Sweet Romance14 min read
Cat Medicine and Broken Promises
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I still remember the way Knox shouted at me, loud enough to make the ceramic mug tremble on the counter.
"Can you stop fussing with it?" he snapped. "It's just a cat. Just wash it. I'm going to play basketball."
"I asked you to hold the shower head," I said, my voice trembling more from surprise than anger. "Just hold it for two minutes."
"Two minutes? I told you—" He cut himself off and left the sentence hanging like a broken match.
"Knox," I said, quieter, "it’s not about two minutes."
He slapped a towel over his head and left the bathroom to cool off. He always used sports as an escape clause.
I picked up my phone and found the screenshot that had been sitting in my messages for hours. It came from a friend—the group chat screenshot of him replying to someone asking who could accompany her for a part-time telemarketing job. Knox had answered, "I'll go."
I stared at the image. "He'll go." Knox would go spend the whole day listening to sales calls, but he couldn't hold a shower head for the girl he'd been seeing for two years.
That moment—just then—I decided something in me had finally finished.
01
When Knox was in the shower, I opened his QQ. It felt small and ridiculous, but something in me needed proof. His chat window seemed empty—no conversation bubbles, nothing. That absence worried me more than a thousand messages.
Then I remembered the roaming record feature.
"I'll check," I told myself, fingers cold as I scrolled back. Ten minutes earlier he had asked a girl if she was ready. She had answered yes, then joked, "Is your husband there? Is he bothering you?"
My throat tightened. I took photos of the chat on my phone and then deleted that log from his account like a thief erasing fingerprints. I didn't want to have to read those pixels again, but I needed to keep the memory somewhere safe.
The girl's name was Raquel Gerard. I remembered her face from one class dinner—delicate makeup, a practiced laugh. When I later mocked her eyeliner at the table she froze. I had been blunt on purpose, baiting the green-tea act until she had nowhere left to hide. It worked. She stopped bothering me that night.
Knox scolded me. "You embarrassed her in front of everyone."
"She's playing a game," I said. "You didn't see how she kept cueing me, flattering me, then poking at Knox. She was laying groundwork."
He didn't understand female social tactics and that made him blind. He said we were all awkward; I suggested he host another dinner and let me apologize to the "little girl" in front of everyone. He refused. He said they weren't close.
Two days later Raquel posted a photo on Moments—a lipstick, in the exact shade I'd worn that night. When I checked Knox's deleted chat history with the shop, I found an address: Raquel's name.
"That's it," I whispered. "That's the proof."
02
I wanted to confront him in the bathroom. I wanted to watch the towel drop and show him the screen with a smile. But when the shame and the betrayal crept up on me, I let the tears fall like tiny heavy stones.
"I can't be fooled anymore," I told my pillow.
Knox came out, dripping, and peered at me with a pattern he'd perfected: irritation as armor.
"Why are you crying? It's just the cat. Tomorrow I'll do it."
"Knox," I said, voice hoarse. "We've changed."
He blinked, "Since when do you start philosophical thoughts in the tub?"
I had been the one who used to make him panic when I cried. He would apologize, scoop me up, say it was his fault. It had been like that in the beginning. Now I felt invisible, like a radio playing static in the background.
I typed a message with steady fingers: "Knox Harrison, let's break up."
03
That night he didn't sleep on the couch, he didn't apologize, he didn't call. Raquel posted a selfie at an internet cafe—the light and angle so practiced that even a stranger could spot the intention. Her caption asked if I was okay. She said she and Knox were playing games and that she would watch over him.
I called her. She said on the phone, "Emerson, you won't be mad, will you? He’s with me. I’ll make him come home and apologize."
I laughed. "Sure. You're his wife now then."
I blocked her number.
I sat with the cat. Little Grey climbed onto my lap, purring loud against my chest. He had no idea he had become a wedge in a failing structure.
04
A few days later, Elsie dragged me out. "Don't hide," she said. "If he brought her, we will show up. Who are we hiding from?"
I agreed, if only because playing the victim felt worse than the scene of public dignity. I spent money on my hair, lacquered a brave smile onto my lips, and went to the class farewell dinner.
She was there—Raquel—passing around chocolates, smiling like a queen with free samples. Knox sat beside her, comfortable as if his hands did not betray the truth of his nights.
When Raquel cued me to speak, I refused. "I don't know you well enough for that toast," I said loudly.
Silence spread like spilled water.
Raquel blinked, then stammered, "Emerson, did I upset you? I'm sorry. I—"
"You flirted with my boyfriend at night," I said, and the words tasted like iron. "You sent him pictures. You had him bring you cosmetics. You bought gifts addressed to you."
Knox looked pale. He wanted to speak, but his mouth was sand. I kept going—everything I had found, every deleted receipt, every chat record—all sorted into a map so simple anyone could follow it.
"You should not be ashamed of yourself," I told Raquel. "But you should be ashamed for what you chose to do. A human being's life is not a game."
People murmured. Some pulled out their phones. I felt no cruelty. I felt a cold clarity. Knox sent me a message: "You went too far."
I replied and then blocked him.
05
I still had a life to live. Bills. Work. Little Grey's medicine.
The cat had a fungal infection. The vet insisted on a full treatment plan: shaving hair, medicated baths, topical medicine, and repeat checkups. I worried about shaving his fur because he was young. It felt like cutting away a part of him, but I never wanted to be careless about his safety.
The first reply to my group post asking about cat ringworm came from Felix Reed.
He asked, "Where are you now?"
"At the clinic for a check-up," I typed. "They say we might have to shave him."
"Don't shave yet. There are better vets. I'll help."
I almost scrolled past—Felix had been a quiet presence on campus. He was handsome in a way that didn't shout. Twenty minutes later, he pulled up outside the clinic.
"You brought lunch," he said, offering a small bag. "I thought you might be hungry."
Little Grey crawled into Felix's arms and purred against his chest like he'd found a harbor. Felix crouched and stroked his back.
"What's his name?" he asked.
"Little Grey," I said.
He checked the lamp, asked the right questions, and introduced me to a vet who called the other place "careless." He didn't speak like someone trying to impress. He spoke like someone who cared enough to learn.
"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked.
I did not know how to expect kindness. The last person who had been mine had made me cry and then walked off. Felix stayed. He helped me pay. He joked about buying pet food like a man considering which candy to offer the moon. He was tender in a way I had not been trained to accept.
06
He and I bumped into each other more often—friends' gatherings, odd university events. He always seemed near, never intrusive. When we played a role-playing murder game at a store, he cornered me in a "haunted room," and when a fake ghost brushed my ankle, I leapt onto him and he did not flinch.
"You're heavy," he said with a smile, steadying me.
"You're awful," I said, breathless.
"Awful?" He feigned hurt in a small, theatrical way. "Try 'irresistible.'"
It was impossible not to laugh.
"Are you sure you're not playing me?" I asked one night over drinks.
"I have a suspect face," he said. "But I'm sincere. Emerson, you deserve someone who actually notices you."
07
After the newness settled into the easy cadence of companionship, we went out to do small things—movie nights, hospital visits for Little Grey, late-night drives. He said things like, "I liked you a long time ago," and the confession felt like a hand on the small of my back, steady and warm.
"I found you feeding stray cats freshman year," he told me. "I thought, that's someone I want to know."
"Why didn't you say anything back then?" I asked.
"I left for exchange," he said simply. "Cowed myself. Came back to find you taken. I waited."
There was a softness to his persistence that didn't set my teeth on edge. He spoke of me as something calm and true.
When we were leaving the clinic one afternoon, Knox and Raquel stood outside, and raindrops hung on the brim of Raquel’s designer umbrella like cheap baubles.
"How are you two together?" Knox asked, throat tight.
"We're just here for Little Grey," I answered. "If you need your things, they're inside."
Knox moved like someone pretending he hadn't lost a limb. He pleaded with me to forgive him. He tried to explain that he had only helped Raquel as a favor that got out of hand.
Felix stepped in, wrapping his arm around my shoulder like a silent shield.
"Knox," he said, low and measured, "take your things and go."
Knox's mouth formed a small, helpless O.
08
A few days later the school was shaken. Someone had poisoned a cluster of campus strays; one died. My friend, who had been feeding them, broke down beside me and whispered, "They were poisoned. Someone put out food laced with chemicals."
My heart stopped. I stared at the sky as if the answer might float down in the clouds.
We demanded an investigation. The security cameras around the feeding area were blank at first, but a different camera caught movement—someone limp and careful, hair dyed a certain shade of pink beneath a hood.
We brought the footage to the police; we brought suspicion to the dorm where Raquel lived.
She stood at the door when we arrived with the police. Her expression was a mask—in that instant she looked smaller than in the restaurant lights.
"What's this about?" she asked, throat high.
"Did you put poison out for the cats?" the officer asked.
"I didn't," she said, sharpness in the edge. "Why would I—?"
"You bought a specific chemical," the officer said. "We found purchase records, and traces on your shoes."
She snapped into denial like a spring. "That's not true! It's a setup! Emerson is making trouble again!"
The room filled with phones. Everyone recorded.
"You did this?" I asked, and my voice was strange to my ears—flat, like a ruler marking a length.
"No! I—" she began to tremble. The first word of denial came easily. The next was fractured. "I would never. You don't understand me. You don't know—"
"Do you remember the strays I posted about?" I said. "Do you remember the feeding point? They were on warm milk and stale bread. Someone put out poison. Some of them died."
She opened her mouth and closed it. Her mascara ran. For a moment she looked like the same girl who had once asked me about my lipstick color as if that were a code for intimacy.
People in the hallway started to shout. "She did it." "I saw her near the feeding point." Phones flashed.
Raquel's denial curdled into a low, frantic cry. "No—no, I didn't do anything! I would never—"
A student put up a video she'd posted earlier that month—an innocuous clip of her at a park near the feeding point. In the loop at the end of the clip, she walked to the trash can and opened a plastic bag. The angle was crude; the suspicion was real.
"Take her in," the officer said. "We'll handle it at the station."
She struggled. "You're making a mistake! Emerson planted the evidence!"
The crowd's mood turned like boiling water. Some people began to record more intensely. A girl shouted at her, "You killed innocent animals! What did you hope to gain?"
She knelt suddenly. "It was just to scare them away! I wanted to scare them off. I didn't mean—"
"Because they ate your precious snacks?" someone growled. "You think poisoning is a joke?"
Knox's face—impassive until that second—crumpled. He could not look at her. He stepped back, fingers white. I saw the memory of our small apartment—a toothbrush, an empty mug—and for a second I thought I would vaporize from the cold clarity of it.
09
The public punishment unfolded not as a formal sentence, but as a living verdict.
Raquel was led through the campus square. Students circled them like ripples, phones raised like surveillance towers. They played her motherly Instagram stories against the crime—contradictions marched in columns. She had once hosted a charity photo with smiles and clean filters; now she dragged a criminal record between her teeth.
"Why would you do this?" a student asked.
She looked up and tried to compose a lie. "I thought—" she began.
"We saw your purchases," someone said, a voice threaded by disgust. "We saw your chats with Knox. You don't get to play the victim."
She fell into denial, then gasped and admitted to small parts of the truth, and then withdrew into screaming like a caged animal. Her performance was erratic: smugness, denial, then panic, then hysterical pleading.
"Please," she begged at one point, throwing herself at our feet, "I'm only young. I didn't mean to kill anything. I—"
Students stepped back, faces hard. One guy I didn't know pressed his camera closer and said, "Say you’re sorry. Say it to their faces."
She looked at the little graves we had made for the cats. Her voice lost its artifice. "I'm so sorry," she sobbed, a thin, broken sound. "I never wanted to hurt them. I didn't know how else—"
"Not sorry enough," a woman said. "You were trying to win a man."
"Is that what you wanted?" another voice demanded. "To win by murder?"
Raquel's face burned with shame. She tried bargaining—tried to invent a path to forgiveness: community work, donations, tears. But the wound she had inflicted wasn't only on animals. It was on the small trust we had for ordinary kindness. That trust cannot be purchased.
At one point the crowd's mood turned carnival-cruel. Phones moved forward like a tide. Someone held a picture of a cat up to her face. "Look," they said. "She was alive. You killed her."
Her knees buckled. She begged the police for shelter.
"You'll face the consequences," the officer said, and the phrase hung like a bell.
10
"Why?" Knox asked later, voice shredded to an edge. He had followed the procession from the clinic steps, as if distance would soften truth.
He looked more broken than afraid. "I didn't ask her to do any of this," he said. "I didn't…"
"You didn't? You sent messages. You bought gifts addressed to her," I said. "You treated her like your second home."
"I—" He stopped. "I thought she was lonely. I thought I could charm her away from wanting more. I didn't think she'd do something like this."
"You didn't think she'd do something like poison animals?" I asked. "Knox, that's not 'something like this.' That's a line."
He looked down. "I know."
Felix stood beside me then, silent, his presence like a quiet shield. He had been there through the arrest. He had watched as Raquel oscillated—arrogant, then broken, then grasping for mercy. He watched Knox's shame and did not gloat.
"You were a coward," I said. "You left choices for other people to make and then tried to blame kindness when it failed."
Knox's face went gray. He left the next day for parts unknown.
11
The fallout was messy and public. Campus forums lit up. People argued that I had been too harsh at the dinner. People tried to paint me as vindictive. Others said Raquel had deserved what she got.
The police took their time. Raquel was charged; she was arrested; the university expelled her. She pleaded for leniency. She called me a monster for reporting her, then attempted to rewrite the narrative so she could be the wounded party.
In one town-hall the Dean allowed Raquel to say her piece under supervision. The auditorium filled. People whispered like leaves. She was ushered onto the stage, sat, and the microphones collected her thin voice.
"I didn't mean for this to get so big," she said at first. "I didn't mean—"
A girl from the animal-rights club stood and told everyone about the smell of the food, the way the little cat’s eyes dimmed. The old camera footage was projected onto a screen. We watched the sequence in slow motion: a hand—Raquel's—tipping a small sachet into a bowl.
Phones flashed again and again.
Raquel's reactions in public followed a pattern that people will keep recounting: triumph, then a sudden flinch as evidence hit, then denial, then a shuddering collapse into apology. "I'm sorry," she kept repeating, "I'm sorry. I was desperate. I wanted him to pay attention."
A chorus from the rows—some applause, more hisses.
"You're not a victim," one of my classmates shouted. "You're a criminal."
She covered her face like she might stop the sound waves by doing so.
The punishment scene was not instantaneous. It was drawn out, intimate and humiliating, and it carried with it the moral weight of every grief-stricken voice. Teachers called for stricter rules. Students called for restorative practices. Raquel got booked in, cuffed with trembling wrists. Her face on the projection was a study in contrast: polished curated images on her social profiles, and the live woman at the podium, ragged and real.
12
I did not take pleasure. I took relief.
"Did it change you?" a friend texted. "Do you feel better?"
"No," I typed back. "I feel like the air is clearer."
Felix sat beside me the night after the public hearing and rubbed the back of my hand with one thumb.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," he said.
"I didn't expect the whole world to know my cat's name," I said, and he laughed softly.
"Little Grey is important," he said. "Everything about him is important because it's part of you."
13
Knox tried to wiggle back into the corners of my life. He left gifts at my door—useless tokens, cheap apologies. He wrote messages about regret. Once he came to my building drunk and tried to talk about "us."
"Emerson," he said, bracing against the stairway rail, "I can't stand seeing you like this. I was a fool."
"You were a cheat," I said. "You used a woman and you let another woman try to destroy lives. Why should you earn my sympathy?"
He looked at the floor. "Because I loved you."
"You loved the version of me you wanted," I said. "Not me."
He left the next day for a job across town. He sent one final message, "Forgive me."
I did not reply.
14
Felix and I made small, ordinary vows to each other. Not promises about forever—just a pact about presence.
"Stay," I told him once on a cold transplant of night. "Just stay."
He squeezed my hand. "Always, but also not promised like some novel line. I'll be here in the morning, with coffee and the litter box."
"You romantic," I said, and he shrugged like a man caught committing gravity.
We moved through ordinary days—Little Grey cured, his fur fluffing back like the small rebuilding of a life. We buried memorials for the campus strays with classes and odd students who had finally stopped being bystanders.
Raquel was a study in decline. She was processed through the legal steps, detained for questioning, and then tried. The trial itself was not the entertainment. The public humiliation had already peaked; the legal system brought a measured coldness: evidence, witnesses, a sentence that felt like both too much and not enough.
15
There were nights when I would replay the early days—Knox's hands, the tenderness that had once been enough—and wonder where that ember had turned to ash. I convinced myself that we had been two people writing in different inks, and that paper finally tore.
One evening, Felix and I walked along the old river where I had fed strays freshman year. He paused and watched a small cat stalking a moth.
"You think about them?" he asked, gentle.
"All the time," I said. "They were the beginning, in an odd way."
He pulled me close. "This is the middle then," he said.
"I want the middle to be kinder," I said.
"It already is," he replied.
16
Months later, rumors floated that Knox and Raquel had married. "They must be a perfect match," someone sneered. The campus whispered that the child she carried wasn't his, that their marriage was fraying. People gossiped, and I let them. What they thought of Knox was no longer my job.
One day Fox, a classmate I barely knew, stopped me, holding a flyer for animal shelter volunteers.
"Emerson, will you come speak about animal care?" he asked. "People want to know how to help without hurting."
"Yes," I said. "I'll come."
Felix squeezed my hand. "Good," he said.
At the event, I talked about Little Grey's recovery. I talked about how wrong attitudes—like thinking animals are expendable or ornamental—can lead people to do monstrous things. I did not point fingers; evidence and the law had spoken. I spoke plainly about compassion and vigilance.
17
The last time I saw Raquel she was outside a courthouse, face hollow and drawn. Someone took a photo of her and put it online. People wrote vile comments. For a moment I felt a small, sharp anger—at the entire ecosystem that cultivates attention like fertilizer for bad seeds.
Felix watched me read some of the comments and shook his head. "Don't let them take your energy," he said.
"I won't," I said. "I learned how to protect the things that matter."
18
A year after the first broken mug and the first angry bath of Little Grey, I sat on the windowsill feeding him tiny bits of orange segments while Felix peeled the fruit beside me.
"You remember that day you splashed water on the table?" Felix asked. "You looked like you'd swallowed a winter storm."
"I remember more than that," I said. "I remember the last time he hugged me when I cried. I remember how small it made me feel then, and how brave I feel now."
He smiled and fed me an orange slice.
"Are you happy?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "Not because I stomped on someone, but because I learned to choose what to keep."
He kissed my temple. "Good. Then we keep doing this."
19 — Unique Ending
Little Grey purred and batted the orange peel with his paw. The peel skittered to the floor, and Felix scooped it up with a laugh.
"You two coming to the volunteer talk?" he asked.
"I am," I answered.
"Good," he said. "Because it was your stubbornness and those tiny cats that taught the rest of us to be people."
He fed me the last slice, then looked past my shoulder. "Promise to never let anyone think your kindness is a weakness?"
"I promise," I said.
Little Grey jumped into my lap. His healed fur was soft under my fingers. I felt the present like a warm blanket I had earned. Outside, campus life hummed—rumors, love, second chances, and the occasional loud, careless human mistake.
I leaned my head against Felix's shoulder and said, "If anyone asks what saved me, tell them it was a cat with a stubborn purr, a man who stayed, and a shameful green-tea girl who showed how low people can fall."
Felix laughed softly, and Little Grey purred louder, as if in full agreement.
The End
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