PART ONE

The thing about telling a story is this.  There are things the reader, or in this case the listener, needs to know and things they want to know.  For instance, I’m going to tell you my name is Nathan Dilworth, I am 23 years old, I am a conceptual artist living and working in Amsterdam, although I was born and raised in DT, the Big D, yeah that’s right – Dallas Texas.  I am in a long term relationship with my girlfriend Kate who’s a California Babe and although I say I live in Amsterdam I don’t really, I really live in a place in the middle of nowhere you won’t have heard of, no one has, called Geuzenveld and I live there in a flat with my girlfriend Kate and Paul.  Now all that stuff is nice, for sure, but you don’t really care.  Why should you?  But it is vital – vital - character background and context for the story I’m about to tell you.  So let me reiterate the main facts – Nathan Dilworth, American Citizen, conceptual artist, LTR – that’s Long Term Relationship – with Kate who’s a California Babe, share a flat with Paul.  Okay?

But what you really want to know is this:  I LIKE TO HAVE SEX WITH CATS.  What?  What?  It’s no big deal, I’m telling ya.  I like having sex with cats, so what?  Give me a break all you people judging me.  Take a look in the mirror that’s all I have to say.  It’s like I’ve had sex with cats since I was a kid, it’s perfectly natural, healthy even – I mean I never do it with boy-cats and a lot of the time it’s consensual so where’s the problem?  People like me get persecuted every day.  And that’s what it is: persecution.  We like to pretend we live in a free society, a liberal society, a tolerant society but it makes me so mad, as soon as you tell a person you have sex with cats or someone sees you on the street having sex with a cat, that’s it, that’s when you see how free our society really is.  I get so mad.  But I don’t want to get into the whole social-moral question of whether sex with cats is a good or bad thing – we could be here all day and I’ve got a story to tell – but let me ask you something?  Is sex bad?  Is loving animals bad?  Case closed.  And the fact of the matter is I’m full of love.  I’m teeming with the stuff.  And if I didn’t have sex with cats that’d be it.  I would literally explode. 

So, my name is Nathan Dilworth, I like to have sex with cats and I am an artist.  My work is as an artist.  Don’t think I spend all day looking for cats and then having sex with them.  Although sometimes I wish I did.  It’s the best way to see Amsterdam, I tell you, I get on my bike and ride through the streets, canals and lanes, searching for cats, the places I’ve been, that’s how I got to know the city…but I digress.  I’m an artist and I’ve got a studio in Amsterdam.  It’s beautiful, big and spacious, filled with light.  Piet Mondrian, he used to work in the very same studio, it’s true.  So I’ve got this studio and most of the time I just go there to think.  I like to think.  I’m not really into the whole making some art object kind of thing.  I just like to sit down for a couple of hours and think.  I share the studio with my girlfriend Kate and a lot of the time I won’t let her speak because it interrupts my train of thought.  And then she’ll usually try and do some work on her laptop but I will say to her, I’ll say, “How do you expect me to be able to concentrate while I can hear that tap-tap-tapping sound of you writing on the keyboard?” and so then she’ll stop.  You know, a relationship is about sacrifice and she has to realise how important it is that I’m able to concentrate.  So anyway, usually after I’ve been thinking for a while I’ll move something.  Like a chair or a cup or a table.  Or the bin.  Or if there’s a piece of scrap wood in my studio I’ll move that.  And then I’ll sit back down and think about that.  Like say if I moved a cup I’ll think about the act itself of moving the cup and then I’ll think about where the cup was and where it is now, and the space around the cup and the space inside the cup and the relation of the cup to the objects around it.  I’ll end up looking at the cup and thinking about it for maybe two or three hours.  It’s like I’m in a trance, I’ll be sweating I’m thinking so hard but then, as if by divine intervention, I’ll be looking at the cup and I’ll see me boning a cat.  I swear to God, I’ll be looking at that cup, thinking about the cup and then – BADABOOM! – I’m boning a cat.  And then I start to get a boner and that’s it.  I can’t think anymore.  I tell you, it’s always the same, I’ll try to keep thinking and get back in the zone, but it’s no good, when I’ve got boning a cat on my mind I need to do one thing: bone a cat.  “I’m going out for a while!” I’ll shout at Kate and she knows when I’ve got a boner bulging in my pants and I say that that it means one thing: Nathan’s going to search for cats to bone.  And she’s fine with it.  I mean, it’s not like she approves and I think she would prefer it if I didn’t bone cats but she knows it’s part of who I am.  I mean, if you had a friend but didn’t like their…I don’t know, their arm, you wouldn’t ask them to cut it off, would you?  I mean, if I ever meet a girl and I think she’s got the hots for me one of the first things I’ll say to her is, “I like to have sex with cats.”  And I tell you, guys if you’re listening and having trouble with the chicks, that line my friends is gold.  Girls, they love a guy who’s different, who’s got a mysterious side and there is nothing more different, more mysterious than having sex with cats.  Of course, girls are all the same and try to reform you but Nathan Dilworth will never be reformed.  I will be a cat lover till the day I die. 

Okay, so this is where the story really starts.  Usually what I used to do was get on my bike and cycle around the streets of Amsterdam, my boner sticking up through my pants don’t forget, looking for cats.  Some days it would take me five minutes, other days, five hours.  You just never knew.  That’s life.  But a few months ago all that changed.  At the studios where I work there’s a bike shed.  It’s a shed where the artists keep their bikes.  And a few months ago something happened.  A cat started hanging around the bike shed.  A cat!  It was almost like divine intervention.  I think she liked the petting and attention she got off all the artists, well, I remember the first time we met.  I went to get my bike and it’s pretty dark in there and I had a massive boner and couldn’t find the keyhole for my lock and was getting frustrated and angry because I had a boner and didn’t have the time or the patience to be fooling around with my Goddamn bike and then I heard her.  Miow.  “Hello,” I thought to myself.  I might have said hello actually, I can’t remember, but I turned around and there she was.  I could just see her eyes, like two translucent moons and then she stepped out of the shadows and – OH MY GOD SHE WAS GORGEOUS!  GORGEOUS I TELL YOU!  GORGEOUS!  My boner, which I had, almost literally exploded in my pants.  I literally leapt on to her and began kissing her full on the lips.  I don’t kiss all cats, just the special ones, the ones I feel I’ve a connection with and boy, did I have a connection with her.  Well I tell you, I boned her that night and BADABOOM, it was like a was shooting bullets out of my boner, it was hot.  Hot baby.  And you know something, once we were done, she just walked away.  She walked off like it didn’t mean a thing, aw this girl, she left me there, in the bike shed, on my knees, with my trousers around my ankles, just laughing to myself, thinking, “This girl is different, this girl’s a keeper.”

So yes, this became I guess you could say a routine.  I’d get a boner in the late afternoon/early evening and I’d go to the bike shed and Nathania – that’s what I called her – Nathania would be there or she’d come if I stood around miowing long enough.  And I’d usually bring some kitty food with me as a treat.  And let me tell you something.  It was some of the best sex with cats I’ve ever had.  Nah, scrap that, it was the some of the best sex I’ve ever had – PERIOD. Oh my God, just thinking about those days, those spring days of our affair, I get turned on.  Pretty soon though, it started to interfere with my art practice.  Every day I’d start thinking about boning Nathania earlier, until I was barely thinking about my art at all.  I was just going into the studio and sitting there for maybe three or four hours straight thinking about boning Nathania.  Nathania, Nathania, Nathania, I’ll admit it, I was obsessed, day and night I had Nathania on my mind, I’d never felt like this way about a cat before.  But like I said, my art isn’t your traditional object-based work, it inhabits the space between painting, sculpture and concept and as a consequence of this it is very intellectually rigorous.  But how could I think these thought when I’ve got boning Nathania on my mind?  Huh?

So one night I said to hell with it.  I wanted to spend the night with her.  I needed something more, you know what I’m saying?  I wanted to wake up in the morning and look Nathania in the eyes.  So I went to the bike shed and laid out a rug, got some candles and incense sticks and made it real nice, just the ways girls like it, I mean it wasn’t perfect, there were still a lot of bikes in there and they keep the skips in the bike shed too but despite this it still felt sort of special, romantic, you know.  But this was in December so it was pretty cold, like minus five or something, and it was raining and the candles all went out and it was pitch black but none of that mattered.  It was still kind of sexy.  Aw and that night – THAT NIGHT – it was perfect.  I remember when she came to me, I had a fistful of kitty food and she was hungry.  It was dark, it was pitch black and you couldn’t see a thing.  All you could do was feel.  And I realised then, as I boned her, I wasn’t having sex.  I was making love.  But then all of a sudden a light flashes on and it’s my girlfriend Kate getting her bike and she looks at me and screams, “Oh my God, what are you doing?” and it’s like, I’ve got my pants around my ankles and a cat on my boner, “What do you think I’m doing?” I yell at her and I try to carry on regardless but it was no good, my girlfriend Kate’s shining this torch in my face and looking at us with this kind of disgusted expression on her face, I couldn’t concentrate, the moment was gone.  So Nathania she walks off, and there was something in that walk of hers, the nonchalence, the love em and leave em strut which turned me right back on and as I watch her walk away I start to rub myself off, saying out loud to myself, “Oh yeah, she’s the one, she’s the one” and then I call out after Nathania, “I got it bad for you girl,” and then I came right there, all over the rug and incense sticks, I was laughing to myself.  It was perfect.    But then Kate, she screams, “Oh my God, you’re disgusting!”  “Get that torch out of my face,” I scream back at her and then I say, “There’s nothing disgusting about a man ejaculating, and if you think there is that’s your problem.”  And that shut her up, I’m like a king of rhetoric. 

Aw but that night, I slept the pure, dreamless sleep of one who is in love.  I tell you, I usually get so mad in the mornings when I have to cycle all the way from Geuzenveld to the studio but that morning, I was singing.  I was singing like John Travolta.  At the top of my lungs I’m riding through Lambertus Zilplein singing Stay by Lisa Loeb – you know that song?  I think it’s my all time favourite, so I’m there belting it out…

You say I only hear what I want to.
You say I talk so all the time so.
And I thought what I felt was simple,
and I thought that I don't belong,
and now that I am leaving,
now I know that I did something wrong 'cause I missed you.
Yeah yeah, I missed you.
And you say I only hear what I want to:
I don't listen hard,
don't pay attention to the distance that you're running
to anyone, anywhere,
I don't understand if you really care,
I'm only hearing negative: no, no, no.
So I turned the radio on, I turned the radio up,
and this woman was singing my song:
lover's in love, and the other's run away,
lover is crying 'cause the other won't stay.

…and then I sang some of the Cat Stevens song I Love My Dog except I changed the words round to I Love My Cat.  I was a changed man, I tell you.  That’s what love can do.  And then I got to the studio and…what the hell?  I’m not going to name names but another artist at the studios, a piece of crap from Austria is standing there at the bike shed holding Nathania.  I could’ve exploded I was so mad.  “Hey!  What d’you think you’re doing?” I yell at him.  “Nathania, come to daddy, that’s a good girl.”  But she didn’t come.  She stayed in that lousy, good for nothing, creepy, slimeball, dirty-faced, creepy Austrian’s arms.  I was furious.  Furious!  So I pull some kitty food out of my pocket – I always keep some on me, you know, just in case, and I say, “Dinner time, Nathania, dinner time.”  But she didn’t come.  I wanted to kill that Austrian creep I was so mad at him.  I started to vibrate I was so mad.  I turned purple and was grinding my teeth – literally grinding my teeth – that’s how mad I was.  And the Austrian, he says to me, “Nathan, chill out, would you like to hold her,” but I flipped out.  I flipped out bigtime, screaming like a banshee – AAAAAGH! – I ran to my studio and I don’t know what I did.  I pushed over my chair, I kicked my piece of scrap wood, I stamped on my bin, I toppled over my table and I took my cup and threw it at the wall, smashing it into a thousand pieces.  And I had made a photo collage wall piece, made up from photos I’d taken of Nathania and drawings I’d done of her, some from life, but most from my imagination, and some locks of he hair, I’d spent more time on this wall piece, this tribute to Nathania than I’d spent on anything in my whole life and I pulled it off the wall and tore it up, into a thousand pieces, still screaming like a madman as I did it. 

“What are you doing?” I suddenly hear and I turn and see my girlfriend Kate stood in the trapdoor looking at me like I was some sort of madman.  “My God, you’re making such a racket, what is it?”  Like she would understand.  No, I wasn’t going to tell her.  But I walk over to her and she’s standing in the trapdoor on the ladder.  My studio, it’s on the ground floor and I guess to protect it from damp there’s a space beneath the floor which creates a sort of cavern under there.  But it stinks.  I don’t know what it is but something down there stinks and a lot of the time it stinks up my whole studio.  So anyway, I looked at Kate, suddenly calm and I say, “Never mind what I’m doing, what are you doing?”  “It smells like crap in here, it smells worse than ever so I decided to take a look down here to see if anything’s died.”  “And has it?” I say to her.  “I couldn’t see, it’s too dark and creepy down there and then you came in shouting like a crazy guy.”  I helped Kate up and out of the trapdoor and then I looked in myself.  I hung my head down to look around.  She was right.  It was dark.  It was creepy.  And it did smell of crap.  It was perfect.  I stood up and said, “Kate, I’d like you to leave now.”  She didn’t understand.  “What are you talking about, this is my studio too, I have as much right as you to-“  “Shut up!” I yell, “You’re supposed to me by girlfriend, I need to think, don’t you understand how important that is?  I need some me-time, is that too much to ask?”  And so she saw sense and left and I waited to make sure she was gone and then I ran outside to the bikeshed and sure enough, the Austrian was still there with my Nathania in his arms and I tried to calm myself, act normal, and I said to him, “Actually I would like to hold her now if that’s alright,” and he says, “Sure, no problem,” acting like we’re goddamn buddies or something and he puts that adulterous temptress in my arms and I wait for him to get on his bike and leave and there I am, left with my Nathania.  I look into her green, deceitful, unfaithful, lying, false-hearted, cheating, devious eyes and say, “It’s just me and you now, Nathania, it’s just me and you.  So don’t love me for fun, girl.”  And then I started to laugh.  I started to laugh and then my laugh became a cackle – a loud howling cackle - and then I thought I must have looked pretty mad so I stopped. 

I took a breath and then I did it.  Clutching Nathania tightly in my arms I ran to the studio, she was miowing and howling something awful, but I didn’t care.  I ran to my studio, turned and locked the door.  I’d done it.  I held Nathania in the air over my face and looked up at her, I’d even begun to cry I was so happy, and I said, “I love you Nathania,” and then I kissed her full on the lips and put my tongue in her little kittie mouth. And do you know what she did?  She clawed me across my own face.  Cutting me deeply, both physically and emotionally.  I was furious – FURIOUS – and I took her and threw her down through the trapdoor into my underground cavern and slammed the door shut.  I was shaking I was so excited and I laid down on the trapdoor and put my lips to the keyhole and whispered, “You will learn to love me like I love you.”

To be continued…

PART TWO

Every man wants the same thing.  To imprison his lover.  To keep her safe from the world and all its predators, threats, lies and corruption.  To lock her away – no, that sound so negative – no, rather to protect her in a splendid, blissful, perfect isolation.  To keep her in a place where there is nothing but love.  And nothing that can harm, poison or destroy that love. 

Every man wants the same thing but most men aren’t men, they’re weak, they live in fear, and never get what they want.  But not me, no, Nathan Dilworth is a man, an all-American, Texas born and bred man’s man.  I wanted Nathania and what Nathan wants he gets so I took her.  And the fact is she wanted me, she just didn’t know it yet.  So as I lay on the trapdoor knowing she was safe forever in my underground cavern – which I will henceforth refer to as my UC – I felt a boner bulge in my pants.  I’d done it, I’d done it, Nathania was mine.  I was vibrating, literally vibrating with excitement and I began laughing to myself.  I say laugh, it was more of a high-pitched moan.  I suddenly felt…complete.  I could hear Nathania through the trapdoor, howling and moaning something awful, she was going nuts but that was understandable, it had been a shock to her, but I was so excited I started to rub myself off as I lay there on the trapdoor, knowing my love was literally inches away.  But then my door to the studio opens and no it’s not my girlfriend Kate, no it’s worse than that, it’s Paul – and he walks in and takes one look at me and sort of freezes, right there, with this frankly insulting expression on his face which I can only describe as a deep repulsion – what?  What?  That guy, in fact all the English, they’re goddamn prudes – so I’m still groaning to myself, I couldn’t stop, it was sort of weird, I think I went temporarily insane because of all the excitement.  So I don’t know if it was this groaning or me rubbing myself off or the shrieking cat he could hear through the floor but Paul actually looked like he was going to be sick, physcially sick, to throw up, the lousy-  Well I managed to stand up and shout at Paul, “What do you want?  What are you doing just walking into someone’s studio?  Can’t you see I’m busy?”  He didn’t say a word, I just slammed the door shut and locked it and I knew that had been a close shave.  I had to be careful from now on.  This had to be…my secret. 

Aw but I still had a huge boner though and my trousers were pulled down around my ankles and as I turned back to the trapdoor they got twisted and I fell over, flat on my face – literally – and my goddamn glasses got broken.  Aw this got me pretty mad and I hadn’t stopped groaning to myself – I couldn’t stop – and Nathania’s screeching had stopped turning me on and started to give me a headache so I tore off my trousers because I couldn’t pull them up and I couldn’t untangle them because I couldn’t see without my glasses and then I fumbled round looking for some tape to fix my glasses and when I found some tape I fixed them and was left looking at the tape in my hands.  I knew what I had to do.  Slowly I crawled on all fours to the trapdoor – like a cat, in fact – and I lifted it and looked in.  A shaft of light illuminated the sandy earth a few feet below and there she was.  Nathania looked up at me and we stared at one another in silence for an instant before she went crazy again, maniacally leaping up, either to attack me or to escape.  Maybe both.  She was out of her mind.  I’ll admit, I was shocked and upset that one I should love so dearly would spurn my love so easily?  Did she not remember the nights – oh those nights – we spent making love in the bike shed?  Did she not remember the treats she had received so ravenously from my palm?  I thought of this cruel betrayal and it was enough to motivate what I did next.  I leapt into the UC, onto Nathania, grappling her as she tried to claw my body – remember, I was totally naked from the waist down and even in the heat of battle I remember worrying that my genitals may in some way be wounded which is of course, every man’s greatest fear.  She bit me and scratched at me and we rolled in the damp sand, battling for supremacy.  Is this what our love had become?  Even as she tried to kill me I still loved her and I felt my boner start to come back.  You see, it was kind of sexy, you know, wrestling like that, it turned me on.  But one must bear in mind, this was a cat I was fighting, not an actual woman, so I was considerably stronger and soon managed to restrain her and do what had to be done.  I taped her four paws together and taped her kittie mouth shut.  She was at last fully restrained.  Thank goodness, I thought and fell back exhausted and it broke my heart to see Nathania incapacitated, lying on her side, writhing crazily.  But it was for her own good.  I wanted to have sex with her there and then but I knew that would be wrong.  It wouldn’t be consensual, for one thing, and I knew what me and Nathania shared was too special – we made love together.  Still I rubbed myself off just watching her roll backwards and forwards trying to get the tape off.  What?  What?  I literally had to, the past few minutes had driven me wild, sexually.  I would explode otherwise. 

So to cut a long story short, I sound-proofed the UC.  With foam and carboard which I collected from the streets of Amsterdam, people in this town they throw everything out – good stuff too.  So I made the UC real nice, I got lamps and bedding, it was real nice, sexy, like a boudoir, yeah that’s right, our private boudoir.  I’d collect stuff during the day, go cycling around, and pick stuff up from the trash and skips and then at night after my girlfriend Kate had left the studio I’d work on our place.  I put a lot of mirrors around the walls and on the ceiling so that Nathania could groom herself – girls like that kind of thing – and also so we could watch ourselves making love.  It also made the UC feel a lot more spacious.  And I managed to re-assemble the wallpiece tribute to Nathania I had previously torn to pieces so there were a lot of pictures of me and Nathania together around the place, you know like a real couple.  But Nathania was still nuts and crazy at me.  I kept her taped up for her own good and it took me a good few days to get the UC feeling like a home but she’d still be writhing around and looking at me with hate – not love – in her eyes.  But slowly, thank God, she began to calm down.  I’d feed her and I kept feeding her the finest kittie food and she mellowed and chilled out a bit and then do you know when the first twinkle of love came back into her eyes?  I took one of my girlfriend Kate’s skirts and made a dress out of it for her.  I put it on Nathania and – OH MY GOD SHE LOOKED ADORABLE, A-DORABLE – oh, like a real Miss Pretty, a princess, a Goddamn princess, and I held her in front of a mirror so she could see herself and as we looked at each other reflected back, it was like a picture – a picture, of the perfect couple.  And slowly I unwrapped the tape from her paws and waited.  I expected the inevitable claw across the face.  I thought to myself, “Too soon, Nathan, too soon.  You can’t hurry love.”  And just as I expected her claw came down on my face – tenderly – tenderly her paw stroked my cheek and drew me near and she kissed me.  She kissed me.  With tongues.  It was the perfect kiss, that’s all I can say about it, the perfect kiss.  And that night we made love.  Seven times.  I was crying as I cylced home to Geuzenveld that night.  Crying heavenly tears of joy.  I loved Nathania so much and she loved me and it was all just perfect – perfect! 

I will never, never forget the next few weeks.  They were the happiest of my life.  They were bliss.  It literally was heaven on earth.  I worked like a dog in the studio.  This is what love can do to a man.  I worked on my art with more focus, passion and intensity than ever before.  I had enormous breakthough with my art and my art practice which prior to this had been mostly located within the realms of thought, it now burst out like a beautiful rainbow and was reborn as sculpture.  Brave, fearless sculpture – oh my God, just thinking about the work I made, like this one piece, I called it Untitled but it was actually called Nathania’s Nest, I stuck a load of scrap wood together and then I carved some holes in it and placed it all on top of a chair which I’d lied on its side on top of a table and – OH MY GOD IT WAS ELECTRIC.  Even my girlfriend Kate who doesn’t understand the depth of my art, even she said to me, “That piece is really good Nathan, I really like what you’re doing at the moment.”  You know something, for the first time in my life, I was happy.  I’ll admit it, I am naturally what you may call highly strung.  I get mad very easily, almost too easily, I get stressed and anxious, just plain mad.  But for those few weeks I felt a calm wash over me.  And I knew I only had Nathania to thank.  So at night, after Kate had gone home I’d open the trapdoor and step into the UC – into my sanctuary – with a huge boner in my pants of course and Nathania would be sat waiting for me, in one of the dresses I’d made for her, looking up with love in her eyes.  It was heaven.  The UC was the only place I felt safe.  Some nights we’d fall asleep in each other’s arms and wake up not knowing what time it was, not knowing even what day it was, just that we were in love. 

I remember one night, after we’d made love, I lay there on the bed I’d made out of a couple of matresses I’d got off the street – double matresses too so we had some real room for play, you know what I’m talking about – so I lay there just watching Nathania.  She was eating, in that ladylike way of hers.  Boy, the girl had got an appetite since I’d locked her in the UC.  It seemed like she was getting through twice as much kittie food every day.  But I didn’t mind, just so long as she was happy, that was all that mattered.  And I was looking at her ass, thinking how blessed, how Goddamn lucky I was.  You know, every cat has an ass but some of them – woo-ey – you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about, especially the guys, sometimes you see an ass and BADABOOM you can’t take your eyes off it.

“Girl, you’ve got a great ass,” I called out to her and she turned and laughed, “Sometimes I think my ass is the only thing you like.”

I rolled over to her and stroked her tail.  “Aw, that’s not true, I like your tail.  And I like your legs and your little paws.  And I like you’re your face, I especially like your face,” I said as I kissed her gently on the lips and licked a piece of kittie food from her whiskers.  “Hell, girl, I like everything about you.” 

“Really?” Nathania asked.  “Really,” I assured her.  “What about your girlfriend?”  I could tell she was a bit jealous of me and Kate.  “You’re my girlfriend,” I told her truthfully.  “No, I mean her up there…Kate,” she said almost spitting the name out.  “Don’t think about her, don’t think about up there, just think about you and me and the here and now,” I said, recognising this newfound wisdom and maturity in my words. 

“Do you love me?” Nathania asked.  “Of course!” I exclaimed, incredulously.  “I want you to say it.  I want to hear you say you love me.”  “I love you, Nathania,” I said and I meant it.  I truly did love her and as I said those words I realised for the first time in my life I truly was in love.

Of course, Nathania didn’t actually speak to me, in the traditional sense – she wasn’t able to - but we’d developed such a mutual understanding and this bond of love had grown so strong that it was almost like we could speak.  That we understood what the other was thinking. 

So anyway, it was perfect.  Perfect.  And no one knew a thing.  Paul never spoke about the time he caught me rubbing myself off to the wild cat howling.  In fact we never spoke much to each other after that.  And Kate, for sure, didn’t see too much of me at night but she didn’t suspect a thing.  Why would she?  I was prolific and making better and better art so she just thought I was working intensively in the studio.  Which in many ways I was.  The only thing she got suspicious of was where her skirts were going because I kept making new dresses out of them for Nathania and Nathania loved these dresses and I loved to please her – I LIVED TO PLEASE HER – so yeah, I must have made six or seven dresses and then I built a little wardrobe for her to keep them in. 

But anyway, I keep getting distracted, the fact of the matter is we had the absolute and complete love most people spend their lives dreaming of.  But it wasn’t to last.

I noticed a change come over Nathania.  She grew sort of agitated.  I don’t know why, she had everything she could have wanted.  A home, food, security and a loving and attentive man.  But somehow that wasn’t enough.  Her hair started falling out.  I don’t know, maybe being locked in the UC wasn’t so good for her, admittedly there was no natural light and other than our marathon sex sessions she got little exercise.  So yes, her hair began to drop out and because of the dark, the lack of natural light her eyes grew sort of huge.  Huge and glaring.  Big, huge, glaring eyes.  She looked a bit freaky in fact, but it didn’t lessen my love for Nathania one bit.  Semi-balding and freaky eyed, she was still Nathania.  But she didn’t love me in the same way.  Her gentle, womanly nature gave way to a nervous anger.  It’s hard to explain but I had to feed her more and more each night until she would let me bone her.  And there’s the thing, we weren’t making love anymore – we were having sex.  And then it happened.  One night we’d had sex and she went off to eat her kittie food like she always did and she ate all I had and came over to me, nuzzling her face against my cheek like she did when she wanted me to open some more tins of kittie food but we were out and I said to her, “Nathania baby, we’re out, sorry girl,” and I felt my boner returning and I hugged her close but she scratched out, clawing me across my chest.  I screamed out, “No!” and leapt back.  What had she just done, I wondered.  What did it mean?  “Nathania, how could you?” I exclaimed, tears rolling down my cheeks.  But as I looked at her, now completely hairless and with big goggly eyes, my heart softened and I realised I was to blame.  I had changed her, it was true.  In a way this was my fault.

So I pulled on my pants and put on my T-shirt – my Nathania T-shirt in fact, I’d had it printed especially, with a photo of me and Nathania on it, one where she still had hair – and I climbed out of the UC and ran, literally ran, to the Albert Heijn next to the studio with this big boner in my pants so I could get some kittie food.  I say some, I had a trolly stacked to the brim, overflowing almost, with tins of kittie food.  I was going to give Nathania a feast, a feast fit for a queen.  Money?  I didn’t even think about it, some things are more imortant than money, love is one of them.  You see, that’s the thing, today we’ve lost sight of what builds the very foundations of a relationship and let me tell you something, let me tell you something I’ve learnt – a relationship is about sacrifice – Nathania had sacrificed her freedom and the least I could do was keep her well fed.  So I’m in Albert Heijn with a shopping trolley full of kittie food and I made sure I stood in line for the prettiest cashier.  I know this is getting off the point but God I love Albert Heijn’s cashier – you know why?  They employ hot Moslem girls and when I’m at Albert Heijn I just like to look at them.  Especially if as they often do they’ve got on those head scarves.  God I love that.  It gets me so mad, to think of the brutal Moslem men oppressing their women, covering them up and keeping them pregnant all the time and I like to imagine myself liberating all the Moslem women.  You know, being like a hero for the hot Moslem girls.  I mean, not all of them are hot but most of them are, and I guess some of them don’t want to be liberated and some of them might like being non-stop pregnant but I know a lot of them don’t and God I’d like to liberate them.  From this…this tyranny of male domination.  So I’m queing up just looking at this hot Moslem girl and it kind of took my mind of Nathania for a minute.  It’s like the forbidden fruit, you know, it’s east meets west, it’s America meets Islam…it’s…it’s HOT!  And when she was checking my tins of kittie food she said something in Dutch and when this happens I like to imagine they’re saying something like, “You’re a really hot guy.”  But not this time Nathan, I thought, I had a trolly full of kittie food and a hungry cat waiting and a boner in my pants so I paid for all the kittie food – over a hundred goddamn euros but it’d be worth it – and I took the trolley and practically ran with it back to the studio.  There I opened the trapdoor and poured it all into the UC.  In a second I was in there and opening them up with a furious speed and Nathania was ravenously eating away.  God, she was beautiful.  I was in love big time.  She was bald, yes, and her skin had gotten all snaky and saggy and even a little bit translucent from the lack of light so you could see her veins and if I had seen her for the first time like this I might have thought her sort of freaky and gross but God I loved her.

So after she’d eaten about half the tins I think she was satisfied.  I was just lying on my side, watching her while I ate a tin myself.  Well, she came over and nuzzled up to me and we started making out and then – I knew this was her way of saying sorry – she went down on me.  Oh.  My.  God.  Listen, guys, until you’ve had a kittie blow job you have not lived.  I closed my eyes and let myself drift to heaven as her tongue slid over my boner.  And just as I was about to ejaculate she did it.  She bit into my boner.  “Aaaaaaagh!” I screamed as I looked down, blood pouring out of my boner.  I didn’t know what to think and then Nathania leapt at me.  I caught her in my arms and held her back and I looked into her eyes and…I can’t bring myself to say it…I saw evil.  She was a monster.  Nathania was gone.  I was delerious, either from the bloodloss or fear or shock, I don’t know but Evil-Nathania was screeching and howling and scrabbling at me and I don’t know if she wanted to kill me or eat me but she definitely didn’t want to make love. 

I think it must have been my survival instinct as blood poured out of my boner – because that’s the weird thing, a boner is just blood in your penis, am I right?  And blood was gushing – that’s the only word for it – gushing out of my penis but it remained a boner.  Weird, huh?  But anyway, the adrenalin took over and I flung Evil-Nathania across the UC and I ran to the trapdoor and started clambering out into my studio but Evil-Nathania wasn’t done.  She leapt up at my naked legs, trying either to escape or pull me back in – it breaks my heart because even though she’d gone evil I still loved her but I kicked her in the head and with my foot tossed her away from me.  Breathlessly, I climbed into the studio and slammed the trapdoor shut.  I had no clothes except the Nathania t-shirt I was wearing.  My pants and underwear were left in the UC.  So I took off the t-shirt, took one last look at the picture of me and Nathania – loving, feminine, furry, normal-eyed Nathania – and then pressed it against my boner to stop the bleeding.  I staggered around, unsure of what to do, I was confused, I could hear Evil-Nathania shriek and wail and that’s all I remember.  I passed out.  I thought I was dead.

Next thing I knew I could hear my girlfriend Kate.  “Oh my God, what’s happened?  Why are you naked?”  I slowly came round, it was morning and my girlfriend Kate was standing over me, I was lying on the floor, naked except for the bloodied t-shirt between my legs.  “And why is your boner covered in blood?”  And that’s the thing – I still had a goddamn boner, can you believe it?  “And what is that shrieking?  Is that a cat?  Nathan!  Nathan!  Oh my God, this is disgusting!”  Last night, it all came back to me, and yes, Evil-Nathania was still howling, howling so loud she could be heard through even my sound-proofing.  “Shut up!” I blurted out, still dizzy from the blood loss.  “Don’t tell me to-“  “Shut up!” I shouted again, this time clambering up onto my feet, “Get out!  Get out!” I bellowed like a mad man and my girlfriend Kate has seen me mad and seen me crazy before but never this mad and crazy – I mean, I looked pretty scary, all wild-eyed and covered in blood, so she left muttering something about it being her studio and I locked the door and fell back down on the trapdoor – crying.  Crying for the cat I had loved and lost.  I lay there crying and recuperating for three nightmarish days and nights, all the time listening to Evil-Nathania’s incessant caterwauling, and thinking about happier times.  About the time we first met, the first time I boned her or how proud I was when I saw her strut around the UC in one of my dresses.  Oh, I’m not ashamed to say it, I cried my heart out.  As I lay there I knew that Nathania was gone – and that Evil-Nathania must die.  I accepted this.  I would let her starve to death.  I would keep her locked in the UC without food until nature took its course.  This, I felt, was the most humane and acceptable way for her to go. 

But then on the third night she stopped screaming.  She was getting weak and hungry.  She was starting to fade away, poor thing.  But then I heard it.  Scratching.  Scratching.  Oh God, she was burrowing her way out of the UC.  I had created a monster.  I was terrified.  And may I put it on record that I even felt in some way responsible.  You know, guilty.  But I could not let her escape.  No way.  It wasn’t so much my fear of her attacking me again, no not that.  It was that I still loved her.  I couldn’t stand the thought of her being with another cat, let alone another man.  It was obvious, I had to kill her.  By this point my penis had stopped bleeding, it wasn’t a boner anymore either thank God and I’d managed to bandage it up pretty nicely with the t-shirt and some tape.  But other than the bandage I was naked – I literally had no clothes in the studio, although I was wearing my glasses but they’re not really clothing.  Or are they?  No, they’re more of an accesory, I mean they can be a fashion item but they have a purpose, a function.  But I guess clothing has a function too – I mean I was cold in that studio, all the time I was laying there I was shivering so I’d have been happy to wear anything, it wouldn’t have had to have been fashionable.  So yes, I guess glasses are clothing.  So I was naked except for my glasses and the bandaging around my penis and I was still weak but I managed to walk over to my toolbox and route through its contents.  One hammer, one craft knife – that’s all you need to kill a cat.  I stepped over to the trapdoor and took a breath.  I lifted it up and I could smell her.  The UC had become like one big kittie litter tray and it stank.  Yeah it stank but it stank of her.  I could hear the crinkle of my bandaging and feel the tape tighten around – yeah, you guessed it, my boner.  God, I still loved her.  I stepped hesitantly down into the UC, my hammer in one hand, the craft knife in the other.  Where was she?  I expected a fight on my hands from the moment I opened the trapdoor.  Maybe, she had burrowed out.  Oh God, I got so mad, I imagined those lousy, mangy street cats boning – DEFILING – my Nathania.  “Nathania, come to daddy, that’s a good girl,” I pleaded tremulously.  But she didn’t come.  God my boner hurt.  You have no idea.  Guys, whatever you do, let this be a lesson to you, if a cat gives you a blow job make sure beyond a shadow of a doubt she’s not going to bite your boner because it’s not worth it.  Maybe if you’re not sure remove their teeth beforehand.  “Dinner time, Nathania, dinner time,” I lied.  The only meal she’d be getting was a hammer in the head.  But she didn’t come. 

I groped around for the bedside lamp.  On came the light and there she was.  Dead.  Spread out on her side at the foot of the bed, where once she had laid after our marathon sex sessions.  I began to cry.  My beautiful Nathania, dead, gone, my one true love forever lost.  I curled up beside her, crying, to hold her one last time.  But oh my God, she was warm.  She was alive!  She was alive! 

“Nathania, Nathania, what’s the matter girl?” I begged as I looked at her, barely breathing, ashen faced, she was literally on death’s door.  Exhausted and starved.  At least that’s what I thought.  To hell with it, I was going to take her to a doctor, I wasn’t going to lose her, no, not this time.  I tried to pick her up and I noticed then how heavy she’d become.  You know, even after she hadn’t eaten anything for three days I noticed how large she still was.  And I observed her stomach, curiously distended.  And then it hit me.  I’d seen this a million times, it hit me like a bolt of lightning – SHE WAS PREGNANT! 

“Noooooooooooo!” I roared furiously, lifting the hammer above me, ready to strike it down on her unfaithful, mendacious head with all my heart-broken might – how?  How Nathania?  How could you go with another cat?  Was I not enough for you?  And as I took one last look at her my head began to calculate how long she had been in the UC against her kittie menstrual cycle.  The hammer dropped out of my hands as I realised what this meant.  I was the father.

Reluctantly, to be continued…

PART THREE

“Noooo!”  A big giant, “Noooo!” that’s all that goes through your mind.  I don’t care who you are, it’s been that way since time immemorial, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, the moment you find out you’re going to be a parent that’s it, “Nooooo!”  I mean I didn’t just think it either, I actually said it, I actually screamed out loud, “Noooo!” as I looked down at Nathania, heavy with my children.  Oh God, I thought my life was over – finished!  I’m ashamed I even thought it but this is what it’s like, I swear, I wanted to kill myself, “How could I be so stupid?” I asked of myself.  “I can’t be a father!” 

I got so mad as I looked at Nathania and that’s not all, I got mad at the unborn children too – I say children because I knew it was rare for a cat to give birth to one child, they usually give birth to a number of kittens and this is known as a litter – I mean I’m ashamed to say it, but I resented them, it was like Nathania and the children, like they were taking away my freedom, my future, like they were imprisoning me, like they were rubbing me out, yeah that’s right, like they were rubbing Nathan Dilworth off the face of the earth.  I couldn’t have children!  A family!

So all this went through my head before the question hit me: “How the Goddamn hell have I got a cat pregnant?”  Now I will level with you, parts of the story I’ve told might have seemed a bit far-fetched and unbelievable but I swear to God it’s all true, every word.  Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.  But still, a cat pregnant with human babies, is nuts.  I’m no scientist so I cannot give you scientific reasons for how this could have happened.  Maybe it’s just best to accept it for what I ultimately realised it was: a miracle.  Yeah but I know some of you are sceptics and that’s not a good enough reason so I’ll throw a couple of hypotheses at you.  One idea I had and I reckon this is unrealistic but I thought maybe we had sex so many times that just by mathematics I produced a sperm – one little sperm – that was genetically compatible with her ova.  You know, anything is possible.  But what I think more likely is this.  I’ve always loved to have sex with cats.  As soon as I hit puberty I was having sex with cats.  Even before that I loved cats, I liked to play with them and pet them, just to spend time with cats.  It’s almost like I’ve had a divine bond with cats – something stronger even than I have with humans.  And with Nathania that bond was stronger than ever.  Nathania was different.  All lady-cats are feminine and lady-like but she was more feminine, more ladylike than any cat I’d met in my entire life, it was weird, and she had empathy – there’s the key, she had empathy and compassion, just like a human.  So what I’m saying is maybe I had some cat DNA in me and she had some human DNA in her - stick with me – you know, that I was evolving towards a cat and her to a human, or the other way around, ie I was evolving from a cat and she to a cat – each of us thereby in the latter or earliest stages of our development, or maybe we were both evolving in the same direction, just at different stages, there are a number of concievable scenarios, but essentially what this would mean is she and I had DNA and genetics similar enough to facilitate human-cat fertilisation.

But like, I say, I’m no scientist.  I just looked down at Nathania laying on her side, literally fit to burst– she was ENORMOUS!  How had I not seen it?  I must have been so in love with her, so absorbed in the love-making that I had failed to notice she was pregnant.  But none of that mattered now.  What was I going to do?   What could I do?  I had to kill her.  I had to.  What?  What?  No man wants to kill a pregnant cat – a pregnant mother PERIOD – but what choice did I have?  I mean, was I going to raise a family in the UC?  Nathan the dad and his cat wife and human-cat children living in what amounted to an accesorised cave?  Are you crazy?  That would be totally unworkable – there’s not enough space for one thing and I haven’t got the studio permanently.  I picked up my hammer – reluctantly I might add – and though I was sorry I knew she had to go.  I took one last look at her – she was monstrous, humongous, bald, loads of veins showing through her skin and with massive eyes that were now blood red like devil eyes.  I shuddered and closed my eyes.  I didn’t want to watch as I slammed the hammer into her head.  I took a breath.  This was it.

A spray of warm blood sprayed over my face.  I was still holding the hammer over my head.  I opened my eyes and wiped my glasses clean, and looked down and OH MY GOD IT WAS DISGUSTING!  I can hardly even bear to say it, there was a little kittie head poking out of her kittie vagina and it was the single most disgusting, gruesome, hideous, horrifying, shocking, repulsive…and beautiful thing I have ever seen.  Oh I can’t begin to describe what it was like to you but in that moment I knew, this was my child.  My baby.  It was weird, the trapdoor was open and as her head poked out and Nathania grunted and writhed around this light came through the trapdoor – a bright piercing light and do you know what that was?  It was God.  No, no, don’t judge me, hear me out, my first baby sprang out of Nathania into my arms and I’m sat there, holding her – a Goddamn cat-baby and I look up into this bright all-encompassing light and it was almost like God was telling me this was his miracle, that these cat-babies were a gift from heaven.  Now that, my friends, that was the moment I believed in God.  As I held that baby in my arms, crying, crying my blessed heart out, I looked up to God and wailed, “Thank you God, thank you for this gift!” and as I said those I suddenly understood the reason I was on this planet, what my life meant, this was what Nathan Dilworth was put on earth to do.  So there.  There’s your reason and your logic and your answers for how it is possible I could have cat-babies.  God.  God gave them to me.  Aw but within seconds there was another baby and another and oh my God there were four babies.  Four I tell ya!

I held all of them, oh my God they were the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and I curled up next to Nathania – there was blood everywhere but I didn’t care – and I kissed her neck and told her I loved her.  We all fell asleep then together, a perfect, miracle family.  I woked up later and at first I thought it had all been a dream.  But no, there in my arms were the four little cherubs.  “So have you thought about what we’re going to call them?” I asked Nathania.  She didn’t answer.  I turned but she was gone.  “Nathania?  Nathania?” I gulped, not wanting to believe it but it was true.  The trapdoor was open and she’d seen her chance and escaped.  Yes, it’s true, deserting her own children.  I broke down, in howling fits of tears, I broke down, helpless, hopeless, the one woman I had ever loved had left me and I couldn’t stand it.  And as I rolled on the floor crying my head fell into something.  It was cold and slimy.  It was her placenta.  She hadn’t even eaten her own placenta, that was how selfish and crazed a mother she was.  Na, na, mother was too good for her.  I stopped loving Nathania in that moment.  I looked at my cat-babies and realised I was all they had.  And in many respects, they were all I had.  And so you know what I did?  I gobbled up the placenta, ravenously.  Yes it was kind of gross, I’ll admit it but it was a gesture, you know, it was a symbolic action so to speak, whereby I was taking on the responsibility of being the mother, father and protector of my children.  And once I’d swallowed the last bit of placenta I took my children and I wrapped them up in one of Nathania’s dresses and I climbed out of the UC for the last time.  I slammed the trapdoor shut, knowing I would never return.  And I went home.

Goddamn Amsterdam.  Goddamn Dutchies.  Everyone in this Goddamn city, they think they’re so liberal, you know, anything goes in Amsterdam.  But let me tell you, it’s a load of crock.  I’m on the tram back to Geuzenveld and yes, I’m naked except for my glasses and the bandaging on my penis – like I said, I had no clothes.  What clothes I did have were in the UC and I didn’t feel like going back in there.  You know, what I just said about climbing out of the UC for the last time and knowing I would never return, that went through my head as I did it so when I remembered I’d left my clothes in there I just didn’t feel like going back, you know?  So I’m standing there on the tram, the cat-babies bundled under my arm and all the Goddamn Dutchies are staring at me and whispering and I got mad, I got so mad that when we finally got to Lambertus Zijplein I ran from the tram screaming, “Don’t judge me! Don’t judge me!”  You see, now I knew I had God on my side I felt like I was being persecuted.  Aw it was the worse in Lambertus Zijplein though because that place is full of Moslems and I sometimes think they hate me, that they know I’m American and so they think that gives them the right to stare at me with hate in their eyes but anyway, it was market day on Lambertus Zijplein and there were crowds, crowds of Moslems literally stood frozen staring at me, as I ran towards the flat screaming.  I was the Goddamn laughing stock.  But I didn’t care.  I was sort of mad but not as mad as I would have been if there’d been just me but I had my kids now.  I was a father.  So being laughed at and stared at didn’t seem to matter as much.  So anyway, I get to the flat and there’s my girlfriend Kate – I hadn’t seen her since I banished her from the studio so I guess she was pretty mad at me and she screams, “Nathan, oh my God, where have you been?  What have you been doing?  You’re naked, oh my God, and you’re covered in blood-“  “Shut…up…” I ordered her, firmly.  “Kate, I have something here, I want to show you,” I said as I unwrapped the dress.  “Is that one of my skirts?” she asked.  “Nevermind that, I want you to take a look at these…” and I unveiled them.  Sleeping, tightly knotted against one another….God they were beautiful.  “Oh my God, what are they, they’re disgusting,” she exclaimed with a brutal insensitivity. 

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” I remarked, as I wrapped them up again, safe from our petty bickering.  “They’re kittens,” I lied – there was no way I’d tell her the truth, “and I’m going to raise them here in the house.”  And do you know what she said?  Do you know what my so-called girlfriend said to me?  “You want to raise them so you can have sex with them!”  I was too furious even to speak.  I stormed off to our room and I could feel that old fury coming back to me, I could feel myself starting to vibrate I was so mad at Kate.  How dare she?  She had never understood me, no one understood me!  But I laid the dress on our bed and looked at my children and that was all it took.  I felt calm and peace wash over me.  I realised that they were all that mattered.  I sat watching them sleep – just sleep – and I could tell just watching them that they were going to be trouble when they grew up.  Just like their dad.  And before I knew it it was dark and my girlfriend Kate came into the room.  Before she could say a word I turned to her and whispered, “We’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight, these little guys need all the rest they can get,” and Kate left – as ever she was starting to accept that what Nathan wants Nathan gets.  And so before I left them to their first night’s sleep I said, “Sweet dreams, my treasures,” and kissed each one, Christening them – Natalie – kiss – Natasha – kiss – Nate – kiss – Nathaniel – kiss.  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking – Nathan is an abbreviation of Nathaniel but in my case that isn’t true – I was Christened Nathan.  Nothing else.  So it made sense to call one of the boys Nathaniel. 

So anyway, from that moment on that was it.  I became a stay at home dad.  Kate thought I was crazy - I made a cot at the end of our bed for the kids and spent all day every day looking after those kids but you see there’s the thing, being a parent is all or nothing.  All or nothing.  Kate would be at the studio most days, so was Paul, which was great because we had the whole place to ourselves.  I had zero interest in art now.  Oh my God, I realised how boring it all was, how meaningless, you know what I’m saying?  I had children.  That was real.  That was reality.  Everything I’d done before seemed…so selfish…so self-absorbed. 

But oh my God, no one told me parenthood was going to be THIS difficult.  I knew it wasn’t going to be a bed of roses but it was 24/7 – 24/7!  I’d be cooking and cleaning up after them and pretty soon they were crawling around and that was a nightmare, I tell you, just keeping track of them, you have no idea but I wouldn’t trade a single moment, not for the world.   You know like, I built a cot for them to sleep in at the foot of our bed and there was nothing I liked more than to watch them sleep or you know sing them a song.  Kate thought I was nuts but I didn’t care.  I’d look at them, drifting away, drifting to neverland and they would look back at me with such love…such love…I feel like crying just thinking about it but it’s moments like those, moments you can treasure for your whole life that make this life what it is.

But yeah, I know what you all want to know.  These were cat-babies so what did they look like?  Well they grew up so fast and pretty soon they were walking and had hair and OH MY GOD THEY WERE GORGEOUS!  GORGEOUS!  But yes, as they grew up it became apparent they weren’t like normal cats.   Their ears were like human ears.  And their noses were a bit weird, sort of a cross between human and cats noses and their joints were highly movable, much more so than normal cat joints and this became all-too apparent when…oh my God I was so proud, I was making some fish-cakes for lunch and I look down and Natasha’s walking to me – upright.  I swear to god, just like a little girl, on her two hind feet.  It was remarkable.  And in no time at all Nate was walking upright, then Nathaniel and then last, as ever it seemed, was Natalie.  You wouldn’t believe it.  It was a sight for sore eyes  I couldn’t believe it at first but I got used to it.  Of course I couldn’t let Kate and Paul see them walking around but that wasn’t difficult because Kate was coming home later and later from the studio – I guess she just didn’t like spending time with me anymore, I think we had drifted apart – it was like the kids had driven a wedge between us but also you know what?  I think she missed the old Nathan, crazy, shouting, angry Nathan but I’m telling you, nothing centres you like having kids – so yeah they’d be tucked up in bed by the time she got home and Paul, well Paul kept himself to himself – that guy, he doesn’t like kids, he doesn’t like animals, so  the flat had become a sort of hell for him but that’s his problem, you know, he’s so repressed, so yeah, basically it was perfect, it was like a UC all over again but not underground and with light.  It was our own little, ideal world.  Every night, after the kids had gone to sleep I said a prayer to God, thanking him for the life he had given me. 

But of course God tests our faith.  He wants to know how strong it is, you know, how much we really believe in him.  So after a while things started to go…how can I put it…awry.  The kids, they got weak, ill looking, the spark had gone from my children, it broke my heart.  I started to fear they were going to go evil like Nathania had gone.  I realised then I was out of my depth.  It’s like if you have human children there are books and doctors and paediatricians and what not and it’s kind of the same if you have kittens but if like me you’ve got cat-babies there’s nothing, nothing and no one you can turn to.  I was a pioneer.  But of course there was someone, someone who could help – God.  So I was watching my kids getting more and more sick, worse by the hour and I’ll tell you something, I prayed to God like I’ve never prayed in my life, I knew he was our only hope.  And I remember I was praying one night, as I watched them sleep, poor things, they’d been in the cot all day long too weak to play, and as I prayed to God suddenly I saw Paul.  In my mind I saw Paul, he was telling me something – through the thick mists of my memory I recalled something Paul had once told me: “A man can lactate if he stimulates his nipple for one hour every day for a week.”  I swear to God, I don’t know why but Paul had said that to me once and BADABOOM I knew God had made Paul tell me that for a reason and in a second I was in the kitchen manicly rubbing ice cubes on my nipples.  That night, I collapsed, unconcious, exhausted from rubbing ice cubes on my nipples.

Well, I wasn’t going to let my cat-babies slip away from me so after that I was never without an ice cube on my nipples.  I even got one of my girlfriend Kate’s bras and wore that packed full of ice cubes and I didn’t show her that but she’d see me at night literally falling asleep rubbing an ice cube across my nipple and she’d scream at me, “What are you doing that for?  It’s disgusting, just look at your nipples, they’re all red and cracked!”  But I just ignored her.  What was the point in trying to explain?  She wouldn’t understand. 

But god bless him – GOD BLESS HIM – Paul was right.  I’d almost given up hope – or you could say, lost faith, when one morning as I was making breakfast I looked down and there it was.  A wet patch over my left nipple.  I lifted up my t-shirt and there it was.  Milk!  Milk!  Glorious, life-giving milk!  I say milk, it was a sort of greyish watery fluid, it might have just been an irritable discharge but I wasn’t going to wait to find out.  I ran to the bedroom and went straight for the cot – I picked up Nate, my God he was barely alive and pressed him to my nipple.  I waited.  And then he began to suck and I fell down on the bed – oh my God, I’ve never felt more alive.  I was feeding him.  My own child, I was feeding him and he was sucking and sucking and it was amost like I could see Nate light up before my very eyes.  I reckon the others must have sensed this because somehow they found the strength to climb out of the cot and walk over to me.  Natasha was first to get the free nipple and begin feeding.  The other two, bless them, they had to wait until they couldn’t wait any longer and they started fighting with Nate and Natasha for some milk and I laughed, “Hey cool it, there’s plenty milk for everyone.”  Of course I didn’t know that for sure, I just sought of felt it.  A mother knows these things.  And you see, there’s the thing, mother and father, they’ve become just like names but I knew then, as I lay down on the bed, nourishing my cat-babies with my milk, I knew then what it was to be a mother.  And once again, I prayed to God, this time thanking him for the gift of milk. 

Well as it turned out once I’d started I couldn’t stop.  I had to wear a Goddamn padded bra to prevent leakage and I even got a breast pump so I could bottle milk.  Bottle what was left that is because most days they would suck me dry.  Literally!  But yeah, once they had some of my milk in them they were alive.  Oh I can’t tell you how much fun it was, those kids they were all over the place, fighting and playing – and I’m not one of these old goose dads, I was fighting and playing with them too most of the time.  It was great.  Great days.  Great days.  And my God, they grew up fast.  As they grew bigger you could say their human features became more pronounced.  They had my eyes for one thing.  And their paws got more fingerlike.  But then something else went wrong.  It’s a parents worst nightmare, you know, something happening to your child.  When they feel pain, you feel pain, when they get sick, you’re sick too.  So what happened was they started walking into things.  It was awful to watch.  Like they’d walk straight into a door or a wall.  I thought they’d all gone blind, you know, like their cat-human DNA may have caused blindness but then it hit me.  These kids were Dilworth through and through.  Just like me and my father and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father they were victims of chronic myopia.  In other words, they were short-sighted.  So what I did was I got a pair of my old glasses – I’m very good with my hands, at making things, I’m very practical – and what I did was I cut and ground the lenses and with some copper wiring I made four little kittie-sized pairs of glasses and BADABOOM they could see.  Just like that, well I can tell you, there was no stopping us now, Family Dilworth was go-go-go and I’d watch them playing, wearing their glasses and walking upright and I was so proud, so proud and felt no shame that I decided I didn’t want them to be my secret anymore.

So the night came, I stayed up later than usual and didn’t put the kids to sleep.  I was sat in the kitchen reading.  Huh, I was reading the book Air Guitar – it’s a collection of art essays by Dave Hickey, subtitled Essays on Art and Democracy, it was one of my favorites from when I was an artist and I picked it up for old time sake, I guess.  And my God it hit me how much I’d changed.  For the better.  I sat there with Natasha sucking at my nipple and the other playing in my lap just reading this book that was like a foreign language, from a different planet.  I felt blessed that God had saved me from such a worthless existence.  And then I heard the latch to the front door.  It was Kate.  Within a second she was inside the kitchen and I don’t think she believed what she saw.  There was a moments silence and then she screamed, “Oh my God, what are you doing?”  “I’m breastfeeding my kad.”  “Breastfeeding!  Oh God, that’s disgusting-“  I stayed calm and interjected, “The kads need to be fed, Kate, and I have milk so I am breastfeeding them.”  “What are you talking about and what do you mean, kads!  What are kads?”  “Kads.  I’ve combined the words cats and kids.  Kads.  These aren’t cats, Kate, they’re a breed of cat-humans.  Kads.”  “What are you talking about?  Take that thing off your nipple!  Have you gone crazy?” 

“No Kate, I’m more sane than I have ever been.  You see, Kate, these are my children.”  She looked like she was going to explode.  I’d never seen Kate like that.  She looked the way I guess I used to look when I got mad.  “These are my children,” I repeated so she would understand exactly what I was saying.  “I got a cat pregnant.”  It was only when I said that that I realised I probably did look and sound pretty mad but Kate had just sort of frozen so I went on.  “It’s over now and the mother is gone but I had what was a long, passionate and meaningful relationship with a cat.  I don’t want you to think of this as a betrayal, Kate, it’s over now and well you knew when we met that I liked to have sex with cats.  That it was a part of who – of what – I am.  And well nature took its course and here we are.”

I looked down at Natasha still eagerly feeding and the other three had until this point just been lying in my lap fooling around but Nate, most likely wanting some milk of his own, stood up.  I guess Nate looked most like his dad and as he stood up on his two feet, wearing little mini-Nathan glasses, I guess Kate got freaked out.  I’ll admit it, this must all have come as a surprise to her but that is no excuse – NO EXCUSE – for what she did next.  She grabbed Nate and she pulled Natasha off of my nipple and she held them both in front of her face and looked at them, no she scrutinised them with this expression which I cannot even begin to describe, it was indescribable, her face was just filled with complete and unexpurgated HATRED.

I looked at her and thought that maybe this was the final straw, that I’d pushed her too far.  “This is the final straw,” she said, “you’ve pushed me too far, Nathan Dilworth.”  I knew she was mad, I could just tell, she was more mad than she’d ever been.  She held Nate and Natasha up and just looked sick to her stomach.  I literally thought she was going to be sick – which hurt me, I must admit, as these were my children.  “Cat babies!” she finally spat with disgust.  “Kads!” I corrected, appealing to her reason.  “Kads!  Kads!  You’re crazy, Nathan, this is disgusting, I can’t even bear to look at them, oh no I’m getting rid of them.”

I instantly put Nathaniel and Natalie to one side and sprang to my feet, desperate to protect my children.  She’d lost her head, literally, and might do anything – strangle them, bash their heads in, throw them out of the window – anything!  I ran to her, flailing my arms around helplessly – what could I do?  She had Natasha and Nate in her hands, I couldn’t risk a physical fight with her.  So what could I do?  I fell to my knees, grovelling at her feet, crying like a baby, begging her to give me my babies.  “No, no, Nathan Dilworth, not this time.  This is too much, cat-babies, oh no, I’ve put up with the sex with cats, I’ve put up with the shouting, the temper, the silence in the studio so you can think, I’ve slept on the couch so your cat-babies can sleep in my bed, I’ve shared my own bedroom with these freaks but no, no, no, this is too far!”

“Please, not my kads!  Not my kads!” I wailed over and over and over.  I was distraught, hysterical, I’ve never felt so scared in all my life.  But Kate, she looked crazy, I really hadn’t expected her to take it this badly.  Usually she goes along with what I say or do eventually but no, not this time.  And then with this crazed grimace across her face she took one last look at Natasha and I shudder to think what she was going to do but all of a sudden, as if by divine intervention, there it was.

“Mummy.”

A stillness fell over the room.  Natasha had spoken.  “Mummy,” she said again.  And I could see it in Kate’s eyes.  Her heart melted.  “Oh my God, did you hear that?  Did you hear that?” she shrieked joyously.  Instantaneously the tears I was crying became tears of joy.  And Kate was hugging Natasha and Nate – I swear to God – literally hugging them and singing, “She called me mummy, she called me mummy!” 

I eased myself up to my feet and took Nathaniel and Natalie, who by the looks on their faces had been as terrified as me,  I took them both in my arms and I stood beside Kate.   “Well?” I whispered into Kate’s ear.  “They look like you,” she murmured as she cradled the brother and sister in her arms.  “I know but are you?”  “Am I what?” she asked, silly thing.  “Mummy,” I said softly.  “Oh yes, Nathan, oh yes, yes, I love them, I love them, I do, I really do.”  And I put my arm around Kate, Kate who I had drifted apart from, who I had wrongly, selfishly thought did not understand me, and I realised then that it was my kads, my kads who had brought Kate and I back together.  They truly were a gift from heaven. 

I knew parenthood was never going to be a bed of roses .  That it would never be easy going, never predictable, never safe but it was in this moment as a family was truly completed that I grasped the simple, universal truth: love conquers all.  If you have love, you have everything.

To be continued…

PART FOUR

Why does everybody hate America?  I was asking myself this very question the other day because, I mean, I am an American in Europe and I will tell you I can feel it.  I can feel the hatred.  People hate me.  It’s racism that’s all but I was asking myself why people hate America and Americans so much and then it came to me: America holds a mirror up to the world and guess what?  You people don’t like what you see.  All America does is tell it like it is and guess what, the truth hurts, you know, people don’t want to see their hypocrisy, their intolerance, their sexism, their ignorance, oh no, so they just go about hating Americans and burning the stars and stripes and I guess that makes everything okay.  You know, making America the world’s bad guy.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, as I say, I am an American.  My girlfriend Kate, who’s a California Babe, is an American too.  And my kads, though they have a Dutch biological mother and were born in Amsterdam, they will be raised as Americans and I hope to take them to the homeland ASAP – I swear to God, I can’t wait to take them back to DT, my folks will be so proud, they love kids.  So anyway, I couldn’t have been happier that Kate had accepted the kads and agreed to be their mother, it felt like a real family now.  But I knew it wasn’t going to be a bed of roses having such unique children, especially in a backward country like Holland which likes to think it’s progressive but don’t believe it for a second and this was all going to be a lot worse what with us living in Geuzenveld which is full of Moslems who A) hate Americans and B) are so illiberal that there’s no way they’d accept cat-children in their community.  So yeah, I knew the road ahead wasn’t going to be easy but I had to remember what makes an American American.  Strength, bravery, courage, freedom and God – and once I had reminded myself of this I knew that I could do it.  That we could do it.

And oh my God, that first night, just watching Kate playing with the kads in bed, seeing how happy they were to have a mother and how happy Kate was to be a mother at last – which is, of course, every girls dream, I could see she’d make a great mother, and that night they all fell asleep together and I stayed up just watching them, weeping gently to myself, oh I wouldn’t trade the world for that nightt. 

Next morning they were all still asleep – Kate was laying next to me with her arms wrapped around the kads, it was adorable, ADORABLE.  And I gently got out of bed and went to the kitchen to pump my breasts which were heavy with milk.  I sat there at the kitchen table, collecting my milk for later, looking out on the bright morning sun shining over Lambertus Zijplein.  Looking out on the world.  The world we would soon have to face.  Kate came in shortly after and I playfully slapped her on the ass and pulled her on to my knee.  “Hey you,” I said, “You realise this isn’t going to be easy?”  “I don’t care,” she said with the iron-strong resolve that only a female mother has, “I don’t care about anyone or anything except you and the kads.”  “That’s my girl!” I told her and I carried on pumping my breast milk, looking out with Kate to the world which would soon try to crush our family. 

The thing about Geuzenveld as I’ve said is it’s full of Moslems and they don’t like me and Kate period.  What can I say?  We’re Americans, we’re a minority, you can say what you like about Americans, you can be as racist as you like but no one cares, it’s fine to persecute Americans.  Yeah, that’s the so-called free world for you.  But there’s no way I’ll hide my real self.  I’ve got the Texas state Lone Star flag hung up in the bedroom as curtains and often I’ll cycle around Lambertus Zijplein singing at the top of my lungs just for the hell of it or when I go to Albert Heijn to pick up some groceries I’ll be belting out my favourite songs, say, some Fiona Apple or Meredith Brooks.  It’s like I’d do exactly the same thing if I was in DT so why shouldn’t I do it here?  I mean, this is my home too.  But all the time I’m in Geuzenveld I can see them staring at me and muttering under their breaths.  The only Moslems I feel I relate to are the Hot Moslem Girls who work at Albert Heijn.  I think they think I’m cute which I am and I guess we can both relate to each other because we’re each victimised in this illiberal and very patriarchal society. 

But anyway, that morning, after breakfast me and Kate we get the kads and strap them into baby carriers on our chests – Nate and Natalie with me, Nathaniel and Natasha with Kate and we march out of the flat straight into Lambertus Zijplein.  Me and Kate, we held our heads high but I tell you, faces turned but I didn’t care, neither did Kate, we both loved our kads, we were proud parents and proud Americans. 

Kate was filled with the same determination as I and we both scowled back at the Moslems as they stared and pointed.  The kads, who had never really been outside of the flat, were dumbstruck by all these new sights.  Eventually it was too much for Kate when one old lady puked – literally puked – at the sight of our cat-children and she yelled, “Nathan, that woman is sickened by our children,” and so I shout at her and I guess everyone really, “Don’t judge us!  Don’t judge us!  Take a look at yourselves in the mirror before you judge us!”  but oh my God, soon we had groups of people coming out of shops to watch us and there were mothers covering their crying childrens’ faces, I was insulted.  I was starting to feel like we were a real freak show.  But eventually we get to Albert Heijn and there we pick up some shopping, you know, like an ordinary family there to collect some groceries, and the kads they all fitted into the child seat on the trolley, and it just blew their little minds being in Albert Heijn, their eyes just lit up, it was beautiful.  Yeah, so we’re not bothering anyone but still people kept staring or crying out in horror.  I’ll tell you something, it was insulting.  I got mad.  I felt old Nathan returning to me.  I mean, why should I feel ashamed?  You tell me that?  Huh? 

Anyway, we get our things and there’s huge queues and as any parent will tell you, it can be stressful shopping with children, they get restless, so reluctantly I go to the shortest queue, forsaking the Hot Moslem Girls at the other cashiers, for Prairie Rat.  This guy, this slimeball, I hate him.  I see him every day here, he’s this white guy – yeah, a white guy working the floor at Albert Heijn, it makes me so mad that this creep is taking a job away from a Moslem girl, I mean he could work anywhere he wants but they can’t, God he makes me sick.  Whenever I see this guy, I get so mad, I hate his ugly greasy face, it looks like an upside down bowling pin with glasses on it.  What really gets me is he acts like the boss of this place, always ordering the Hot Moslem Girls around, God he makes me sick.  My eyes wander to the girl at the next register and she is gorgeous, a beauty but then I have to look back at this freak and I just want to shove his face in the bottle recycling machine and see what I get for it.  Bing!  Ein cockish sucker.  Why am I telling you this?  Look, I’m a human being and I can’t stand this sort of guy, ordering the Moslem Girls around, it’s white supremacy, that’s what it is and by the time I get to the front of the line I’m just staring at him, vibrating I’m so mad and that piece of crap, he takes one look at Nate and Natalie strapped to my chest and says something in Dutch and I know it’s an insult and I know he knows I’m American, I’ve been here enough Goddamn times and he’s grimacing and I shout at him, “Speak English, Dutchie, I wanna know what you said!”  “Leave him,” says Kate but I’m too mad now and he points at Nate and says, “What is wrong with your babies?  They are all hairy…”  That was it, that was all I needed to hear, old Nathan was back in that instant and BADABOOM I lunge over the counter – yes, with Nate and Nathalie still strapped to my chest, they loved it, they’d never seen their old man like this.  And I’m slapping him across his greasy face screaming, “There’s nothing wrong with my babies, they’re perfect!  Don’t judge us!  Don’t judge us!” 

Before I know it there’s security and literally a million angry Moslems tugging me away from and I figure that’s it, I’m going to get fatwa-ed and they bustled me out of Albert Heijn, leaving Prairie Rat crying like a girl and I got so mad because he was only crying because the Hot Moslem Girls were fussing over him and before I know it me and Kate are stood in Lambertus Zijplein surrounded by an angry mob of Moslems and the kads are wailing and crying, only Natasha can speak and she just keeps crying, “Mummy!  Mummy!” and I realise this is do or die, Nathan Dilworth, you must protect your family.  So I step up to the mob and like Spartacus I bellow, “Are you not Moslems!  Do you not believe as I do in peace and love – that we must love our fellow man?  Are we really so different?  If you cut me I bleed the same blood as you-“I don’t really know why I said that bit, it just sounded good at the time and then I took Nate and Natalie out of the baby carrier and held them over my head.  “These are my children!  They are kads.  Cat-children.  Yes, I had sex with a cat, I had sex with many cats, and yes I got one cat pregnant and these are the miracle creations of that union – these are God’s creatures!  Love them!  Love them!”  I pleaded.  And Kate, who seemed genuinely moved by my speech she took the kads she was carrying and held them over her head and there we both were, crying over and over to the mass, “Love them!  Love them!” 

But they just sort of stared and I don’t know if they really understood and this got me mad, I’ll admit it.  I mean, what did they want from us?  So I handed Nate and Natalie to Kate and what I did next, it wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever but it was the kind of stunt old Nathan was famous for in The Big D.  I mooned them.  I swear to God, I pulled down my pants and mooned the whole lot of them, 360 degrees, it was perfect.  Kate and the kads, they were laughing their asses off – at my ass.  And after that we just strutted through the crowd back to our flat.  Moslems Nil, Dilworth One. 

After that victory, life was good.  We had our home and each other and though the people in Geuzenveld kept staring it wasn’t like it was anything new to see the kads, you know.  Oh but those kads grew up so fast, I’m telling you and it was like they had the best of both worlds.  The beauty, agility and hair of cats and the intelligence and ability to speak of humans.  Yeah, one by one they all started talking and Kate started home schooling them and making them clothes and I built a little apartment within our own bedroom if youcan believe it for them to live in, it was just like having real normal kids.  What am I saying?  For me they were real normal kids.

Aw but I tell you, it was non-stop fun in that flat.  Like this one time, we had a disco party just for the hell of it, I put on one of my own party compilations and we were all boogying away in the kitchen, I’m wearing my denim jacket, I look like Johnny Travolta – it’s true – and we’re all getting down to Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchel and then we had a slow dance to Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful which I thought was rather fitting as I felt the lyrics related to the kads in many ways and then it was rock and roll time as we all headbanged to Bitch by Meredith Brooks.  Kate jokingly kept covering the kads’ ears when Meredith sang the word Bitch but Nate loves that song, he’s going to grow up to be a real rocker, just like his dad.  And next up was my favourite, party starter, my number one favourite song, I got the whole family in on this one…

All I wanna do is have some fun – now you Kate!
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do – everybody - is have some fun – you go, Natalie
I got a feeling I'm not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

Okay now it’s daddy’s turn…
I like a good beer buzz early in the morning
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud
He shreds them on the bar
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers…

Anyway, you get the picture.  Oh yeah it was perfect, we all collapsed after that, completely exhausted, all of us crying tears of laughter and then the next song started.  I remember I’d put it after that to bring the tempo down, so people could chill out.  Ah yes, those unmistakable opening finger-picked chords of Stay by Lisa Loeb.  This song, it had taken on a new meaning for me, however.  And for the first time, since…since…she had escaped from the UC…I missed her.  I could feel the tears well up and the kads soon noticed that a sad veil had been drawn over their father.  “What’s the matter, daddy?” Nathaniel asked me.  “It’s nothing, it’s just…” I couldn’t continue but thankfully Kate finished my thought – oh truthful, ever-loving Kate, she said, “You’re thinking about Nathania.”  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, barely audible.  “It’s okay,” she said, putting her arm around me, “Nathania was an important part of your life.  Of all our lives.” 

And so I cried quiet tears as the song played out but it was only as Loeb sang the line, “I thought, "hey, I can leave, I can leave."
Oh, but now I know that I was wrong, 'cause I missed you” then I broke down, I could take no more and I fled the room, wailing hysterically.  I had not realised until that moment how much I missed Nathania, how much I needed Nathania, how much I loved her.  I staggered to the centre of Lambertus Zijplein and howled to the night, “Nathania!  Nathania!”  I fell to my knees, sobbing and then – who can tell why, I began to miow.  Miow!  I miowed, calling to Nathania just as I had done a lifetime ago. 

Pretty soon though there was a crowd of kids gathering around me and laughing and people were shouting at me in Dutch from their apartments, I guess to shut up so I composed myself and walked back to the flat.  As I climbed the stairs I could smell something.  It was a familiar odour, I wasn’t sure what it was but I could definitely feel the hint of a boner overcoming me.  Looking back, my God, I was a whirlwind of emotions that night.  And so I get to the flat and – OH MY GOD THERE WAS A CAT AT THE DOOR!  A DEAD CAT!  A DEAD CAT!  I was horrified, I couldn’t believe it, these Goddamn intolerant creeps were trying to terrorise us out of our own home.  I was furious.  I picked the cat up, poor thing – and marched to the kitchen where Kate was sat reading the kads a bedtime story and I held the cat up so they could all see, there was no point hiding the truth.  “Seems like the neighbours want to scare us away.”  “Oh my God!” yelped Kate, covering the kads’ eyes. 

So you know what I did, I went to the bedroom where the Texas flag was hung and I took it down and I went out onto the balcony – bearing in mind, I never use the balcony because it’s a Goddamn pigeon nest and covered in pigeon crap but I was so mad now I didn’t care and I stand on that balcony overlooking Lambertus Zijlplein and I wave the flag in one hand and the dead cat in the other and all I could think to say was, “USA!  USA!  USA!”  I swear to God, that’s what I did and soon there was a huge – seriously, a huge crowd of Moslems gathered looking at me so yes, I mooned them again.  I pulled my pants down and bent over mooning the whole lot of them and then I’m not sure why but I started whipping my ass with the dead cat – I’m still yelling “USA!” and I turn around to shout directly at them again but my trousers got all twisted and I fell over.  Yes, into all the Goddamn pigeon crap and I got so mad and I can hear all the Goddamn Moslems laughing – yes, laughing at me.  So I tear off my trousers and my shirt, that’s how mad I was and I stand back up completely naked and by this point I am literally fuming and I see all these Moslems in hysterics, literally in hysterics.  And there, amongst them, who do I see laughing with them?  Yes!  Whitey, the Prairie Rat!  So I just scream, no words, I just scream and like a javelin I throw that cat and it must have been divine intervention because yes, it lands smack bang in Prairie Rat’s face.  That shut him up.  And it calmed me down, I felt sort of vindicated, you know. 

But yeah, after that I knew we had to be careful.  These fanatics wanted us dead.  So I decided we had to do things properly and register the kads with authorities.  They were Dutch citizens, after all, and deserved the same rights and protection as everyone else.  So next day, me and Kate we cycled into Amsterdam, I pulled a little trailer on the back of my bike with the kads sat inside.  And I’ve got to tell you something, registering the kads for doctors, for schooling, with the city and all that, that was the first time I experience Amsterdam’s liberal attitude.  To these civil servants they were just children, like any others, albeit hairier.  And after that we had a real family day out in Amsterdam, seeing the sights, taking a ride on a pedal boat through the canals, just doing what families do, you know.  And then as the kads got tired we decided to head back and we go to collect our bikes and what do we find?  Yeah, inside the trailer, you guessed it, there’s a dead cat. 

I’ve got to tell you, it freaked me out something awful.  But I knew I had to stay strong for Kate and the kads so what I did was, I laughed and I took the cat, poor thing, and I drop kicked it into the canal.  I had to be the man, show them I was in control, make them feel safe but I was worried.  This started me wondering, was this really the work of illiberal, American-hating, cat-hating Moslems? 

So yeah, we cycled home and I raised everyone’s spirits by singing the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – a great feel-good song and one we must never forget which was written originally for a male singer.  But anyway, I guess you could say we’re coming to the climax of our story.  We get back to Geuzenveld and going up the stairs to our flat there’s that smell again.  Yes, I feel a boner emerging.  And then we get to the front door and yes, there’s another dead cat at the door.  But not just that, the door has been broken open.  Literally broken off its hinges.  I feel my heart racing and say quickly to Kate, “Take the kads and go and lock yourself in the bathroom, quick!”  She does this and I step past the bathroom door and look into the flat.  I can’t see anyone but I can smell her.  She’s here.  This boner means one thing: Nathania’s back.  I step cautiously forward and peer into Paul’s room.  Nothing.  Next door I look into our bedroom.  Nothing.  I quickly check the kad’s rooms.  All empty.  Oh but I can smell her, I can smell her and I’m terrified and literally coming in my pants, all at the same time, God I love her.  I turn to the kitchen door and push it open.  There she is.  The lights are out, but there, sat on the kitchen table, silhoetted against the streetlights of Geuzenveld is the only woman I ever loved.  Nathania.  She had come back to me.

There’s no other word for it, she was humongous.  Since I had seen her last she had somehow become a vast, gigantic monster.  “Hello Nathan,” she purred.  Her voice hadn’t changed, it was still as feminine and sexy as it was the day we met.  “Nathania, I-I-I-“ I stuttered, I couldn’t speak.  “Shut up.  Don’t speak.  I don’t ever want to hear you say another word.  Just listen and look at me Nathan.  Look what you have done to me.  I’m a monster.  A vile, hideous, crazed, maniacal beast and you turned me into this.  I used to be a cat.  A lady cat.  I used to be happy.”  “No Nathania, you still can be happy,” I began but she snapped, “Shut up!  I said I never want to hear you say another word.  It’s over, Nathan, you destroyed me, now I must do the same to you.”  “Nathania, please,” I began, sobbing.  “Turn on the light, Nathan.  I want you to see what you’ve done to me.” 

Trembling, I lifted my hand and switched the light on and oh my God, she was monstrous, she was…monstrous.  She was a great big huge grotesque nightmare vision of a cat and she was beautiful.  In my eyes, she was more beautiful than ever.  I loved her then as much as when I’d first set eyes on her.  And I said this to her, I said, “I love you, Nathania.”  I said it again, “I love you, Nathania,” and then I added, “You’re beautiful…” and I could see with those words something switch inside of her and, yes, there they were, welling up in the corners of her huge bloodshot eyes…tears.  “You will always be beautiful to me,” I said as I stepped towards her, my arms outstretched, my boner bulging in my pants. 

And I hugged her, holding her close, oh just to touch that hairless skin, it was heaven, let me tell you, and I began to weep, I was so happy, I was so in love…I would never let Nathania go, I would never let anything come between us ever again, I thought to myself and I began kissing her neck, and my kisses became more and more passionate – this boner couldn’t wait – and then she did it.  She bit me.  She bit deep into my neck, oh my God, it was agony, I felt her teeth tear through my flesh and blood began pouring out, literally pouring out like a fountain, and I wailed, “Nathania, no!” but she wouldn’t stop, she wouldn’t let go, she just kept her cat-teeth wrapped around my neck, biting harder and harder and I writhed frantically to break free but it was no use, she’d got me but then all of a sudden I hear Kate, she’d left the bathroom and was running towards us screaming, “Nathan, oh my God!” and she climbs on top of Nathania, trying to pull her off me – and I’ve got to admit, even in this terrifying, near-death situation I felt a little aroused by the two women in my life fighting over me– one to kill me, the other to save me, so yeah what I mean is as all this happened I still had my boner.  Aw but there was blood everywhere and I thought this was it.  Nathan, your time has come.  If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.  But then the cavalry arrived.  One by one, the kads walk in, crying, no doubt traumatised by what they were seeing and hearing.  All I can hear is a chorus of “Daddy!  Daddy!”  And then Nathania, she stops.  She quit biting me and she turns to looks at the kads.  Her babies.  They all look at each other and eventually Natasha, she speaks, she says, “Cat mommy?”  and I look up at Nathania and see a tear drop from her eye and then she turns to look at me, we stare into each other’s eye.  And we kiss.  Oh that kiss, if it lasted forever it wouldn’t be long enough.  Just to taste Nathania again, it was heaven, and I’m lost, I’m lost in Nathania, all that lost time, all that hatred, it all disappeared into nothingness as we kissed and – what’s this – all of a sudden I can feel another tongue slipping in to join the fun and – oh my God – it’s Kate, this was perfect, perfect!  And before I know it we’re all just stripping off and making out and kissing and we’re all just doing it, you know, right there on the kitchen floor, oh my God, it was so sexy, the three of us, united at last, it was perfect – PERFECT!  And the kads, they are literally dancing for joy around us, I’m serious, they were so happy to see daddy, mommy and cat-mommy happy, the way nature intended.  And do you know what happened next?  As if things couldn’t have gotten any better.  The kitchen door opens and in walks Paul.  Oh my God, his face, his face!  It was a picture, a picture!  And then, if you can believe it, as if by divine intervention, I came right there and then – BADABOOM, I ejaculated, it was perfect.

So there you are.  That just about wraps my little story up.  Earlier tonight we all had dinner together.  I made roast chicken and I sat at the head of the table carving, I felt so proud, so complete, what with Kate on one side and Nathania on the other, wearing a dress, a gorgeous pale blue summer dress that Kate – not me – made for her and then there were all the kads, Nate, Natasha, Nathaniel, and Natalie all laughing and fooling around the way kids do, all of them so full of energy and I’m chatting away about I don’t know what and Nathania’s playing footsie with me under the table and so if Kate but neither of them know the other is and I’m smiling to myself and looking at all of them and I felt…trapped….suffocated…I had become a prisoner…Suddenly it seemed so obvious, they had me exactly where they wanted, oh yeah, now it all made sense.  I looked at Kate and Nathania chatting to each other and I could see what they’d done.  They had everything a woman wants.  Children, family, a home, a husband.  I started to vibrate.  I hated each and every one of them.  What had I become?  I used to be Nathan Dilworth.  I used to be a conceptual artist, born and raised in Dallas Texas, The Big D.  Now who was I?  I was nobody.  I was nothing.  I couldn’t bear to look at them.  I literally turned away and looked out of the window, out into the the world, to freedom, out there on Lambertus Zijplein and I could just make it out, down there, just outside Albert Heijn, walking gracefully was a cat…A cat!  And I looked out at it, just watching it walk by and I thought to myself, “Hmm, she’s nice.”