Mrs Cavendish had been a quiet, efficient woman with little imagination. Shortly before she died she instructed her son always to be neat and disciplined, and to take care of Muppet the cat. Howard had always been a neat and disciplined man and had no intention of changing just because his mother was dead. Muppet had no intention of changing either. Fresh cream and tuna in brine was something no cat should be without.

Every morning Howard rose at seven and had a ten-minute shower. After drying himself and dressing in a suit, he had breakfast at seven-twenty (cornflakes, and tea with milk but no sugar) and watched the news until seven-forty. He then fed Muppet his first bowl of tuna and switched the kitchen radio on before getting in his car and driving for half an hour to his workplace. Back home, Muppet spent the day listening to Classic FM and washing himself, or sunning himself in the garden.

Howard worked for a stationery company and sat behind a desk all day, working out budgets and watering the fern that sat next to a picture of his mother. He was always early for work and nobody ever questioned this.

At lunch he sat in the cafeteria, read a newspaper, sipped turgid tea from the machine and ate a chicken salad sandwich from the sandwich lady. When he finished work he drove home to feed Muppet another bowl of tuna, followed by fresh cream. While Muppet lapped eagerly at his cream, Howard changed into less formal attire, watched the news again and ate dinner at six-thirty.

Before Mrs Cavendish’s death, he had eaten whatever she put in front of him with a polite “Thank you, mother” regardless of his feelings towards the food. Mrs Cavendish had delighted in feeding her son on cottage pies or great slabs of meat dripping with fat and gravy, followed by sickly-sweet puddings drenched in cream.

He struggled to maintain her standard of cooking, never entirely confident that he’d got it right. Cooking meat made him nervous, and he started pinching Muppet’s tins of tuna, eating them with a baked potato. Muppet disapproved of this pilfering of his tuna, but Howard ignored his angry mewling, reasoning that what was good enough for the cat was good enough for him.

He did maintain his mother’s habit of garnishing every meal with parsley. Mrs Cavendish felt it only proper to do this; she had seen it on TV cooking shows, and a sprig of parsley had accompanied every meal Howard and Muppet had ever eaten. Muppet loved it, wolfing it down with the rest of his dinner. Howard was not fond of it, but he felt it his duty to keep up this tradition.

Muppet would curl up in Mrs Cavendish’s rocking chair after eating, and sleep silently until breakfast time. Howard would go to bed at nine, read for half an hour before turning out the lights and settling immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep. That was Howard and Muppet’s life prior to, and continuing for six months after, their mother’s death.

*****

On the first of May Howard got up at seven, had his shower and dressed before pouring his cornflakes and making his tea. He sipped at it, thinking it tasted very plain and had the rather rebellious idea that he might like some sugar in it. Mrs Cavendish had gone through her whole life without adding sugar to tea, leading her son to believe that it was simply anathema.

He put a spoonful of sugar in his tea and enjoyed it much more. The next morning he put in two spoonfuls, then, feeling reckless, mixed in a spoonful of Muppet’s cream as well. Muppet was outraged at this invasion of his property, and spent the day shredding up newspapers and pissing on them by way of revenge. When Howard returned home to find the mess, he withheld Muppet’s cream for the evening. The cat retaliated by yowling underneath his window all night.

*****

On the seventh of May Howard hesitated before placing a sprig of parsley on top of his fish pie and steamed vegetables, or on Muppet’s tuna. Looking at the little pot in his hand, he decided he didn’t actually want it on his food anymore. Cats weren’t supposed to eat plants, he told Muppet when the cat mewled at him. The decision made him feel bold and daring, although he whispered a little apology to Mrs Cavendish’s carefully cultivated parsley plant as he put it back on the windowsill.

The next morning he put three spoonfuls of sugar and cream in his tea and left for work at eight instead of seven-forty five. At lunchtime he had a corned beef sandwich and didn’t like it very much. However, the decision to switch from chicken to beef increased his sense of daring. When he got home that evening, he decided not to cook himself a full meal, but to simply have some cheese on toast, which he did in the microwave.

Muppet looked up from his bowl of tuna in sunflower oil with languid disgust. Howard had bought sunflower oil by mistake and Muppet was showing his disapproval by sniffing the tuna carefully, then knocking it around the kitchen floor and hiding it under the fridge.

Howard thought Mrs Cavendish’s other baby was being childish. He wasn’t making a fuss about the change from brine to sunflower oil, so there was no reason for the cat to. He cleaned up the discarded tuna and went to bed, deciding to sleep in for an extra ten minutes in the morning.

*****

On the tenth of May, Howard enjoyed a Chinese takeaway and Muppet sniffed with distaste at the leftover meat scraped off the spare ribs before sneezing and stalking away with his tail in the air. They had run out of both cream and tuna. The next night Howard ordered Indian. Muppet turned his nose up at these leftovers too. Howard felt he was being ungrateful. Muppet felt he was being neglected.

The next morning, Muppet wasn’t around for breakfast, so Howard left him a bowl of water and a dish of sandwich meat. When he returned from work that evening with a takeaway pizza, the bowls were untouched. He decided not to worry. Cats, after all, were fiercely independent creatures. Mrs Cavendish had always said so as she plucked Muppet up from his slumber and cooed all over him. He had endured these displays of affection with bored grace. Three days past without a sign of him.

*****

On Monday the fifteenth of May, Muppet came home carrying a dead bird, which he ripped apart slowly in the garden before sauntering into the house and curling up in Mrs Cavendish’s rocking chair. Howard was ten minutes late for work and had a bag of chips for lunch. In the evening he ate a Pot Noodle and stayed up until ten before going to bed.

Muppet continued to ignore him, and he worried that the cat might be pining for Mrs Cavendish and had actually spent his hiatus looking for her.

On Tuesday the sixteenth of May, he was twenty minutes late for work and had a cold that rendered his lunchtime cheeseburger tasteless. He stopped off at a newsagents on the way home and bought a microwave Korma curry and a packet of Lockets.

Muppet hissed at him when he came in. Annoyed by this, he attempted to shoo him outside but got only a few scratches for his effort. The cat jumped onto the top of the fridge and refused to budge, so he decided to leave him to it. He prepared his curry and ate it in front of the TV before drinking a cup of tea laden with sugar. Muppet began yowling at him. He turned up the volume on the TV as high as it would go until he could no longer hear the noise.

He watched a soft-porn film on Five and went to bed at twelve-thirty.

*****

On Wednesday the seventeenth of May, he overslept until eight and only woke up when Muppet began scratching on his bedroom door and yowling at the top of his little kitty lungs.

Feeling groggy and annoyed, he slid out of bed and opened the door. Muppet dashed past his legs, jumped onto the bed and screeched at him. He rubbed his eyes and began swearing at the cat, using words Mrs Cavendish would have blushed at.

The curious thing was, the more Howard swore at Muppet, the bigger he seemed to get. By the time he had told the cat to fuck off, Muppet seemed the size of a Doberman, his claws tearing giant rents in the bed linen, a great hairball of outrage, teeth and claws.

Startled by this unexpected behaviour, Howard backed out of the room, his swearwords drifting into silence as Muppet continued to grow. Just as he got into the hallway, Muppet flung himself at him. He slammed the bedroom door shut and Muppet collided with the wood and began hissing and spitting, throwing himself against the door furiously.

Panicking, Howard hurriedly dragged the bookcase in the hall across his bedroom door to keep him from breaking out. Sweating and sneezing, he sat on the top step in his pyjamas and wondered what to do with the demon on the other side of the door.

Since he couldn’t go to work in his pyjamas, and since he had no intention of letting Muppet out of the room, he spent the day at home in his living room, watching cartoons and make-over shows and trying not to hear the cat’s continuing battle with his bedroom door. At noon he rang a local pizzeria and ordered a large pepperoni pizza to be delivered.

As he waited for his pizza, he realised there was no longer any sound coming from his bedroom. Thinking Muppet must have calmed down and resumed his normal size, he went upstairs, moved the bookcase back to its original position and opened the door, prepared to tell him what a bad cat he was.

The bad cat was not in the room. And, Howard saw with horror, his window was open. The curtains flapped in and out of the glass. Rushing over, he peered into his back garden, hoping to see Muppet. There was no sign of him.

In a state of dread, Howard realised he was out on a cream-and-tuna-withdrawal rampage somewhere, possibly slaughtering little schoolchildren. He ran downstairs and rang the police to tell them a giant, blood-thirsty housecat was on the loose. They told him wasting police time was a criminal offence and hung up.

Howard sat in his living room, hugging his knees and wondering where Muppet had gone and how many people he would kill before returning for him. The ringing of the doorbell jerked him out of his terrified reverie. It was the pizza delivery boy. He went to answer the door, stopping just short of it. Muppet might leap in as he opened the door.

Crouching by the letterbox, he informed the pizza boy that he couldn’t open the door in case his cat attacked him and asked if the pizza could be brought back when the cat had been subdued. The pizza boy called him a wanker and left.

He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea, adding eight sugars to it. As he ladled sugar into the cup, he heard a sound behind him and turned to see Muppet, now the size of a lion, struggling to get through the kitchen door. His larger frame kept him wedged in the doorway, but he wriggled and writhed and it was clear to Howard that soon he would break the frame, enter the room and kill him.

He had nowhere to go so he grabbed a dirty knife from the sink and scrambled onto the sideboard, sending his tea flying. The cup smashed on the tiles and sprayed boiling hot liquid all over Muppet, who shrieked in pain and renewed his struggle to enter the room.

Howard hunched on the sideboard, knife in hand, watching the giant cat wear himself out and eventually, impossibly it seemed to Howard, go to sleep, his great head dropping as he snored gently, apparently unconcerned that he was trapped in the doorway.

He considered stabbing the cat while he slept but was too afraid of him waking up again, so he remained where he was, looking around the kitchen for some means of escape. As he did so, it struck him how filthy the room was. Dirty plates piled up crookedly in the sink, dust covered the windowsill and there were muddy paw prints on the floor. How long since he had cleaned up in here? Mother would be appalled.

Carefully, slowly, Howard lowered himself to the floor and opened the cupboard under the sink to dig out washing-up liquid and bleach. He risked a glance at Muppet over his shoulder as he turned on the taps. The cat hadn’t moved, although he did look a little less bulky. He began washing the dishes, scrubbing hard to remove dried-on sweet-and-sour sauce and grains of burnt rice.

Once that was done, he cleaned the windowsill and sideboards, still careful not to get too close to Muppet, who was awake now and watching with calm interest. As big as he now was, Howard could see the tangles and knots in his long fur. Mrs Cavendish had spent long hours combing Muppet every weekend.

Howard set aside his wet dishcloth and searched for Muppet’s comb and brush. Muppet hissed warningly when he approached, so he bribed him with a bowl of milk. The cat eyed it suspiciously, then decided it was as close to cream as he was likely to get and accepted it as graciously as he could.

While he lapped at the milk, Howard began cautiously brushing him, working out all the snarls and knots as gently as he could. To his surprise, the cat began to purr quietly and he found himself feeling almost cheerful. As he worked at the cat’s fur, Muppet began shrinking, as if the fur had been all that made him so large. After an hour of work, Howard was on his knees, picking burrs and grass out of Muppet’s tail as the cat purred ever louder, luxuriating in the attention.

Finally Howard released him and he shot to the other side of the kitchen and began washing himself vigorously. Howard leaned against the fridge and sighed. The kitchen looked clean again, as did Muppet, but he knew the rest of the house was a mess. And there was no proper food in the house. Mother had always kept such a neat house; he felt ashamed at his treatment of it. Where to start?

Muppet scraped at the kitchen cupboard, mewling plaintively. Howard rose and found a pen in a drawer, along with an old envelope. He sat down at the kitchen table and began making a shopping list. Tuna in brine, cream, parsley...

© Naomi Clark 2009