smithers

In April of 2020, I sat in the bed of the bed­room that I had been rent­ing since Jan­u­ary, in a house in Han­cock Park. 

There were four oc­cu­pants in the house, be­sides my­self. A girl named Tillie, a dude named Tim, a dog named Hans, and an­oth­er one called Cory. 

The house was rather large, but that’s nei­ther here nor there. Even with all of these be­ings, be­ing around me, I most­ly kept to my­self, in my bed­room, feel­ing lone­ly as ever. 

I didn’t know my room­mates, I had only just met them, and sud­den­ly we found our­selves stuck to­geth­er in the most pe­cu­liar sit­u­a­tion. The world hav­ing just shut down, all of us were forced into quarantine.

Like every­one, I found so­lace in tex­ting with friends. One friend in par­tic­u­lar, we would just text and talk for hours about noth­ing and every­thing. I like to talk about what I wish would hap­pen, and then see if it happens. 

I’ve been play­ing this game with my­self since I was a child. “I wish some­thing ex­cit­ing would hap­pen. I wish some­one would whisk me away to Lon­don. I wish my ex boyfriend would get ugly. I wish it would storm. I wish I had an ice cream.”

On this night, I wished so bad­ly for a big, fat, or­ange cat. 

To my friend, I texted this:

I wish I had a big, fat, squishy, or­ange cat. And he would let me pick him up and squish him and hold him and he would cud­dle with me and nev­er, ever bite or scratch. He would ac­tu­al­ly like be­ing picked up and he would be so heavy and fat and his squish would hang over my arms, and he would be very warm and soft and love me.

My friend sug­gest­ed that I might ac­tu­al­ly get a cat, in­stead of wish­ing and fan­ta­siz­ing. In my life, I’ve learned that most things are bet­ter in fan­ta­sy, than in re­al­i­ty. I list­ed the hun­dreds of rea­sons why this wasn’t even close to any realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty. The main rea­son be­ing that there was nowhere to put a lit­ter box.

“Un­less,” I said, “this cat is toi­let trained. You can do that, you know! Train cats to use the toi­let. It’s a thing.”

Then I sent him a bar­rage of videos, of cats shit­ting on toi­lets. Sat­is­fied, hav­ing proved this ridicu­lous fact, I put my phone down and wan­dered out of my bedroom.

Tillie stood in the din­ing room, with the French doors that opened to the back­yard, wide open. She looked stunned. “I think my cat just came home.” She said.

“What cat?” I asked.

She said some­thing about hav­ing a cat that had left be­cause he hat­ed her pre­vi­ous roommate’s cat. She thought he was liv­ing next door, but she hadn’t seen him in five months. Since way be­fore I had moved in.

Just then, a big, juicy, de­li­cious, lus­cious, roly-poly, fat, or­ange cat walked up to me, purring and rub­bing against my legs. He was miss­ing an eye, eter­nal­ly winking.

Tillie picked him up. “This is Smithers.” She said, as she hand­ed him to me. “You can pick him up and hold him, and he will nev­er bite or scratch you, he is the ab­solute sweet­est guy, ever.”

I couldn’t un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing as I held this cat-suit wear­ing, tub of love. A glitch in the ma­trix, or a psy­chic down­load, it didn’t mat­ter, be­cause my wish had come true.

And so quick­ly. Then Tillie said, “Oh yeah, he doesn’t even use a lit­ter box. He is trained to go on the toi­let! It’s weird, I know, but the guy who used to own him taught him how, by putting a lit­ter box un­der toi­let seat.” She was laughing. 

I went back into my bed­room to get my phone. I didn’t know how to ex­plain to her what had just hap­pened, so I had to show her my texts. She read the ex­change and screamed, “you’re a witch!”

We laughed and laughed, and I laughed a lot, be­cause this shit hap­pens to me all the time. All the time, re­al­ly. Sur­prise, shock, and then some­one scream­ing, “you’re a witch!”

 

—hol­ly solem

Flom­mist Hol­ly Solem is a singer/songwriter, mod­el, ac­tress and writer known for her work on Amazon’s orig­i­nal se­ries Hand of God, as well as play­ing, tour­ing and writ­ing with nu­mer­ous bands and artists. Copy­right © 2021–23 Hol­ly Solem.

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