The Worst of Sounds

I can hear it now.

The sound of my old roommate’s cat slurping water with her tiny, scratchy, leaf-like tongue.

And immediately, a look of disgust forms below my hairline.

My face wrinkles up like a comeback scrunchy. 

It is forever and always the worst sound of all sounds. 

Could it be that I simply had a very complicated relationship with that cat?

One that has involved too many scratches on my arms,

A headache-type ringing to my ears.

And an after-hours search party when she “mistakenly” slid out the back door,

Just seconds after I desperately peeled the door back with only 500 hanging items off my arms and an already spilled cup of coffee.

Why on earth did the cat need to slurp her way to Timbuktu right next to the dinner table where I would be eating food that I had been waiting for and daydreaming about all day?

All.Day. 

I couldn’t do it.

I can’t do it.

I will never do it.

I refused to spend my rent that way, sharing dinner with a slip-slop-slurpery, evil cat.

My food already cold in my hands,

I stormed off to my room.

But really...

I think the cat won that day.

And she knows it.