previously. I followed the glowing cigarette into as it moved toward the all-night grocery and dashed behind an old sedan at the back of the lot.

Eric stopped in front of a maroon minivan parked just beyond a cluster of cars and knocked on the side door. I knew something was going down and moved closer. Two rows away from the minivan, I poked my head around the side of an SUV.

The woman who opened the door had threaded her long ponytail though the opening of a baseball cap pulled low over her forehead. When she and Eric started to argue, I slid over one more row and crouched behind a shiny pickup where I could better hear the exchange.

“—not smoking in here,” said the woman. “My kids have to ride in this van.”

“Then you’ll just have to wait,” said Eric. “I’ve yearned a long time for stuff this good.” He took another long drag on the smoldering cat fur, tilted his head up, and blew the smoke into the sky.

 I almost cried out with surprise when I got a good look at Eric’s face. The thick double scar on his cheek had disappeared. His jaw line had squared up, and he had suddenly sprouted a rugged growth of day-old beard stubble.

When a third face appeared from inside the van, I cringed. The man’s bulbous flesh looked as if it had suffered multiple bee stings. “That smells so good.  C’mon, Annie.  At this time of the day, let’s just smoke it here.  Nobody’s gonna see, and even if they do, nobody’s gonna care.”

Annie ripped off her baseball cap. What I had thought was some kind of thick seam on the bill of the hat was actually a long, thin horn protruding from the center of the woman’s forehead. “You think they’re going to care if they see this, Rolf? We’re supposed to blend in with humans, become one of them, not draw attention to ourselves.”

Eric blew the next exhalation right into Annie’s face. The horn appeared to melt a bit when it came into contact with the second hand smoke. “In the time you’ve spent arguing about this,” said Eric, “you could have rolled another cigarette and gotten rid of that thing.”

Annie held her frown, but her nostrils involuntarily flared to capture every morsel of the sweet vapor. “Fine,” she said. “Do it.”

Eric handed her the butt of the first cigarette while he rolled another one. She put the remnant between her lips and inhaled so massively that the flame raced downward until only a final ember floated into the night.

“Thanks for sharing,” said Rolf.

“Just chill,” said Annie. “I really needed that.” The horn had eroded to only a small raised circle.

Eric lit the second cigarette. As the Himalayan Gray rotated between the three people, it performed its transformative magic. Annie’s lips plumped, her wrinkles faded, and the black circles under her eyes vanished. Rolf’s thin, greasy mullet morphed into the thick, gleaming locks of a romantic hero. Eric could now have starred in a Hollywood franchise of action movies.

After Rolf took the final hit, the trio let out a satisfied sigh.

“Much better,” said Annie.

Rolf looked his female companion up and down. “You know,” he said, “if I were a human male, I’d be tempted to initiate a reproductive sequence with you.”

Annie’s contentment turned to disgust. “Then I’d be tempted to sever your reproductive appendage. No, it’s bad enough my husband’s going to start pawing at me when I get home. That’s the one bad thing about replenishment.”

Eric began to distribute the bags of Domestic Short Hair. “Fine,” said Rolf. “I’ll just—”

I lost track of the conversation when an unseen force yanked me to my feet. I turned, but the bow-legged man with the cowboy hat retained his fistful of tee shirt. The man’s handlebar mustache almost tickled my cheek.  “Did you touch my truck, boy?”

“No, sir. Just standing next to it.”

“You weren’t standing. You were crouching,” said the cowboy.

“Yes, but, um, I promise I didn’t touch it.”

Slowly, the truck owner released my shirt. The wrinkled fabric retained the imprint of the man’s firm grasp.  “Find another car to hide behind,” said the cowboy, as he tucked a bag of sour gummy worms into the pocket of his jeans, “because if you scratch my truck, I will skewer you and serve you to my hogs.”

“Yes sir.” I shuffled behind a sedan as the man climbed in his truck and drove away. When I was no longer in danger of becoming pig feed, I turned back toward the maroon minivan, but it was gone.

I started walking home. I would have liked to hear the rest of the conversation, but I had caught enough to figure out what was going on. Aliens were among us, impersonating us, studying us, though for what purpose I didn’t know. Cat fur, of all substances, allowed these infiltrators to retain their ideal human shapes and kept them from reverting back to extraterrestrial monsters.

I needed to tell my parents. They needed to find some way to inform the governor, maybe even the president.

I was almost out of the parking lot when tires squealed nearby. Before I could react, the maroon van screeched to a halt and the side door opened. A hand clamped around my wrist and jerked me into the van.

Behind the wheel, Eric glanced behind him before pulling onto the road. “That’s him. That’s the supplier.”

“More like the spyer,” said Annie, from one of the captain’s chairs in the center row. Rolf stuffed me into the other chair, buckled my seat belt, and secured my arms and legs with thick rope.

“Why’d you have to follow me?” asked Eric. “I paid you well. You were going to ace your SAT.”

“Where are you from?” I demanded. “Why are you—”

Rolf knotted a gag behind my head.

“As we like to say,” said Annie, “‘Curiosity killed the cat—we just take its hair.’” She lifted a syringe in the air and pushed the air out of the needle.

I tried to struggle, but the bindings were so tight, I couldn’t manage a rope burn. Nobody heard my muffled screams.

“Do we really have to do this?” asked Eric. He’s the best supplier we’ve had outside of the groomers, and we haven’t recruited a new one of those since our last woman expired. Brian’s got a very soothing rapport with the animals.”

“He’ll talk,” said Rolf. “Human’s always talk.”

I furiously shook my head in denial.

“I’ve surveilled this kid and he’s different,” said Eric. “He doesn’t have any friends, and communicates only minimally with his parents.”

My shake became a vigorous nod. The point of the needle was moving closer to his arm.

“I don’t know,” said Annie, “it seems like a huge risk.”

“He got us the Himalayan Gray,” said Eric.

The syringe hovered. “That was pretty sweet,” said Annie.

My father stuffed a fried potato wedge in his mouth and chewed without taking his eyes off the local news.  When he swallowed, a golf ball rolled down his esophagus. “Now somebody’s shaving cats twenty miles down the road.”

“So the serial cat shaver’s moved on?” asked Mom, as she topped the chocolate pie with whipped cream.

“Or the one here’s gone to ground and the new one’s just a copycat. That’s where this social media’s gotten us. If teenagers do something dumb in a little podunk town like ours, now they can spread their idiocy to the whole country. Like when all the kids started eating laundry detergent. Brian, did anybody in your school try to eat those soap pods?”

I put my fingertips on my temples for a preemptive massage. “Not that I’ve heard about,” I said.

“Maybe the news slipped by you,” said George. “And even if nobody tried it, I bet dozens of your classmates were thinking about it.”

Mom set the completed pie in front of her husband. “Don’t be so critical, George. Weren’t you the kid who used to eat bugs for money?”

“Totally different, Marge. Bugs are almost pure protein, they’re good for you.”

“At least laundry soap is clean.”

The throbbing in my head intensified. I speared my last couple green beans and pushed my chair back. “I’ve got a big homework load tonight,” I said. I didn’t dare mention anything about headaches. Mom would force me to go to a doctor.

George was easing his fork tines through the top of the pie. “Whipped cream’s awfully thin on this, Marge.”

“Cream’s in the fridge, mixer’s on the counter.”

I closed my bedroom door as the argument ensued. I opened his window, popped the screen, stuck my head out the window and let the fresh air fill my lungs. The oxygen did not erase the pain, but I appreciated the peace and quiet.

Things were going well in school. I had actually completed all my homework in class, and I was on track to widen my lead as valedictorian. And while I hadn’t gotten my scores back, I felt assured of a perfect score on my SAT which should help me land a full scholarship at one of the fine universities on the other side of the country.

The discomfort migrated from my whole forehead to a small circle in the middle of the bone. I walked over to my bookcase and pulled out the copy of War and Peace, behind which I kept my secret stash. I grabbed one of the cigarettes, a basic Domestic Short Hair, and a lighter. I plopped down in my desk chair and rolled over to the open window.

The pressure built between my eyes. I touched my forehead and felt the bumpy protrusion of the emerging horn. I lit the cigarette and burned half of it with a single drag. The smoke irritated my lungs, unlike the mellow varieties of long hair, but it got the job done. The pressure eased and the smooth skin reappeared.

I had been terrified when Annie stuck me with the needle and injected the clear serum under my skin, but the reality of my new identity was not nearly as bad. The constant need for rejuvenation was an inconvenience, as was the need to maintain a cat fur pipeline, but my alien body was stronger and required less sleep. I had also met a whole group of visitors closer to my own age with similar interests. We were planning to get together this weekend for a rousing game of Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit.

Across the side yard, I noticed Pickles, the next door neighbor's cat, lounging in one of its favorite spots on the window seat. When Pickles touched a paw to the pane, I wiggled my fingers in greeting. Before my transformation, we could go on like this for minutes, but this time, Pickles flung himself off the cushion as if the material was a broiling cookie sheet. I put the cigarette between my lips and pulled out my phone. If I couldn’t have genuine cat camaraderie, there was always YouTube.