sketchbook stories: the gray cat

strike a pose

Before I was born and well into my thirties, my mother’s household was never without a cat. The rules were simple: gray and fluffy—never shorthaired—with fur billowy as the down comforters they napped on; male; and named “Perky.”

My mother often sketched the various Perkys. Like most cats, they squeezed themselves into odd, too-small spots. Shoeboxes. A picnic basket. The sweater drawer of her antique bureau.

And in moments of grace, accessible once I open the creaky door of memory, I hear the faint whisper of a Perky lapping the saucer of evaporated milk my mother once poured.