The Cat Who Wouldn’t Talk
A very short story about a man, a cat, and silence.
The cat wouldn’t talk, and Max thought that odd.
He had saved almost half a year for the thing, and, of course, it didn’t work.
It all started when he heard the new voice through the walls. Max’s apartment complex was dying a slow death. Any potential tenants splurged the money they didn’t have on ornate sky risers or flashy seascape bunkers instead of his dull block of flats.
So when Max heard the new voice, his curiosity arose. He crossed the hall and knocked on his neighbor’s door, a heavyset man who also rarely left home.
“We have a new neighbor, don’t we?” Max stated.
The neighbor furrowed his brow. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“But I heard a voice,” Max said. “It wasn’t yours.”
“Oh!” The man held his belly as he chuckled. “It is me. I got one of those new talking cats.”
He pushed open the door, revealing his messy apartment. “See? There, on the couch.”
Max squinted until he indeed saw a cat sprawled out on the cushions. It twisted its head in Max’s direction.
“How’s it going?”
Max would’ve fainted if he hadn’t seen the commercials and virtual boards play the advertisements day after day. A cat that could talk. That you could have a conversation with. It was all the rage.
And after Max sat and had a cup of tea with his neighbor and his new roommate, he knew he had to have one too.
“It’s great,” his neighbor whispered to Max in the kitchen. “I haven’t been this happy in a long time.”
As the neighbor refilled Max’s cup, the cat chuckled from the couch. An old re-run of that 40’s sitcom flickered on their wall screen. He heard the crunch of a cat treat as the furry creature kicked up its feet.
So, Max saved up. He shut off his brain and suppressed his emotions for six months while he set aside 50% of his money, lived like a priest, and watched it grow.
He was excited to have a friend. He didn’t fit in most places and liked keeping to himself. He was, in many ways, also a cat.
All he remembered was that it was a Saturday when he took the train into town and strolled into the shop with the confidence of the king of the pride.
“One talking cat, please.”
The store’s half-dead manager looked over a pair of glasses at the beaming man in front of him.
“What’s your price point?”
Max showed him the numbers on his phone.
“Can get you a pretty decent one for that. Send away or in-house?”
Max furrowed his brow.
The manager sighed and elaborated. “You get more choices if you browse online. Does take longer. Or you can try your luck on what we’ve got here.”
Max followed the manager’s thumb to the cages of cats that lined the store’s back.
“I’d like to see what you’ve got.”
The manager grunted, and the two strolled through the crates.
“Right now, our cats are just cats. They do not speak. You pick the one you’d like, and we’ll work our magic and make it talk.”
Max was surprised at the selection. There were Siamese, Scottish Folds, Maine Coons, but it was an orange tabby with a black spot on its nose that caught his attention. The cat stared at him questioningly before sticking its whiskers through the pen for a closer look.
“How about this one?”
“Comes in under your budget, but I can throw in the Level IV-V vocabulary package to fill it out.”
Max grinned, shook the manager’s hand, waved to the cat, and went to bed that night feeling like he was about to finally have a friend.
But the damn thing wouldn’t talk.
A week later, Max sorted through the literature, hoping to come across something he’d missed.
Nothing is required of you. Simply speak. The cat will respond.
Max put the pamphlet down and stared at the little creature. It looked back as if wanting a conversation to begin.
Max cleared his throat again. “Hello.”
Nothing.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
Nothing.
“What do you think of the apartment?”
The cat gazed around the living space. Max watched the creature absorb the tidy setting that he’d meticulously cleaned up for this very event. His eyes widened as the cat’s mouth opened… wider… about to respond —
It sneezed.
Max sighed as the cat got up and rubbed against his legs. Something is very wrong here, Max thought as he pushed the cat away and patched himself through to the talking cat store.
“All of the specs look fine on our end,” the manager said. “Perhaps it just needs some time to adjust.”
Max shut off the conversation. He stared frustratingly at the cat, which stared at a plant in the corner of the room.
“Hello?” Max said.
The cat just stared at the plant.
Max slipped on his shoes and walked across the hall. He knocked aggressively on his neighbor’s door — a bit too aggressively, he realized, upon seeing the reaction on his neighbor’s face.
“Max? Everything alright?”
“Yeah, Jesus, is there a fire?” The cat shouted from his usual spot on the couch.
“I’m sorry to bother, no, it’s just… I got a cat, you see. A talking cat.”
“Ah, congratulations!”
“Yes, but the problem is — it won’t talk.”
“A bit of a problem for a talking cat,” the cat snickered.
“Ssh, Harrison,” the neighbor said to the cat.
“Did you have any issues with yours at first?”
“Quite the opposite.” The neighbor lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t shut up.”
“I can hear you, you know,” the cat called as it crunched down on another treat.
“Maybe you could take a look?”
So Max and his neighbor returned across the hall to find Max’s cat staring at a dripping faucet on the kitchen counter. After an hour of trying to spark conversation on any topic a cat might find enjoyable — from furballs to birds to naps — the neighbor left Max alone with his non-speaking cat.
The days trickled into weeks as Max’s frustration fluctuated between disappointment and anger. His life hadn’t gotten any better. And his new cat didn’t talk. It just slept, chased flies, licked itself, and slept.
Sometimes it would hop onto Max’s lap after Max returned from a long day at work. Max hoped it would ask him how his day was. Or agree with his complaints about his boss. Or give him some insight into what color the kitchen should be painted.
But, besides the strange noises the cat made as it brushed against his hand, there was only silence.
After one particularly grueling day, Max came home to find the cat sleeping like a baby on top of his pillow.
That’s it, Max decided. Enough is enough. So he grabbed the cat and its crate and took the hour train ride into the city, where he dropped the cage onto the shop manager’s desk like a sack of bricks.
After a short examination, the manager offered him a full refund.
“It’s clearly defective.” The manager shrugged as he grabbed the crate. “We’ll see to it.”
“What will you do with it?”
“No one really wants just a cat anymore.”
Max exchanged a look with the sad-looking creature.
“But it’s yours if you want it.”
Max needed some time to think about it. And so think he did when the voices across the hall began to turn from affable to argumentative. Max would find his neighbor wearied and tired as they passed in the hallway. The once genial man could barely manage a smile.
This new behavior culminated in a screaming event full of foul language that drowned out even the loudest volume on Max’s wall screen. He must have gotten that pricey Expletive Pack, Max thought as he opened his door after the tumultuous affair.
He saw Harrison, his neighbor’s cat, enter the elevator while muttering unspeakable phrases under his whiskers. Max walked through his neighbor’s open door to find him lying in a puddle of his own tears.
He told Max that the cat had voiced his displeasure at the kitchen’s untidiness while he had voiced his displeasure at the cat’s laziness. The neighbor thought the cat should get a job. The cat said there were very few jobs for cats and that maybe Max’s neighbor should get a better job or go back to school. This led to water being squirted and claws drawing blood before Harrison decided to move out into the alley.
“It’s for the best,” Max’s neighbor uttered between heavy breaths. “He was a free-loader.”
Later that night, Max opened a beer and flicked on his wall screen. That old 40’s sitcom came to life.
He turned to his cat, who stared blankly back at him.
Max sighed and took a sip of his beer as he scratched its head.
Maybe this was better.
Tom is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. He's currently studying English part-time at Oxford. Here, you’ll always find new fiction or an essay on Sundays. Visit tomkalbanese.com or subscribe for more.