"I'm home, Tim!"
I enter the apartment, looking for him. He's nowhere to be found.
"Tim?" I ask, curious. "Where are you?"
I peer around the area, unable to find him. The bedroom? No. The study? No.
Ooh! The kitchen! It's probably his favorite room in the house, although I can't blame him for that. Who doesn't love food?
Sure enough, he's there. I find him eating lunch. He's making a mess as usual. Too bad he never cleans up after himself. I swear, I do everything around here. That's the price I have to pay for love, I suppose.
"Hi, Tim!" I chirp. "I missed you!"
I get no response. He ignores my presence completely, intent on eating.
"Hello?" I call, walking to him. "Can I get some sort of greeting, maybe?"
He turns his head to watch my approach, and his eyes narrow. He seems to almost be disinterested, lazily assessing that I'm nearby. He then resumes his meal, shuffling so he has his back to me.
Is he ignoring me on purpose? It clicks. He's mad at me.
"This is about me leaving this morning, isn't it?" I question, despite knowing the answer. "That's not fair."
Silence.
"I'm sorry," I try, hoping to placate him. "I know you probably wanted to do something today. But I can't spend every second of the day with you. I have friends. A life. Other people I talk to."
Tim gazes at me again, his green eyes hinting at displeasure. He finishes eating and brushes past me, with hardly any acknowledgment at all.
When I try to follow him, close behind, he rounds on me. His face twists back in a snarl, fury sparking in his irises. When I stop, he starts to move once more to his destination.
"I can't believe you're acting like this," I snap, irritated. "Giving me the silent treatment is ridiculous."
Tim takes a spot on the couch, fiddling with the remote.
Fine. If he wants to reject me, I'll make him change his mind.
I leap onto the couch, wrapping my arms around him. He's frozen in surprise.
"You know you can't be too mad at me, Tim," I coo. "Just let this happen."
He swats at me, noises of discontent escaping his mouth. After a relatively intense struggle, he manages to wriggle out of my embrace with another glare. When I reach out to him, he recoils violently and growls. The look on his face suggests that he's offended someone as lowly as me could have the gall to even attempt to touch him. I guess I should be grateful he didn't decide to hurt me for that. There have been many times I wasn't so lucky.
He pads away from the living room, making it all too clear he won't tolerate me anymore.
"Come back and love me," I whine, reaching helplessly in the direction he went.
I knew I should have gotten a dog instead of a cat.
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,816 Reviews
Telling you that your story is really clever is probably not really, but I loved the idea great job!
So its a story about a woman who has no friends and relatively no life and has a cat that hates her.
She has friends. She was out with them.
And her cat doesn't hate her. Cats can just be kind of aloof and cold sometimes.
She's fine.
Hi there Storygirl!
This is rather adorable, and you definitely have a cute idea. Kudos to you for coming up with something so lighthearted!
I think you still have to be careful when pulling off something like this. Until the very end, I was rather convinced that the woman was in an abusive relationship and was denying it incessantly. I know you wanted to convince the reader of a situation where Tim is the boyfriend, when in fact it's the cat, and you did a very good job of that, but you shouldn't end up taking it as far as an abusive boyfriend. Generally, such a subject is not one to make light of. Of course, there were only a few lines that hinted at some sort of abuse, but you might want to alter them in order to have that general lighthearted feel throughout. You can convince the reader that Tim is a grumpy boyfriend without having them think of some horrible man who treats his girlfriend poorly. Some lines that were kind of red flags to me were:
I understand that a cat's behaviour is selfish, but considering the track you have the reader on up until here, it's understandable if they interpret this as controlling.
This was probably the worst, and I think you can guess why. By no means am I saying you should remove this parts entirely; I am merely suggesting that you alter some words so that they don't imply something as dreadful as an abusive relationship. Of course, a cat's behaviour can be likened to such a relationship, but I think that because this is kind of cute and lighthearted, you don't want to make a joke out of something serious. I guess the point I'm trying to get across is be cautious.
Otherwise, the twist ending took me very much by surprise! This was nice to read and I did enjoy it, once I got past the initial shock of the ending.
Thanks for a lovely read!
Best,
Lav
Hi! Thanks for stopping by!
I can absolutely see how that got a bit too dark. I think because I knew it the whole time, it didn't register as being so distressing. I can see it now though.
I don't want to be offensive or hurt anyone. Hmm. Do you have any ideas on how to change it a bit?
I still want to sort of hint at scratching, but I want to steer clear from anything that might seem so abusive.
Let me know if you have any ideas!
Thanks once again for reading though. I appreciate it. ^_^
A lot of it is just about word choice. For example, instead of writing that Tim "recoils violently", you might consider something along the lines of "recoils grumpily", because violently implies abuse.
Hi, Storygirl,
This was so clever! At first I was thinking that this girl's boyfriend was just a huge jerk but it makes sense by the end, of course. Good lead on. By the time I got to "he swats at me" I'd figured it out but I was guessing up until then. I seriously thought he was just an awful boyfriend and she was just dumb but it comes together.
I don't really have any major critiques--this is what it is, a fun short story with a cute twist at the end. It does feel familiar but that might just be me. I don't really think this has potential to be expanded, but it is a great example of an exercise in writing, so props to you. You handled it well. Nice job
TRC
Hi! I'm glad it was fun. :>
Like I told Chrissy, I was so worried I gave it away WAY too early. I'm glad I didn't.
I did it for the prompt "within 500 words write a story of unrequited love."
Not sure if that helps you any with the familiarity haha.
But thank you so much, for your kind words and review. I appreciate it. ^_^
I just wanted to say that I loved this, at first I thought it was her husband
Just amazing <3
Thank you! ^_^
I thought for sure I had ruined the surprise somehow, so I'm really happy to hear you thought it was her husband!
I'm so glad you loved it.