Husband likes to say there are two plant assassins in our family: me and Cat.

Before Cat, few plants in our household were able to escape my demonic clutches. Whenever Husband went on a work trip, they’d be left begging for water. Some didn’t manage to cling on till his return and wilted away from this earth. Each time, sorrow-stricken Husband would berate me. Feeling wronged, I’d retort, “But I didn’t do anything to them!”

“That’s the point,” he’d snap, furious. “It’s because you didn’t do anything that they died.”

In the end, Husband started cultivating only extremely hardy plants, which I was forbidden to interfere with.

Neither of us could have foreseen that, once rescued from me, his beloved houseplants would fall victim to the slaughter of Cat. As soon as he arrived in our home, Cat began a reign of terror that immediately vaulted him past me to number one in the plant-killer charts. I rejoiced that the resultant carnage had, for once, nothing to do with me.

At the end of his rope, Husband held Cat up at arm’s length and gave him a good scolding. Cat merely stared limpidly back with his round, clear eyes, utterly innocent and hapless. Finally, Husband realized the futility of his disapproval and set him back down. Even then, Cat knew how to use his own cuteness to exonerate himself, and he truly saved me too. If not for his presence, the few surviving houseplants would surely have succumbed to my ministrations.

As far as Cat is concerned, plants aren’t for admiring or sniffing at but for sleeping on. Whenever the weather is nice and Cat is in a good mood, he climbs atop a houseplant and snoozes amid its vegetation, rolling his plump body this way and that, allowing the sunlight to baste every cranny. Beneath his weight, the leaves and branches crunch and rustle, speaking their final words. Cat ignores them, dozing contentedly all afternoon. By the time he wakes up, so much of the plant will be mulched into the soil that there’s no way it could spring back to its original shape.

There are also times when Cat grabs hold of a peculiar inspiration (who knows where from) and declares a particular plant his sworn enemy. Lunging at it, he’ll wrestle and bite in a display of overstimulated vigor. After a few rounds of this, the plant will be decimated, and Cat swaggers off the battlefield every inch the victor, leaving in his wake a chaotic scene of strewn leaves and branches. Without a word, Husband sweeps away the corpses of his fallen soldiers and disposes of them. He has trained himself not to betray any emotion in these moments, having psychologically prepared himself for the arrival of this day.

After a plant’s passing, the soil that once housed it gradually grows hard and dry. Cat continues treating it as a bed, sprawling atop its surface and snoozing away, limbs splayed, photosynthesizing in the stead of the eradicated plant. With each absorption of sunlight, Cat’s fur manufactures particles of joy, bringing sheer happiness to Cat when licked up and to humans when inhaled, so much so that we forget all about the plants he murdered, and even Cat no longer remembers that he is a killer.