I wait for mass to be over so everyone will leave. For now, at the bottom of the hymnal rack on the back of a pew, buried in the sanctuary of its wooden walls and listening to the back-and-forth between the parishioners and the priest, I am content. I am far, far back in the church, many, many pews away from people. Have mercy on us O Lord, for we have sinned against you and it is right to give thanks. 

If they saw me they would shout. If they reached into my sanctuary and touched my soft fur they would scream and scream. Maybe they would take my little body, warm and holy in their hands. “This is her body. We give it up to the Lord, it is right to give thanks and praise,” and then maybe they would drown me in the baptismal font. 

It is okay that I am far from the altar. My ears are very keen. My ears are keen, and my teeth are strong. I find a cockroach hiding with me in the hymnal pocket, and eat it in two bites. I like the crack-gush of its body breaking between my sharp teeth. Take this and eat of it. It’s my body now. 

I chew through the leather cover of a hymnal. I like the salt-taste of long-dead animal skin. I like the woody dust-taste of the paper. One cannot live on bugs alone, but also on the Word of God. 

Today the priest is talking about Ruth and Naomi. Ruth was married to Naomi’s son, and there was a famine and he died, their whole family died, everyone died except Ruth and Naomi. Ruth said to Naomi, “where you go, I go, and who you worship, I worship, and where you die, I will die.” And when a man saw Ruth and asked, “whose woman is this?” Naomi said, “Mine.”

🐀

I live in St. Hyacinth Basilica. A hyacinth is a flower that grows in the Spring whose petals taste bitter and whose bulbs make my stomach hurt but it is a good name for my home because suffering is God’s plan. They are the first things that grow after the snow melts, and like Jesus they are perennially reborn every Easter season.

There are not many parishioners and it does not take long for the church to empty. I crawl out of the hymnal pocket and I let myself drop to the floor with a soft and jarring thud. My body is strong and the fall is not so far.

I smell the air hoping to find my friend. She came in from outside where she lived in a dumpster. She left because they started putting poison in the trash. She left to find somewhere safe and she found me. 

When she first came here she carried the air-smell of outside in the black oil slick of her fur. She smelled like the smoke of cars and the sour tang of dumpster rot and the smooth warmth of cooking grease but she has been here long enough that she is starting to smell like dust and paper and wood just like all of us. Just like me. 

I am glad that she is here because soon it will be Advent and from Advent until Pentecost it gets cold outside. It gets so cold it can freeze your ears and your naked tail and your little naked feet. The people bring snow and slush in on their boots and it makes the aisles gritty and slick with cold water and the salt of the earth.

My friend is missing three toes and I am glad she came to the basilica before she could lose any more. The first time I met her was at night outside of the multi-purpose room where the children go during mass. She found me in the doorway. Her body was still except her nose which was twitching with my scent. It was as if she had been waiting for me. When I found her, she led me straight into the room and to half a cookie. Not even half, half of a half maybe, and she made space for me so I knew I was supposed to eat it with her, even though there was not very much. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I got nervous and confused. I did not know what to do, so I sniffed and sniffed her. I hoped it would help me understand but I got lost in the smell of outside on her. I got lost watching her whiskers waver. She did not eat the cookie until I stopped smelling her, and then we ate it together. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. It was the best thing I have ever had. 

I do not smell my friend, the inviting grease-smell that still clings to her, so I decide to find something else good. I run across the floor, my claws click click click scrabbling on the shiny stone. 

God said “rats are those things that are unclean among you, the swarming things that swarm on the ground,” but being unclean is not so bad. You should see what God has to say about you.

I flatten my body and wiggle under the door into the room where the priest keeps his vestments. They are lined up hanging on racks. I bury my claws into the soft cloth and climb up up up. It is a lot of work but blessed are those who stay steadfast under trial. I make it all the way into the pockets where there is almost always candy. There are lumps of chocolate, delicious little turds wrapped up in foil. I eat the chocolate and the foil too, and every time I bite down the foil leaves a thrill of metal blood-taste in my mouth. There are hard pebbles of butterscotch. I chew through plastic wrappers and crunch crunch crunch them. I maybe crunch them too loud because I smell my brother climbing up the vestments following my trail until he tips into the pocket with me. 

I do not know if he is my brother. It is hard to remember the mass of small wiggling bodies, pink and sightless as worms, a morass drinking from our mother. This is our body, drink of it. I cannot keep track of who in our home I am related to. You know what big Catholic families are like. 

My-brother-who-might-not-be-my-brother crawls into the pocket and licks at the sugar smeared on my face. I imagine him crawling on top of me and filling me with his wiggling pink worm-babies. I imagine him eating up all the candy and even though I know there is enough for us both it makes me angry. It is mine. I bite him hard in the neck, and he squeals. I bite and bite and bite, and part of his ear comes away in my mouth. Mine. He keeps squealing and scrambles out of my pocket without fighting back. 

If the meek ever inherit the earth, maybe things will work out for him. 

🐀

Even in the middle of the night, when the parishioners are gone and the priests are gone and the deacons and cleaners are gone, one person stays in the church, hanging above the altar, always watching because God is always with you. Even when he sees us, he never screams or shouts or moves. We’ve grown very comfortable with each other. 

The person above the altar has a name and that name is Jesus. Jesus and The Devil are God’s best friends. God loves Jesus because Jesus is the sun, and God loves The Devil because The Devil tempts people to sin. God likes sinning because he likes to get angry and he loves to forgive.

In the end, I do not find my friend. She finds me. I smell her coming, my small unclean thing, moving towards me in a darkness that bleeds into the edges of her. My whiskers brush up against her flank and the discrete warmth of her body makes me suddenly aware of how exposed we are, huddled in the aisle, and so I run off and her claws click click click behind me and we shove our bodies underneath the tabernacle. 

I stop moving and do not know what to do with myself. I scratch my ears and wipe at my eyes. I smell the floor but I know there is nothing to smell. I smell the floor again. I have never taken anyone to the tabernacle. I have never taken my brothers or my sisters and I have never before had a friend. I chewed a hole in it and I am the only one who knows that hole is there. It has only ever known my body. It is mine. I smell the nothing on the floor again.

My friend presses her nose against my muzzle. My whiskers flex around her narrow head, and her nose is cold and wet against my skin. It is too much and I cannot bear it. I show my teeth and latch onto her mouth. My teeth are strong. I break her skin and taste her blood and when it enters my mouth it becomes mine.

She squeals and bites back, her teeth breaking the skin of my lip just where I bit her. My blood must enter her mouth, too, and become hers. I brace myself and wait for her to keep going, but she does not. She pulls away from me, and the only parts of us that touch are our whiskers. 

I can feel my body shaking, and I am reminded of how very small I am. I step forward and bury my face in the thick fur of her neck. I smell her and she smells almost like my home. I move slowly towards the hole I made. Slow enough that she will know to follow. Be strong and courageous. Be not afraid. 

In the tabernacle they keep the Eucharist in a heavy golden bowl with a heavy golden cover. It is too heavy for me to move, but the cabinet itself is warm and dry and I like to smell the bread and wine that I cannot reach. It is a good place to hide. When my friend begins sniffing around the edge of the lid, I remember that when two are gathered in God’s name he is among them. His body is just there, just beneath the lid. We push it together and together we are strong. The bowl topples over. It is loud, but it does not matter. No one can find us here except each other. Where she goes, I go and where she worships, I worship. 

This is our body and we eat of it.