You could say hi to a person, and get angry because they don't say hi back. But when you say hi to a cat, all it does is squint at you like you're a nuisance before rolling its eyes at you, and yet you would still think that that is the cutest kitty ever.
In the past hour I've had these two different personalities showing up. The misanthropist, someone who hates the human species so fucking much; and the ailurophile, someone in love with the existence of cats.
____
The misanthropist runs for the train, pissed off with the two elderly women who were walking slowly and blocking the pathway earlier. She hates being caught between dashing into the train and slowly walking to give it a miss; she settles for the former.
On the carriage she's run into, there is an empty seat--obscured by two office women standing in front of it, neither making the move to take it. The woman on the right of the seat has her legs crossed, and one of her feet is practically almost on the empty seat itself.
The misanthropist decides, Fuck it, I'm gonna grab that fucking seat, screw all these people.
The office bitches move an itch, and the bitch with her legs crossed makes a very subtle movement to make space for this very angry girl in a black cardigan, green bag on her back.
A family is conquering 4 of the seats in the opposite row, and the misanthropist catches sight of the baby girl in the arms of one of the women staring at her. She stares back and frowns; she isn't the kind of person who would make faces for a baby to laugh at.
The baby is playing with a flyer; she seems cute for a second, when her big brother pulls down her shirt, which was riding up her tummy, to cover her little belly. It's a tiny movement, so significant, but the moment is gone when the flyer drops to the floor.
It's clear that the woman holding the baby saw it. She even bends forward to look at it, and then continues to fuss over her baby. The flyer lies on the floor, forgotten; there's a picture of a bedroom on it. An ad for a new condominium? A hotel? An interior designing company?
The misanthropist's heart starts beating faster, and then she starts to boil. It suddenly depends on her life to have this flyer removed from the floor, but the ones responsible weren't even making the effort to pick it up.
It stays there from Bedok to Simei, and then the horror: the family is alighting. Still, nobody is making a move or even taking notice of it. It's driving her crazy!!! Don't you dare step off this train before picking up the flyer that your baby dropped, woman!!!
Spoiler alert: they alight, and the stupid condo/hotel/interior designer flyer remains on the floor.
And the misanthropist blows up. She wants to kill every human being on this planet, for that stupid flyer. Right now, I am thinking: why couldn't she pick it up then, and throw it into the bin? Why, because of her ego of course, because she does not want to pick up the rubbish that someone else left behind.
____
The ailurophile hates being caught between dashing across the road when a car is driving slowly, and waiting for it to pass by first before attempting to cross, especially in a smaller road with no traffic lights.
The road between her neighbourhood mall and community centre is small, the kind that's after a gantry. She watches two cars slowly maneuvering around each other, one towards the gantry and the other from, before being able to cross. That's when she sees a blob of black in the middle of the road.
At first glance, the ailurophile thinks it is a plastic bag, dropped by somebody who couldn't be bothered to pick it back up. And then she thinks of something worse--last year one of the beloved coffeeshop cats, a fat orange one, died in a car accident. This blob looks suspiciously like a cat, a dead one.
Before she can think of what to do, the blob moves! It's a fluff ball, another coffeeshop cat she calls Jenny; she's been around since the ailurophile was twelve, and she has a meow that goes like an F1 car driving past at high speed.
She doesn't like having her in the middle of the road, so she calls out from the sidewalk. When she was young, her mother taught her how to make the continuous clicking sound with her tongue, to attract cats' attention. Jenny looks up at her, but she doesn't make any move to come over.
Looking left and right beforehand, the ailurophile goes over to the cat and asks her What are you doing here? The cat gets up and rubs against her legs like she always does, earning herself a few strokes down her head.
Come on, come come, the ailurophile urges the cat, and she obediently follows. From a distance, anyone will see a girl in a black cardigan crossing the road, with a little cat walking right beside her, just like old friends.
The ailurophile and the cat flirt around for a while more. Eventually, the four-legged girl goes back to rolling around on the ground, on the sidewalk this time; and the two-legged girl goes on home, next to the ghost of her twelve-year-old self, waving goodbye to a skinnier version of Jenny.