Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine(86)

This was tricky. On the one hand, I could not deny that I was drawn to her. She had an undeniably rakish, alopecia-based charm and a devil-may-care attitude that would melt the hardest of hearts. I could tell that she was a cat that brooked no nonsense. She was, at the same time, a vulnerable creature, one which needed looking after. Therein lay the rub. Was I up to the task?

I thought back to the counseling sessions, how we’d talked about thinking things through rationally, recognizing unhelpful patterns of behavior and being brave enough to try doing things differently. Come on, Eleanor, I said to myself. Be brave. This is not the same as before, not even close to it. She’s a cat, and you’re a grown woman. You’re more than capable of doing this.

“I will assume the mantle of care, Raymond,” I said, firmly. “This creature will be looked after assiduously.”

He smiled.

“I’m sure she will be. She looks at home here already, right enough,” he said. The cat was now sprawled across the sofa cushions, for all intents and purposes asleep, although one ear twitched intermittently as she monitored the conversation.

“What are you going to call her?” he said.

I put my head on one side while I considered this. After a while, Raymond stood up.

“I’m going to nip downstairs for a fag. I’ll leave the door on the latch,” he said.

“Don’t blow the smoke toward my windows!” I shouted after him.

When he came back ten minutes later, I told him that her name was Glen. He laughed.

“Glen? That’s a boy’s name, surely?”

I thought about all of those red labels, all those empty bottles. “She’s named after an old friend,” I said.



The next day I woke with a start to find Glen lying beside me, her head on the pillow and her body under the covers, just like a human. Her huge green eyes were staring intently at me, as though she had willed me awake. She followed me into the kitchen and I gave her some water, which she ignored, and some kibble, which she bolted down and promptly vomited back up onto the kitchen floor. I turned away to get some cleaning materials from under the sink, but when I looked around, she was eating her sick back up again.

“Good girl, Glen,” I said. Low maintenance.

Raymond had only brought the bare minimum for her to spend the night, so, while she was snoozing on top of the duvet, I snuck out of the flat and took the bus to the retail park, where I knew that there was a big pet supplies store. I bought her a bigger, comfier bed, a proper litter tray with a covered roof for privacy, four different kinds of wet and dry food, and a sack of organic cat litter. I picked up a bottle of oil that was supposed to be good for her coat—a teaspoon was to be mixed in with her food every day. I didn’t care if her coat grew back or not, because she was fine just as she was, but I felt that she might be more comfortable without the bare patches of skin. She didn’t strike me as the type to enjoy playing with toys, but just in case, I bought a glittery ball and a huge fluffy mouse, the size of an old man’s slipper, which was stuffed with catnip. When I took the trolley to the till, I realized that I was going to have to call a taxi to get it all home. I felt quite proud of myself.

The driver wouldn’t help me carry it upstairs, so it took me a few trips, and I was sweating by the time I got everything indoors. The expedition had taken over two hours, from start to finish. Glen was still asleep on the duvet.

I spent the day pottering around the flat. Glen was good company: quiet, self-contained, mostly asleep. That evening, as I sat with a cup of tea and listened to a play on the radio, she jumped onto my lap and began kneading my thighs with her paws, claws partially unsheathed. It was slightly uncomfortable, but I could tell that she meant it kindly. After doing that for a minute or so, she settled herself carefully onto my lap and went to sleep. I needed to go to the bathroom about twenty minutes later, a necessity exacerbated by the fact that she was far from slender and was lounging with her full body weight directly atop my bladder. I tried to gently shift her to one side; she resisted. I tried again. On the third attempt, she got to her feet slowly, arched her back and then shuddered out a long, judgmental sigh, before dropping down onto the floor and waddling off toward her new bed. Once ensconced there, she glared at me as I left the room, maintaining the expression when I returned, and continued to glower at me throughout the evening. I wasn’t worried. I’d dealt with far, far worse things than an irritated feline.



Raymond paid a visit again a few days later to see how Glen was settling in. I’d invited him and his mother, as he’d mentioned that she was keen and I imagined, as a cat obsessive, she’d enjoy meeting Glen. In any case, there were still plenty of biscuits left over from his previous visit, so it was not as though it was any trouble.

They arrived in a black cab, which Mrs. Gibbons was very pleased about.

“The driver was lovely, Eleanor, wasn’t he, Raymond?” she said. Raymond nodded, and I thought I detected a hint, just a tiny one, of weariness, as though it wasn’t the first time she’d gone over the topic during their short journey from the south to the west of the city. “Oh, he couldn’t have been nicer, helped me in—and out!—of the taxi, held the door open while I got my walking frame . . .”

“That’s right, Mum,” he said, tucking her walking frame into the corner of the living room while she settled herself on the sofa. Glen, ever the iconoclast, had immediately gone to bed—my bed—as soon as they arrived, and there was nothing to see of her but a lightly snoring lump under the duvet. Mrs. Gibbons was disappointed, but I left her to peruse some photos on my phone while I went to make tea. Raymond joined me in the kitchen, leaning against the work top while he watched me pour. He placed a carrier bag next to me.