Roy and The Split Personality Cat

It was a clear winter Monday, the sky a faraway blue, the sun a teasing promise. I had spent the morning enjoying friands and the fashionable addiction of the time, caffeine. It was twelve o’clock noon exactly when there was a knock at the door and I opened it to find Roy Orbison standing on my threshold. Bedecked in his trademark all black, black sunnies on his nose, he greeted me with a nod, saying, “I don’t go in for these newfangled technologies. Doorbells! What use be them to me?”

“Roy!” I said, “Do please come in!” And he did.

I was surprised, as you may be too, to find Roy Orbison a sudden visitor to my house. But from five months of living so close to Moonee Ponds, Zombie capital of Victoria, I was, by this time, used to all sorts of things rising from the grave and making surprise turns among the living. And Roy looked pretty spritely, I must say. There was no odour of rotting flesh, nor paleness of the pallor – in fact he didn’t look a day over 52, which, strangely enough, was the age he was when he died. Or so I thought.

We had seated ourselves in the living room and I had offered him a cup of tea and was just about to suggest the eating of some cheese. He was admiring the screen that covers our fireplace. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice the gaping hole in one side of it and point out the potential fire hazard. But I was prepared to counter with the newness of our smoke detectors, though I was not sure if Roy would know what smoke detectors were, if they had been around in ‘his time’ and even if it was insensitive to mention them at all. At the time I thought it was lucky that The Cat chose this moment to come bounding in – though, in precious hindsight, perhaps luck had nothing to do with it.

For The Cat who had come hurtling into the room was not Sweet Toby Johnson, as he is eighty-two-to-ninety percent of the time, but instead was his alter ego, the dangerous and deranged Slasher McTook. Roy could not even draw breath before Slasher started doing what his name dictated he does – he took one look at Roy and attacked him with a whirl of claws, yowling his Xena-warrior-cry and ripping shreds into the poor timeless crooner. Where there was flesh there became bloody flesh-strips, where there was black clothing there became shredded, bloodied black clothing, exposing yet more bloody and shredded flesh underneath. Roy’s glasses became askew and all he could say was “Oh!” as the tornado of stripes and claws wreaked its havoc.

It all happened so fast, that I could hardly call my own usually-dear animal off him, before it was over and Roy was left standing, bleeding by the fireplace. Slasher McTook withdrew to wherever it is he goes to think up his schemes of mayhem and violence, all the while listening to Beethoven, The Best of. Again Roy said “Oh!” and I was worried he was going to bleed on the carpet and we wouldn’t get our bond back. Then the more pressing concern came to mind that Roy Orbison would bleed to death and I would be responsible for the second death of a beloved icon. With that, I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed an industrial sized roll of cling wrap that I had been hiding under the sink, not quite sure why I had been treasuring it so, but knowing that one day my life would depend on it. And the day had come! It was today!

I hurried back into the lounge room and set to work on Roy, carefully wrapping layer after layer of cling wrap around him to stop the bleeding. I started at the feet and worked my way up. I stretched the cling wrap tight; as I was practised at doing at work when wrapping cheese, though never in my wildest cheese-dreams had I imagined I would one day do the same to Roy Orbison. The cling wrap formed a silky cocoon over the man in black and I could see the colour returning to his face – that is, before I wrapped his entire head in the life-saving plastic film. Of course, I left an airhole so that he could breathe! What do you take me for?

After a time, my work was done. Roy Orbison was completely wrapped in cling wrap. Crisis diverted! “You are now completely wrapped in cling wrap,” I told him. His black sunglasses gleamed at me from under all the cling wrap. I knew that now he felt safe.

He looked slightly unstable, so very carefully I lowered him into an armchair. Not that the cling-wrap cocoon allowed him to bend enough to be seated, he was more propped diagonally over the chair. But I think he appreciated my efforts. I then went into the kitchen to fetch some Prima Donna I had in the fridge, an aged Swiss-style cheese, with a delicious, slightly sweet, nutty flavour. I broke small pieces off and fed them to Roy through his mouth hole. I found my breathing and heart rate increasing, and it seemed like both Roy and I fell into some kind of cheese-trance and drifted away onto a higher plane of pure bliss.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I felt a small furry creature nuzzling my hand. The sky was now a twilit purple, Roy still in his cling wrap, and Sweet Toby Johnson looking up at me as though to tell me those approaching sirens had some mysterious thing to do with me.

“Ok, Roy,” I said, “It’s time.” I didn’t wait for his response. I quickly got him back onto his feet and spun him round and round to free him of his silken wrap. When all the cling wrap was just a sad pile of glittering silver on the floor, a slightly tottering Roy stood before me, looking down in alarm at the small tabby that was circling our feet.

“Don’t worry, Roy,” I told him, “That’s Sweet Toby Johnson. Slasher McTook, your attacker, is gone now. For the time being, at least. You have nothing to fear.” I smiled. I was amazed to discover that his slashed black clothing had mended itself under cling wrap, his terrorised skin also now perfectly healed.

But I didn’t let Roy show me his appreciation, or even admire my record collection – which included a number of his own albums. Instead I hurried him out the backdoor, down the back ramp and over the back fence. No point in ceremony, I thought.

“I’ll always remember you, Roy,” I whispered, as Toby and I watched his receding black figure disappear over the hockey grounds and into the creek. “What a day!” Toby blinked at me in agreement.

What a day indeed!