Watching You

Because of the intense form of autism I practice, I never was sure where to look when talking to people - or rather, when they were talking to me. I tried all the obvious possibilities, from staring just over their left shoulder to staring down at my own hand as it made a puppet mockery of the other person’s words. Nothing seemed right though, either to myself or to the person attempting to engage me. And that’s when I remembered a bedtime story my stepfather used to tell me when I was a lad.

The story was true - all of his stories were true, and that’s how he would always begin them. This is a true story. Some friends of mine - he said - adopted a cat because it looked like a cat that they had owned before.

[To the autistic, this practice - seeking relief through replacing a thing with a like thing - brings up many troubling questions. But those take me away from the story.]

While this cat very much resembled their former cat, its history was a mystery, and they noticed something odd about the cat’s demeanor soon after they brought it home. Oh it was friendly enough, and docile. But it had an unusual intensity about it, due to its unwavering focus on the eyes of whomever was nearest by. That is, it was a cat who stared. And the stare itself, it wasn’t something that one might have described as friendly, or even curious. No, this was one of those stares you usually only come across when you walk nude down the cell block at your local neighborhood maximum security prison.

A hungry stare then.

And this couple, they were real animal lovers, with big hearts and great patience. So they might have grown to accept the unwavering attentions of their new little friend were it not for one other behavioral quirk. Namely: the cat began to launch itself at their heads. This new practice didn’t happen often, but three or four sessions of flailing spastically to protect your head against a feral cloud of talons and teeth will begin to take its emotional toll.

Anyway, one fateful night found our couple entertaining guests. You know when you learn a lesson? Well you know how there’s always that time just before you’ve learned it? That’s this night. Only scraps remained on the plates, and everyone was enjoying banal conversation. Meanwhile, the cat was sitting at the edge of the Oriental rug staring silently (one might say longingly) into the husband’s eyes. Suddenly, and without provocation, the cat made a running leap at his head. But, having gone through this several times already, the man was already enjoying a heightened sense of awareness. Without pause the man swung his arm around like a bat and caught the possessed feline missile in the ribs, sending it crashing into the wall.

The cat died almost instantly, and the relationship between our couple and their guests was always kind of strained after that.

That’s the story.

So where does a cat look when you talk to it? Right into your eyes. And that’s where I’m going to look. It never even occurred to me before, but I think there’s been a lot that I’ve been missing.

Related Tales

» “Hair” (21 of Dec, 2004)
» “Reality” (22 of Jan, 2004)
» “Figuring It Out” (11 of Jan, 2004)