Miau Miau

            She is a rainbow incarnate.  Red, that can only be deemed cherry, piled in a messy bun, fastened with a matching chopstick, camouflaged as a rogue strand.  A hairdo that concealed her hash stash when a shopkeeper accused her of stealing a bracelet, resulting in a night in Nepali jail. 

            Turquoise eyeliner, her only spot of makeup.  It matched the swastika behind her ear so precisely that I’d thought she’d drawn it herself.  “My tattoo piss them off in Denmark.  They say, ‘Aha! You are fascist!’ and I say, ‘No, I Buddhist.’” (The swastika in Buddhism symbolizes Buddha's footprints). Her laugh is velvet gravel.  Rich with mirth, but toeing the precipice of crumbling into a coughing fit.  One paint splattered hand holds omnipresent spliff dregs, the other a stainless steel mug brimming with beer, a lighter, a paintbrush.  Once I saw all three.

            Paler red bags sag beneath icy eyes, echoing her hair and makeup, contrasting sallow cheeks that tinge green in the sun, her stage makeup.  “The show must go on!” she refrains when I ask why she fainted in the Qatar Airways office in Moscow.  “The circus came to town.  The circus left.  The clown stayed!”  We cackle with genuine, equal fervor. 

            She spun a thousand tales, a partial spider web with dangling threads: of smoking a joint in Dubai’s airport’s smoking lounge with a Nepali cleaner standing guard outside, of smoking cigarettes inside D.C.’s airport, the subsequent TSA jail threats, and her grinning, begging reaction since she was studying the death penalty (“What better place to collect data than the inside!”), of being kicked out of Mumbai’s slums “for disrupting social order, I suppose.  I fed the dogs.  They didn’t like that.” 

            “A boy from New Jersey said I have no empathy.  I say, ‘No, I have… for your dog!’ I am Miau Miau, I don’t like humans.” 

I beg to differ.  “Need anything?” I asked before leaving for dinner while she remained at the guest house, sanding and painting a turquoise chair, a project she’d embarked on just two days before returning to Copenhagen after nearly three months in Nepal.  “Just your company,” she grinned, revealing caramel teeth above a solitary, black chin hair.  We talked for what linear-oriented people would call hours, but what I saw as spirals, dipping in and out of tangential tidbits.  My fingers itched to surreptitiously record, capturing her wisdom. 

            “She’s really smart,” Suraj, the 20-something host brother, swore as we sojourned to dinner, having known her for the past 4 years. 

            “I know.” And empathetic, I thought.  Tears welled when we said farewell, as she thanked me for helping look after her two adopted cats and loveable mutt Toto, arming me with eye ointment, fungal spray, and baby powder.  I never saw her eat, though I spotted a bowl of chowmein in her room, tucked amongst a half completed project of a crimson child’s slipper and plastic rose, defunct lighters, Empathy: The Handbook for Revolution (“You know this word don’t exist in Russian???”).  But it sat cold and congealed in a dog bowl, studded with cat kibble.

            Miau Miau never advised nor dispensed sage wisdom (except: “If you need to break up dog fight, use beer,” and mimed shaking a bottle), yet it dripped from her quips, from her half started, never finished, roughly comprehended stories.  She possesses a secret to life, a knowledge of which she was vaguely aware.  Fascinating like the stars, shining with the hues and splendor of a multicolored sunrise, I attached to her a puppy, though I suppose she sought to appear as if attaching to no one; a cat.  Still I remember her tears upon parting, though they were likely born of relief at my agreement to watch her pets.  In less than 48 liner hours, I felt as if I’d known her for years.  Maybe I have.  Maybe she’s the dormant, crazy cat lady, waiting to pounce from the confines of my soul.