A Tale of Two Kitties

By Dawn Natelle

Lenore was the best of cats, Thor was the worst of cats. She was as white as fresh snow, he was as black as the sky after midnight. She would sit on the back of Philip’s easy chair, he would claw up the curtains and sit up there. She would come down to his lap when he sat down, he would leap from the top of the curtains onto his back to startle him. She never left the house, he would bolt out of the door whenever possible. Philip would have to turn on the electric can-opener with the door ajar, and Thor would return, looking disgusted when he saw there was no can. As Philip would close the door the dark cat would glare at him, as if to say “I knew there was nothing there, but I couldn’t take the chance.”

Philip was a programmer. Five years ago had been hired into a small team of six programmers who turned out wonderful programs. Then their boss was promoted, and a new boss came in. Tyson was not a programmer, but had convinced management that an accountant could manage the department.

Tyson lived for numbers. Once Philip had spent four hours writing an elegant two line function that was core to an application. Tyson raged that he had spent too long on only two lines, and insisted that it be broken up into a 34-line routine that was much less efficient. But 34 lines looked better than two on his reports. And each line had to be documented: even stupid things like start of loop, loop increment, end of loop. Tyson also submitted documentation counts to his superior.

The department was now 14 people, tripping over each other, and getting less code built than the six programmers had before. As the backlog in code grew, Tyson demanded more staff to get work done, and hired rookies out of college because he could pay them less. As soon as they started doing productive work, they were scooped up by other companies. Tyson was fine with that. He preferred hiring to actually managing his staff.

So Philip came home totally frazzled on a Friday. He fed the kitties, then himself, and went and poured a long bubble bath. The cats would not allow him to close the bathroom door: it still bore long scratches where Thor had once tried to get in.

Lenore would sit in the doorway and purr softly. Thor would stride in and out of the bathroom and hiss. Years ago he had decided to jump up on the edge of the tub and find out what was happening. He learned that cat claws do not work on porcelain, and that you cannot walk on bubbles. He fell into the water, and thrashed around in a panic until he leapt out in a combinatio of cat, water, and bubbles, tearing through the house until Philip ended his relaxing bath and took a bath towel to dry the cat, which of course had to be done before the man dried himself.

That had been Thor’s lesson and he no longer would come near the tub.

Philip’s apartment had three bedrooms. One he slept in, with the two cats generally at his feet. The closet there had his suits: (Tyson seemed to feel that it was impossible to write code without a suit and tie on). The second bedroom had a small bed with a frilly canopy over it, a French provincial dresser and a matching make-up table covered in a collection of bottles. The larger closet in there was full of female clothing and shoes. The third bedroom, the smallest, just had a computer desk with a Mac, two screens, and a comfortable office chair.

Philip went into second room and stood at the closet for a while. Suddenly the cats changed. Thor came in and rubbed against his shaved legs, while Lenore stood at the door and hissed. Her time was over.

The man took a pair of padded panties from the dresser, and a matching bra. He took a pair of silicone forms from another drawer, and put them into the bra cups. Finally she pulled on a pair of panty hose, rolling them up her legs and arranging them around her padded posterior. Then back to the closet, where she pulled out the black denim miniskirt, and the white peasant blouse she had chosen. Finally she covered her short brown hair with a blonde human-hair wig and combed it out to a pageboy style that barely reached her shoulders.

A necklace went on, and then some bracelets that clinked and clanked as she moved her hands. Finally, she sat down at the makeup table, and did her face, which Philip had shaved closely in the bath. Concealer, rouge, eye shadow, mascara, false eyelashes, and lipstick, and finally Pippa was ready. She slipped on four-inch heels and tottered out.

Thor had sat on her lap during the makeup application, while Lenore hissed outside the door. His dark fur on the black skirt would not show. Her white fur would, had she ever deigned to try.

Pippa went into the office and booted the Mac. She sat down and Thor was immediately back on her lap. Lenore occasionally would come into the room, particularly when she thought she was being ignored. She would jump onto an arm of the chair, and bat at the long hair hanging down, or swat at the false breasts on her chest. It was clear that she did not approve. Then she would jump down and hiss from a corner of the room, while Thor would sit patiently and purr, waiting for Pippa to compile code when he would be petted.

Pippa was building a tablet application on weekends, hoping that it would secure her freedom from Tyson. In the best of all worlds, she would be able to work as Pippa from home. She was not trans, but felt that her best work was done by Pippa, and would like to let that part of her life have an equal footing with Philip.

She coded late into the night, then cleaned her face and went to bed under the canopy. Thor would sleep at her feet, while Lenore slept alone on Philip’s bed.

Saturday went much the same, although Philip emerged for a few hours in the afternoon to go shopping, to Lenore’s delight, starting when she had removed her makeup and changed into male drab, and then rubbing his legs as he put away groceries and prepared lunch after shopping. But following lunch and a close shave he went into the second bedroom and it was Pippa who emerged, this time in a black maxi-skirt. It was nack to the office for another eight hours of coding with Thor on his lap.

Sunday started with another eight hours on the computer, and then she finally washed the makeup from her face and became Philip again. He watched the late Sunday football games, especially the recaps, so he could do some ‘jock talk’ with the boys at work on Monday. Plus he wanted to give Lenore her purr time each weekend.

Before going to bed in the main bedroom, Philip stopped and looked into his office, where his Mac was peacefully sleeping. He said: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better application than I have ever written.”

With apologies to Charles Dickens. (Guess who reread A Tale of Two Cities over the last week.)