Today’s writing prompt and my response.
Prompt four for this week. Use the prompts however you like, one at a time, poetry or prose; or pen a short story over several of them.
Cats Table Polite: use these 3 words
Faye never did like cats. It wasn’t their self-sufficiency which turned her off. That was a positive. It was the way they made her feel sub-par. Those narrowed eyes, the lifted tail and pointed noise all said, with a delicate sigh: I know what you really are. Liar.
It was during her school days when Faye learned the value of a lie. For she should have lied to the snooty girl appointed to (reluctantly) show Faye around in her first week. She should have said she was here at the gift of a rich and ancient great-aunt who had decided Faye would be better off removed from the toxicity of her parents’ divorce with its venomous wranglings over ski chalets and country houses, not to mention a huge amount of money.
Stupidly, she had let it be known she had won a scholarship.
Faye never told the truth about herself again. At university, she played with the idea of having a famous, gorgeous model for a mother, who tragically died young, a victim to the stress and drugs of the industry, leaving baby Faye to be raised by her only surviving relative, a rich and ancient great-aunt, well-travelled, well-married.
By that time, however, google had made oysters of everyone’s world. Too easy to be found out. She kept the great aunt, however and named her Matilda (or Tilly to her loving grand-niece), giving her eccentric qualities and a grand country mansion where she lived alone, with a host of polite staff.
When Faye began work in a low key job in human resources for a large corporate, Aunt Tilly moved from her mansion into a fancily expensive care home, where she was visited regularly by Faye. Who expected to inherit, of course, eventually, on the sad occasion the dear aunt finally left this mortal coil. And the plans she had! After a suitable period of mourning.
Her colleagues loved it and would ask after Aunt Tilly: her latest amusing sayings, her best stories reminisced from a glamorous past. Her health. Faye watched from her desk as they gathered at the coffee corner, obviously talking about lucky Faye and her aunt, because they would look her way and smile, and shake their heads at each other. Wishing it was them.
It was the cats, the ones she came across as she walked to and from the station each morning, who gave her the evil eye. Lies, lies, they smirked at her. How long must Aunt Tilly live before you don’t inherit? Then what?
This summer evening, Faye sat at her kitchen table in her humble flat. Her cheap laptop was open in front of her as she pored over employment opportunities. Nothing yet, but there would be, one day, and she would leave her low key job for something more exciting, more suited to the grand-niece of a wealthy and eccentric old lady. And Great Aunt Tilly would be resurrected to mere elderly. Another chance at life. Wonderful! Faye shut the laptop with a sigh, and glanced out the window. A cat sat upright in the centre of the unkempt lawn. It peered through the glass at Faye, stood, lifted its tail and its nose and stalked away. Liar, liar.
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Your love of cats appears paramount in this story – I don’t think (Ha! Ha!)