How to Adopt a Cat
World Literature Today|Winter 2021
Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story).
Maayan Eitan
How to Adopt a Cat

I 1. Try to seduce someone. How? Read him a story you wrote. The story will have quite a lot of sex in it. Body parts, passions, all that jazz. Lift your eyes off the page the moment your father appears in it. Smile a half-smile. There will be irony there, of course, though you’ll admit to your therapist that you’re dead serious. Dead. Serious.

2. He won’t be seduced. He’s an artist, a free soul, but he’ll tell you he’s looking for someone stable to start a family with. In fact, you realize, he’s looking for his mother. Your mother, you tell him, died during your birth. It’s a lie, but it might just as well be the truth. Tell him about your childhood. Say: “I belong to a dynasty.” To your therapist say that everything you’re doing in order to make him fall in love with you fails.

3. Tell him, “I belong to a dynasty,” then add: “My parents wanted to live outside of society.” He will look at you with dark eyes. These are the kind of eyes I want my child to have, you’d feel like saying, then immediately erase the thought from your mind. You’ll shut up too. What child? you’ll think later. Ah, it’s simple: the one he won’t have with you.

This story is from the Winter 2021 edition of World Literature Today.

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This story is from the Winter 2021 edition of World Literature Today.

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