Typical New York City Friday afternoon back in the day: a dark Alphabet City shithole of a bar stinking of stale beer and cigarettes, the requisite old man sitting at the bar watching TV, two coked-out businessmen huddled in a booth in the corner, this goth girl dancing by herself over by the jukebox, some dilettante bridge-and-tunnel poet playing wannabe bad boy. The poet is currently trying to buy a drink by reciting a spontaneous poem to the hot bartender in payment (good luck with that). One of the businessmen slinks out the back door into the alley with the resident coke dealer. The old man argues incoherently with the talking head on the television screen.
Tobe sat at the far end of the bar from the old man and the TV, spying on the girl by the jukebox. The music was deafening, but she positioned herself right next to the speakers, rocking out to Concrete Blonde.
Tobe hated Concrete Blonde.
Much of what she wore was of the standard Lower East Side uniform: clunky black boots, fishnets, short black skirt, black mesh shirt with a black leather bra. Hot, but kind of a generic hot.
What set her apart was the choker.
Sitting at the bar, all he noticed was that she wore a thin leather strip around her neck. The strip of leather had silver letters embedded into it, and though he could not read them from this distance, he could tell that they were fake chrome, probably plastic. He could also tell, even from a distance, that the letters were poorly attached and aligned, and haphazardly spaced. The goal may have been a sleek metallic look, but the result was homemade and sloppy.
Homemade and sloppy was hotter.
He slid down off the barstool, nabbed his bottle of beer by the neck, and strolled over in the general direction of the jukebox, not directly toward the girl.
When he was about five feet away, he could read what the choker said: “BAD KITTY.”
His cock roused.
Only then did he notice that, hiding within her mass of artfully unkempt black hair, was a pair of lace kitty ears attached to a headband of some kind. They were cheap, with kind of a Halloween look to them, but combined with the choker they gave his cock another punch of blood. He had no idea why.
He walked closer to her. He said, “I love this song.”
Without even bothering to look up, she said, “You don’t even know this song.”
“There's a crack in the mirror, and a bloodstain on the bed,” he said.
She looked up for the first time, and said, “You were a vampire, and baby, I'm the walking dead.”
“Bloodletting.”
“Good song.”
She didn’t respond. He knew the lyrics because he had an ex who loved Concrete Blonde. She was the reason he hated them. He figured that he’d established enough cred to warrant another attempt at conversation. He said, “I like your ears.”
Her body slowed, still dancing but her movements now more liquid, her limbs curling into the space around her.
“Mew,” she said, and with feline quickness licked her lips. Her eyes shot to his face, shot away.
It was very hot. It really was. He didn’t know why.
“You like cats?” he asked, and it sounded incredibly lame the instant the words left his mouth. She didn’t respond, and he didn’t expect her to.
“I do. Cats. I like cats. I love cats. I have a cat.” He forced himself to quit babbling and shut up, before he made things worse.
“Name?”
“Me or the cat?”
“The cat. Let’s start with the cat.”
“Sophie.” She nodded, apparently approving of the name, but then retreated back into her own world.
He said, “When I was a kid and Sophie was a kitten, every morning when my alarm would go off she’d jump into bed with me to be petted, and then lick my face until I woke up and petted her. I’d turn off the alarm and pet her while I, you know, woke up. After awhile I didn’t need my alarm anymore. I shut it off for the summer and she just kept jumping into bed with me anyway, licking my face, demanding to be petted. She never stopped. I never used an alarm again. Still don’t.”
He paused, his heart beating a little quicker at the possibility she might respond.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“Of course it is.” It was.
“You still live with your childhood cat?”
"Yeah. I moved here from Iowa. Drove to New York with me in the front seat, her in the back.”
“You drove what, a thousand miles with a cat in the car? Really?”
“Fifteen hundred. She had a cat box and food and water in the back seat. She cowered back there the first day, but by the afternoon of the second day she was curled up in the passenger seat pretty much all day. It was a great road trip. Me and Sophe.”
She looked at him. She said, “That’s very sweet,” and he said, “Well, like I said, I love cats,” and he knew he was in, knew he had her, knew in the way she smiled as she said the word “sweet” that he would be fucking her tonight. The story about Sophie and the alarm was true. The one about the roadtrip was bullshit.
Her dance, while they talked, had gradually softened and morphed into a slinky, sinuous sway, first to one side, then the other, as she listened to him.
“I’m Toby,” he said. “People call me Tobe.”
She said, “People call me Kat.”
“What should I call you?”
“Whatever you want.” She smiled, shot him a sidelong glance.
He decided, fuck it, let’s do this now, see what happens, and leaned in to give her a kiss, slowly enough so that she would not be startled by it, quickly enough so that she would respond instinctively, without sufficient time to consider the act.
He kissed her sweetly, if not exactly chastely, but his lips lingered on hers just a moment longer than necessary, and the kiss momentarily turned deeper. He leaned back to gauge her reaction, hoping the reaction wouldn’t be a slap, or a beer in the face.
She made a sound.
Not her earlier “mew,” which he had found so arousing, but rather a soft, low vibration in her throat that did not even initially register as a human sound. The sound registered as extremely erotic, but in a way he could not exactly place.
Then he recognized the sound for what it was.
She was purring.
Prrrr.
The trill in her voice hit him deeper than he imagined possible. He still didn’t know why. It sounded so hot.
A kitty fetish. Huh.
Ears, check. Collar, check. Mews and purring, check.
Did he have a kitty fetish?
Was that even a thing?
They necked a little in the corner of the bar after that. Kissing, fondling, whispering secrets and innuendo. The kissing got a little more intense, the secrets dirtier, the innuendo less veiled. Jump-cut to the walk home, during which the necking became foreplay, occasionally spilling over so that they had to duck into the temporary confines of an alley or a dimly lit corner to continue.
When they arrived at her apartment building she fumbled for her keys as his hands—already under her black pleated skirt—caressed her ass through the fishnet. They tripped over the doorframe of the building, careened through the hallway, their ardor rising as they left the public streets behind.
At her doorway he pushed her roughly against the door; she kicked her leg and hooked her knee over the doorknob with animal dexterity; he slid two fingers deeply into her sodden pussy and took her face with his other hand and kissed her fiercely. They stayed that way until they heard the unlocking of a door from inside the apartment next door.
They disengaged and made a half-hearted attempt to compose themselves as the severe young woman exiting the apartment locked both the locks on her door. She threw them an open stare of disapproval, then turned her back to walk down the hall. They gave up the façade before she was even out of eyesight. Tobe pinned Kat against the door, fingering her. Kat haphazardly thrust the key into the lock and turned the knob and the door flew open and deposited them onto the hardwood living room floor.
Lying on his back, still attempting to recover his composure, he opened his eyes to an upside-down room. He looked up to see an improbably yellow cat regarding him warily, as upside down as the rest of the room, from atop a set of bookshelves. Its eyes glowed at him.
“You have a cat?” he asked.
She responded, “I have seven.”
“Seven.”
“Seven,” she confirmed.
He said, “You have seven cats.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just making sure I heard you correctly.”
“That one’s Zenith.”
“Hi, Zenith,” he said. The cat bolted crazily out of the room.
Only then did it occur to him that while the day was bright and sunny, the room around them was nearly pitch dark. “Why’s it so dark in here?” he asked.
“Black-out curtains. I don’t like the light.” He looked to see the upside-down window at the far end of the upside down room, and yes, bright lines of afternoon sunlight peeked from the edges of an imposing thick curtain.
“Why, are you a vampire?”
Kat rolled him over, until she was on top of him, straddling him, her arms outstretched, holding his wrists down.
“No, silly, I’m a witch. I turn all the boys I fuck into cats. Look around.”
He looked to his side. A sleek gray kitten watched him from under a table, mere feet away. He laughed uneasily.
“You Iowa boys sure are gullible,” she grinned, then joined him in his laughter.
She licked his face.
She purred.
Prrrr.
It was the same intoxicating low rumble he had heard back in the bar. He forgot about the curtains, the cats, the witches and vampires; his hard cock pulsed in response.
She said, “I know you didn’t really drive to Iowa with your cat.”
“Yes I did. I….”
“Stop it. No you didn’t. I bought it at first, but when you said the cat curled up in the passenger seat for the entire second day, well…bullshit. Bullshit. Cats don’t do that.”
He started to protest. She put a finger to his lips. “Stop it, I said. I don’t care. I really don’t.”
“Okay.”
She said, “I want you.” She smiled with hot, loopy radiance.
“I want you.”
She leaned down to him, kissed him deeply. She said, “I like that you like my kitty ears and my collar.”
“They really turn me on.”
“I know,” she said. “I saw how turned on you were in the bar.”
“I don’t know what it is about the ears and the collar and the….”
“I want to be your kitty.”
A hush fell. Fire shot through his veins in a rush. His voice grew gravelly. “You wanna be my kitty?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to make you my kitty?”
“Yes. A slutty little kitty.” She licked his face again.
He took her gently by the throat, and held her face inches away from his own. “Pet you? Train you?”
“Pet me. Train me. Please.”
“And after I have you petted and trained? What do I do to you then?”
“Fuck me. Use me. Take me.”
His grip on her tightened. He pulled her face closer. “Fuck you the way you need to be fucked.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck you until I use you up.”
“Yes. Use me up.”
“Make you my kitty. Fuck you like a slutty little kitty.”
“Make me your Fuckkitty. I want to be your Fuckkitty. I need to be your Fuckkitty.”
He reversed the roll so that he straddled her, pinning her wrists with his hands. The room finally returned to right-side up. His heart pounded, his cocked throbbed, his mind swam with color and red heat.
His Fuckkitty. She wanted him to take her and make her his Fuckkitty.
It was hot. Fuck, it was hot.
Her just-ate-a-canary smile showed she knew what effect she had on him. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and slipped out of his grasp before he was fully aware she was in motion. As she walked into the bedroom she turned in the doorway to say, “I want you to get up and come into the bedroom in about five minutes. Wait five minutes. Okay?”
He nodded his assent, too lust-stunned to speak.
“You’ll not hear another word from me.” She walked into the bedroom and closed the door.
Those five minutes felt like an hour. He fished his phone out of his pocket but there were no messages, nothing of interest. He stared at the time and counted down with the clock, his hard cock almost painfully sensitive, desperate for release. He waited at the door for the last full minute, his hand on the doorknob, barely able to contain himself. Exactly five minutes after she had asked, he turned the knob and opened the door.
The lights were off, the room was dark except for the light spilling from the open door of the bathroom off to the side, painting a bright diagonal stripe across the room and onto the bed. A blackout curtain identical to the one in the other room hid the window in the corner.
He walked into the room. He closed the door behind him, hearing the soft click of the lock.
His Fuckkitty crouched in shadow just at the edge of the light. The light glanced against her flexed thigh as she sat on her knees, bending forward to lap from a bowl of water next to her. After she had slaked her thirst she rose, met his eyes and licked her lips.
