Bodega Cats
Flash Fiction by Chloe Paige
Under the fluorescent lights of the bodega, Papa counts the cash from the register, sighs, and stuffs the bills in one of the two jars inside the safe.
The little girl clinging to his leg whimpers. An old black cat rubs against her ankle. Papa opens the door, scoops up the cat, kisses his tiny face and drops him out into the night. The little girl, Anna, cries and presses herself against the door, salting the glass.
But now isn’t the time for tears, so Papa turns his daughter away.
With the sidewalk icy under his paws, Muffin slinks away from the store. Yesterday’s rain slicks the pavement and warbles under the glare of lamp posts and oily city grime. Muffin dodges two folks bundled in thick coats and scarves. Their breath plumes with chatter, a language Papa and Anna don’t speak. Taxis and buses roar through the street lined with parked cars. A food truck with neon signs floods the air with meat and spices and salt. The smell calls to the old cat, a smell like Mama whenever she cooked.
But now isn’t the time for past years, so Muffin rounds the corner of the block.
A man clutching a paper bag bustles from the 24-hour pharmacy. He mumbles into a phone in another language, different from the folks on the sidewalk, different from Papa and Anna. Muffin skirts by him and passes two women gushing at shiny things in a store window, the glass adorned with polished gold lettering.
Of all the different voices that built these streets, dialects that spice the air, and all the tongues that persist, there’s one language everyone can speak, a universal mother tongue.
Past the gilded store of shiny things, in an alleyway, far in the shadows, is a sleeping bag. Muffin creeps towards it and sniffs. The man inside coughs and rolls over. He reaches a frayed gloved hand out to scratch under Muffin’s chin.
A tiny white dog pokes its head out from a layer of blankets tucked inside the sleeping bag. It growls at Muffin. A breeze weaves through the fur of the two animals. The dog trembles. The man coaxes it back into the blankets, his beard speckled grey like Papa’s, his eyes worrisome like Anna’s, and a cough like Mama’s that only an impossible pile of money could have fixed.
But now isn’t the time for fears, so Muffin darts away.
White lights of the subway station spill from the stairs across the street. Muffin readies himself, runs through the alley, across the busy street he knows better than anyone, and skids down the stairs into the stuffy air.
Grey tiles rumble under his paws. A train deep in the tunnel rattles and hisses. A stranger dressed in a tailored suit shoves his wallet in his back pocket and kicks a vending machine. He reaches inside to take out a bag of potato chips.
His glossy shoes shuffle toward the stainless-steel bench Muffin hides under, waiting, tail twitching. The man crunches on his chips and drops the foil packet to the ground as the rattle of the train turns into a roar, the hiss into a screech.
The subway bellows into the station with a whoosh of hot air. Its doors open and people flood onto the platform, their hands on bags and phones. They tower around Muffin in a bustling cacophony of voices.
With his wallet sticking out from his pocket, the stranger stands for the train. Muffin jumps on the bench behind him.
The cat lunges. His teeth sink into the leather wallet and they both smack to the ground. There’s a shout. The stranger whirls around and shoves back through the crowd. Muffin drags the wallet through the platform with all the might in his little body, between shuffling feet, around rolling luggage, upstairs, away from the strangers, to get home to Papa and Anna. They’re waiting for him.
The old cat, with fur the colour of asphalt, tugs the heavy wallet into the night and through the busy street. His eyes fill with headlights. His ears fill with screeching tyres.
There’s a language everyone can speak. When newsstand headlines become grimmer by the day, and desperation aches to the bone, people still need to build homes, even if they have to make them on crumbling foundations. Whether home is a sleeping bag, or a family struggling to keep the lights on whilst homesick for a person, they do what they have to do, knowing hope justifies the means.
So, on a freezing December evening, a man and his little girl sit in silence on a bodega floor, waiting for their cat to come home, never losing hope. And that old black cat, who knows the traffic on the way to the subway station better than anyone, and always comes home, scratches at the door with a wallet between his teeth.
Anna tears the door open, her laugh loud like Mama’s, her eyes hopeful like Papa’s.
Papa rushes to scoop up the cat, kissing his cold, tiny face. Muffin purrs.
“Good boy,” he murmurs into Muffin’s fur. Grey whiskers meet grey whiskers, twins in another life.
Papa sets Muffin on the counter and the cat curls up to rest his weary bones in his favourite cardboard box by the register, the one decorated in colourful scribbles from Anna’s markers. She perches on the counter with her best friend, scratching under his chin.
Under the florescent lights of the bodega, Papa opens the safe that keeps two jars. One brims with treats for Muffin. He plucks one to feed the cat he trained and grazes his fingertips over the photo of Mama taped inside the safe’s door, because then was the time for tears, now is the time to persist.
Papa counts the cash from the wallet and stashes it in the second jar, three-quarters full of coins and crumpled notes, labelled Anna’s School Fund.
BIO: Chloe is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer from the salty shores of Wadawurrung Country in Geelong, Australia. She is published in a small handful of literary journals, and has won the Elegant Literature Award, NYC Midnight, and has shortlisted multiple times for the Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction. She can be be found on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/chloepaigeauthor/) and Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/chloepaige.bsky.social).