Nikolayev and Lyuska

Nikolayev hated the cat, wet socks, and his mother-in-law. The socks would get wet because his boots had holes, the mother-in-law would nag him for having made short work of her daughter’s happiness, and the cat just peed in his cap if he dozed off on the floor. Taking on his mother-in-law was pointless. That sprightly old gal could easily dodge an oven fork brandished in her direction; she checked the stools to make sure a leg hadn’t been sawn through; and she never drank tea that Nikolayev had brewed.

The sock thing was worse.

His mother-in-law knitted the socks, so he had to humiliate himself by filching from her stash. She counted them and made notches on the windowsill for any that were stolen. When the tally topped a half-dozen pairs, she would start whining for money or promising to call in the local constable. The windowsill was slashed and scored like a lace doily.

The cat’s name was Lyuska. Her mother, decrepit old Muska, had kept on having litter after litter until she finally ran out of steam, gave birth to a runt, and quietly died. The wife and mother-in-law promptly lost their minds. They fed the kitten from an eyedropper, holding their breath. That little thing reminded them something awful of their beloved Muska.

From that point on, the cat was spoiled rotten and had no respect for Nikolayev as a man and the head of the family. After a day of torment on his bumpy, rackety tractor, all he wanted was a drink and a good sleep, but the cat had her own opinion on that. A couple of times she had blithely swatted his quarter-liter of vodka off the table, which got her flung out the ventilation window. And there it was; they were at war.

Lyuska would lie in wait until Nikolayev sat down to supper and, purring quietly, would sneak up from behind, sweeping the floor with her tail, and latch onto his calf, chomping down on it with her sharp teeth. Then, off she scampered, to hide beneath the floorboards. Nikolayev would go after her, and never mind if his mother-in-law and wife tried to get in his way. After a while, he would give up in disgust and go to get some shut-eye on the stove, under his granddad’s cozy homespun coat, which Lyuska had managed to soak in between times. She gnawed Nikolayev’s leather boots, which let even more water in, and raked her claws across his felt ones.

Fresh from the bathhouse on his days off, Nikolayev would sit at the table in his knee-length sateen undershorts and striped t-shirt, his eyes slitted with happiness, chugging beer from an enameled milk can and snacking on onion and herring. Lyuska, neatly netted beforehand, would be howling balefully in the storage chest. And that’s how they lived, until Nikolayev broke his leg. He flat out refused to check himself in at the clinic, having decided that he’d rather put up with his mother-in-law than a dozen ward-mates.

That was when Lyuska changed. Too weak to lift a finger, Nikolayev lay in a listless rage, feeling the cat eyeing him from the stove. Eventually she plucked up courage and started coming down, even lying on the rustic little mat by the bed. Then she’d be jumping onto the beat-up sofa. Once, when the mother-in-law was making a racket banging pots and buckets, Lyuska pricked up her ears and started gently sharpening her claws on Nikolayev’s plaster cast.

Sick and tired of being laid up, Nikolayev actually took to sharing his troubles with Lyuska and feeding her bits of the cheese that his mother-in-law made. Before the week was out, he couldn’t go an hour without worrying whenever Lyuska launched her bulky self through the ventilation window. She had her litter at night, waking Nikolayev with a strange snuffling and rustling in the sheets.

He didn’t sleep a wink, for fear of moving his leg in its plaster cast. It was not until morning that he called out – softly, feebly – “Mother dear, where’re you at? I’ve got kittens here.”

“Oh, botheration!” his mother-in-law wailed. “And you with a gimpy leg, so who’ll do the drowning?”

“I’ll kill ya,” Nikolayev said crisply, and reached for his crutches.

He let all six of them be.