The Cat is a Metaphor

He decides to write something on a page in his diary. His diary has blue lines, all close together. He likes to write on lines like this. His name is Robert.

 Robert writes this:

 

Don't write about mirrors. Don't write about writing. Don't write about eating. Don't write poetry. Don't write about bloody stuff. Don't write about diaries.

One day, Frank woke up from a terrible dream. He dreamed of a cat dying. In the dream he was riding in a red Chevy Cavalier. In front of him someone was driving a Black Escalade. Frank wondered if he dreamed of the Escalade because he watched the Sopranos before going to bed. He wished he had been in the Escalade in the dream, not the Cavalier.

In the dream, Frank tried to peer into the Escalade. He tried to imagine the faces of the rich and powerful people driving the SUV. Then, the passenger side window rolled down and someone threw a cat out of the window. Frank stopped his car and the Escalade drove on.

The cat started screaming. It made really loud and terrible noises. Its body was smashed its head was broken in. The cat looked like it was trying to jump out of its own body. It was all contorted and kept making vile and terrible moans.

Frank got out of the car and went up to the cat. By the time he reached it, the cat had settled down and was now making a low, almost peaceful moaning sound. It was like a defeated sound, like those groans that fallen samurai make in films. There was blood all over the cat's head and its eyes looked up at Frank in a half resigned, half cautious kind of gaze.

Frank woke up at that point. He didn't remember anything else. He went downstairs. He didn't own a cat, or have a car. He didn't feel like he learned anything from the dream. When he told his girlfriend about it, she said that it was a manifestation of his hatred toward the rich. Frank said he wished he didn't have a trust fund or a drug problem; they caused too many polarities in his life.

 

Robert stops writing in his diary. He reads over the words that he wrote and he tries to see if they mean anything. He wonders who Frank is and why he had conjured him out of thin air like that. He wonders himself what Frank's dream meant.

Robert decides that he doesn't want to write anymore tonight. He doesn't think he has a story. He thinks that he should think more about what he really wants to write, like a fantasy novel or a book about creatures that don't really exist. He wonders if it is possible to write a novel at all. He wonders if he is too lazy to be a writer.

 

--

My agent said that this piece would not be very popular. She says nobody will get a story where a writer writes about another person who is in turn a writer writing about the actual writer of the story. She said it is trite. I had never heard someone use the word trite in actual conversation before. I thought it was very aristocratic.

My agent said there isn't anything to hang on to; that the story goes nowhere and it doesn't illicit any real feeling at all. When I asked her what she felt during the cat bit, she told me that it wasn't believable enough and that cats only die gracefully.

“Throw this one away,” she said.