Down the Drain

DOWN THE DRAIN

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DANIEL PYLE

For Marshy, my friend.

ONE

In the darkest corner of a utility room lit only by the trickle of light leaking in around the window's heavy curtain, the calico found her food and water dishes in the recess between the washing and drying machines and buried her snout in the too-dry food. The noise she made when she ate sounded something like the crunching-gravel sound the Man’s truck made when he came home from work. She dropped a piece of food and lapped it off the floor. Crunch crunch.

When she’d had her fill, she licked a few powdery crumbs from her whiskers and turned to the water dish.

The dry water dish.

She meowed and turned away with an uppity swish of her tail.

The Man was good about keeping her food bowl full, but when it came to keeping her watered, he still needed some training.

She jumped into the laundry basket on the dryer, peed into the mound of unfolded clothes, and went in search of something to drink.

Last time the Man had left her dry, she’d found a pot in the kitchen sink half full of water and some kind of orangish substance she thought was supposed to be cheese (although not any kind of cheese she’d ever eat). Drinking that water had been disgusting and more than a little degrading, but it had been better than dying of dehydration. Probably.

She sauntered through the empty house, hopped onto the kitchen counter, and peered over the edge of the sink.

Empty. Dry.

She considered peeing on the stack of dishes beside the sink but decided maybe it was more important to hold on to her last bit of liquid than to give the Man a message he might or might not even understand. She dropped off the counter and continued her search.

The door into the bathroom was shut but not latched. She pressed against it with the top of her head and forced her way inside.

The bathroom sink was as dry as the kitchen’s had been. The toilet seat: down, forbidding. When she jumped onto the bathtub’s ledge, however, she found what she’d come looking for. There, in the middle of the bathmat, a shallow pool of dirty-looking water.

The cat thought drinking this sludge might be even worse than drinking the “cheese” water, but it was (again) better than death.

She dropped into the tub and lowered her head to the puddle. Short, curly hairs floated in the liquid; she drank around them. The water tasted like soap, dirt, and sweat, but she tried to ignore the taste and concentrate instead on giving her body what it needed to survive.

She finished all but the grungiest streamers of water and went to work giving herself a bath. She had one saliva-drenched paw raised to her forehead when the tub let out a soft grumble.

Her first thought was that another cat had gotten under the house. They found their way down there sometimes, birthed their kittens among the decades-old construction debris or engaged in drawn-out, screeching fights. She would listen to them, longing to join in their feral fun while simultaneously enjoying the fact that she had a nice, dry place to sleep and (usually) an endless supply of food and water.

The grumble came again, and this time she couldn’t pretend it was a sound any cat was capable of making. She perked her ears and turned toward the tub’s drain.

Ggggrrrrrhhhhg.

She approached the moist hole and tried to look into its black depths. The hair on her back felt electrified; she guessed it was probably standing straight up. She thought she saw something in the drain, a white bit of contrast in the mirk.

A tooth?

No. That couldn’t be. She leaned closer. Despite the water she’d just ingested, her mouth and throat felt dry. Too dry to swallow. Almost too dry to breathe.

The drain moved, widened, and her instincts kicked in. She might have been as curious as the next cat, but she wasn’t suicidal. She leapt away from the drain.

And hit the shower curtain.

It was a clumsy move. Not like her at all. She’d known the curtain was there, should have been able to jump out of the tub without coming anywhere near it.

But there it had been, and now here she was, rolling down the slick surface and back into the bottom of the tub. And not feet first. Another anomaly.

She scrambled back into a standing position and lowered herself, preparing to jump. The tub bulged in the middle like some living, breathing monster and knocked her off balance. She fell to her side, gasping, yowling, a