An ice skater's mother keep an Abyssinian cat that is prone to aborting their litters. After ending her pregnancy, the cat eats roses. The skater's mother has an affinity for roses, Abyssinian cats, and Persian rugs. She tells her daughter that she wishes she had a thing of her own to keep her company, to give her comfort. But the skater's grandmother hated cats. On the eve of the mother's wedding, she threw one of her daughter's cats out of a window. She had wanted her daughter to buy an island with her new husband and gave her a large sum of money to do so. The grandmother dies years later falling down a flight of stairs, and the mother makes sure that the woman is wearing her Chanel No. 22 perfume even in her casket.

Since the grandmother's death, her granddaughter has become a figure skater for Traveling Ice Adventurers. The skater's mother finds it embarrassing work. The woman skates on the ice with a man dressed as a bear, a bear who pursues the pretty blonde woman and amuses the crowd by clumsily acting human. The skater had been seeing the photographer who captured all of their performances, but he moves to L.A. to photograph for Japan Air Lines.

Before one performance, the man who dresses as a bear tells the figure skater that she needs to stop trying to be artistic and taking chances or their boss Harry will fire her. The skater claims that Harry does not _know _skating but that she will stop taking risks and stick to the routine. They have this conversation as she sloppily puts on her makeup. The skater reflect on how, earlier that afternoon, her mother called her to tell her that her cat had aborted another litter of kittens. The mother feels guilty because the cat does not like any of the male cats, and she thinks the cat would be calmer and happier if she had kittens. The skater tells her mother that she could not have known. The mother then reveals that the doctor had told her to confine the skater's grandmother before her death, that she was a danger to herself as she began losing her memory. When the grandmother died, she tells her daughter, she had overheard a conversation outside her window and had gone to hear more.

Before they go out on the ice, the bear reveals that he received a letter from the skater's lover, the photographer, named Ben. He tells her that Ben is sorry he left, he misses the skater. The bear and woman go out onto the ice and begin their routine. As they go through it, the woman realizes that she has started crying, and the bear tells her that she is not herself.