Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Presidents of the United States of America – Kitty

Trigger Warning: Cruelty to Animals, Cruelty to Humans

Hoping for a fresh start in a new house, Mark disposed of his daughter’s beloved pet cat the night before they moved. But somehow, impossibly, the cat has reappeared five hundred miles away in a place it’s never been. It’s back for snuggles. And revenge.

======

With a satisfying snap, Mark broke open the gelatin capsule of yet another pain pill. The fine white powder inside the pill he tipped into a bowl of salmon. The label on the pill bottle warned users not to take more than two pills at a time, and that was a warning intended for adult humans. He’d already tipped three into the salmon and went on to add two more. That should be enough, surely. He mashed the powder and fish together then rinsed the fork carefully under the kitchen tap.

“Here, Kitty,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Here, Kitty-Kitty, come and get it.”

The grey tortoiseshell cat prowlled around the entrance to the kitchen. Any time anyone was in the kitchen, it wasn’t far away. Given that Mark never fed him though, Kitty regarded him with suspicion. Rubbing its cheek against the side of the doorway, it left a greasy, brown smear. One of many things Mark couldn’t stand about the animal, he’d wiped that mark off only a few days ago but already the cat’s efforts had already caused it to reappear. Gritting his teeth, he set the bowl down on the linoleum.

“Come on, you stupid animal!”

Kitty sniffed the bowl. Its eyes met Mark’s as he backed away. The cat looked suspicious. Could it smell the painkillers, or was it just the fact that Mark never normally gave it food? Or were his nerves making him project something that wasn’t there? He’d found the tin of salmon while cleaning out their cupboards in anticipation of the fact they planned to move to their new house tomorrow and thought it would make an appropriate last meal for the cat. He wasn’t totally heartless after all. Maybe he would have been better off just mixing the pills with some normal cat food, however.

After a few long moments, Kitty wolfed a couple of mouthfuls of salmon. He didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the taste. Greedy as ever, the cat began to gobble the rest of the bowl. Hate seeped through Mark’s mirthless smile. His eyes checked the kitchen doorway, nervous, but his family were all sleeping soundly though ahead of their big day tomorrow.

Kitty got most of the way through the bowl of salmon before making a choking sound. Mark looked around. The tortoiseshell cat reeled. Letting out several hacking coughs, it traded its footing from paw to paw. Little spasms went through its body, fur bristling.

“Come on, you little shit,” Mark said.

It took a couple of minutes, the cat prowling around the outskirts of the kitchen. It tried to get past Mark but he pushed it backward with his feet, not wanting the cat to run and hide somewhere in the house. Kitty got slower and weaker with each passing moment, making him easier to corral. Gagging, he spat up a couple of puddles. Pink bits of salmon swimming in pools of white foam. Mark felt a surge of anger and almost went to kick the animal before remembering it wasn’t really to blame this time. Just let it happen and then there’d be no more puddles of cat puke and no more kitty litter tracked through the house. No more oily stains on the walls and claw marks on the furniture that he paid for. No more arrogant little creature stalking around like it owned the fucking place, hissing and spitting as if it could keep him from his own wife and kids.

Spasming, Kitty lost his balance and fell. He shivered and went still, eyes rolling back in his head. His breathing cycled through a series of rapid pants then slow gurgles before stopping.

“Okay, fuck, here we go.”

Kneeling on the linoleum, Mark lay a hand on the cat’s side. It was probably the most gentle touch he’d ever given the animal. That it had ever allowed him to give it. From the moment Jessi, his wife, brought Kitty home, the cat had hated him and the feeling was mutual. Pushing his palm through the thick, grey fur, he felt its ribs. No movement, no breathing, not even the flutter of a heartbeat. His own heart raced.

Mark had prepared. All of the kitchen was packed into boxes, the cupboards and drawers empty, benches bare, a gaping hole where their refrigerator had been. He reached into one of the boxes and whipped out a black garbage bag. Picking up the cat and turning the bag inside out, he stuffed it inside. Kitty, in spite of his name, was a tomcat, a big, old street tom. His limp body was surprisingly heavy. Using paper towels Mark mopped up the puddles of puke, throwing the wadded paper into the bag, and he tossed the salmon can in there as well. He washed the bowl and fork he’d used, dried them, and stuck them back into the packed boxes.

Padding quietly through the house, Mark carried the garbage bag to the back door. Boxes were stacked in the living room around their remaining furniture. He slipped through the doorway, careful not to let the screen fall in its frame. Sliding into his shoes, he crossed the lawn to their garden shed. It was mostly empty but he’d left a few old tools behind. A rusty shovel waited by the doorway.

Their yard backed onto a strand of woods. Mark was going to miss them when they moved into the new house, he’d always enjoyed the sense of peace and privacy the trees afforded them. Carrying the cat and shovel in separate hands, he negotiated through the trees by moonlight. He didn’t want to use the flashlight on his phone in case it was seen.

Twenty paces from the edge of their yard was a kind of streambed. It only really ran when it was raining, the rest of the time, like now, it was just a muddy drainage ditch. By moonlight, he shovelled up wedges of heavy, wet, claylike mud. Making a hole big enough for the cat’s body, he reached for the bag. It hadn’t made a single rustle. Prodding it once more, he made sure the cat was dead then shoved it into the hole. He layered mud over the grave then molded it down, flattening it out, making sure it couldn’t be seen.

Returning to the house, Mark dropped the shovel back in the shed. Mud splattered his sneakers and the cuffs of his jeans. He scrubbed them as he crossed the yard. When he looked up, he saw a tiny shadow behind the screen door.

“Daddy?”

Their youngest, Zac, waited in the doorway. Only three years old, he’d been getting up and wandering the house at night. He should have known better, Mark thought. Zac had been known to get the screen door open. If he had, he might have wandered off.

“You’re not supposed to be up,” Mark said.

“Thirsty,” Zac said, his usual excuse when he got caught out of bed.

“Sure, yeah, whatever. Let’s get you a drink and then it’s back to bed, right? Big day tomorrow, I don’t need you crying and screaming because you’re tired.”

xXx

The next morning, Mark was up again before Jessi and the kids. He set to work immediately packing their cars and getting the final things ready for the movers. He tried not to dwell on what he’d done the night before, to remain above suspicion. After a while, he heard Jessi getting the kids ready. The movers arrived and soon he was too distracted monitoring them to even worry. Furniture, appliances, and boxes went first. He thought they’d downsized before the move but it seemed like the amount of shit never stopped. Eventually, however, he heard his daughter’s voice ringing through the house.

“Kitty! Kitty, where are you?”

Six years old, Lizzy was a spitting image of her mother. Dark hair, big eyes, and a big heart too. Mark had no idea why she cared about that ugly animal. He turned away and returned to the moving truck. He overheard Jessi joining Lizzy’s search, carrying Zac at her hip. After a few minutes, Jessi found Mark instead.

“Honey, have you seen the cat?” Jessi asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Mark said, biting back on a rambling excuse. “Been kind of busy here.”

“Daddy, I can’t find Kitty!” Lizzy appeared behind his wife.

“I told you to keep him out of the way this morning! There are people going in and out and you needed to keep him inside.”

“I haven’t seen him! He was gone when I woke up!”

“Well.” Mark shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. You’d better find him before we leave.”

“We can’t leave without Kitty!”

The movers finished their job and drove off in their truck. They had a long journey ahead, as did Mark and his family. Mark had loaded both cars with suitcases, garbage bags full of clothing, and loose odds and ends. His truck was crammed full. Jessi would be driving with the kids but more stuff took up every other inch of available space. Mark did a final walkthrough of the house. Empty rooms, bare, pale patches on the carpet and the walls. The only thing left by the front door was the battered blue pet carrier they’d been saving to load Kitty into.

Jessi had put some kibble in a bowl and was shaking it as she and the kids roamed the edge of their yard. Mark found them near the woods. They weren’t that close to the spot where he’d buried the cat’s body but he felt his heart racing.

“We have to go! We have to meet the movers at the new house, remember?” Mark said. “It’s a long drive.”

“Kitty! Kitty!” Lizzy screamed into the trees, as if the cat even knew the name she’d given him.

“We can’t find the cat, Mark,” Jessi said.

“It doesn’t matter, we have to go,” Mark said. “Maybe it’s better this way, he was a stray when you picked him up. Just a mangy stray, now he can go back to whatever he did before.”

Jessi hesitated. “You didn’t-, do something, did you?”

Mark’s flush of anger was genuine. Sure, Jessi’s accusation was accurate but she didn’t know that. He saw the fear in her eyes and felt legitimately offended.

“Do something? Like what? You think I got rid of the cat somehow, like I took him out back and-,”

Mark bit back on saying more. He knew his tendency when lying was to ramble, to say too much in protest, and he deliberately stopped himself.

“I just meant that maybe you left the door open last night, or something, and he got out.”

“You know what that animal is like! Ever since you found him and brought him home he’s been getting out, disappearing for a few days, coming back when he feels like it. I told you to keep him out the way this morning with the movers coming.”

“I know, but Lizzy couldn’t find him when she woke up.”

“We have to leave. We can’t let the movers beat us there, they won’t wait at the other end.”

Jessi sighed. “What if you go and I’ll stay here a little bit longer? If the cat doesn’t turn up then I’ll talk to Mr Dunn next door and ask him to keep an eye out.”

“And then what? If he comes back we drive six hours here and six hours back, just to collect a fucking cat?” Mark said, before he could remind himself that wasn’t a real possibility.

“Please, Mark! Lizzy is really upset. You go, I’ll follow you soon.”

Mark’s eyes slid toward the woods. He was pretty sure he’d done a good job of hiding the spot where he’d buried the cat but it had been dark, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t think of a good way of continuing the argument so he left it there, and left without saying goodbye to the kids.

The drive to the new house was long but straightforward. After twenty minutes, Mark joined the highway and he stayed on it for the majority of the next six hours. He was grateful at least not to be putting up with Lizzy and Zac in their current state. Hopefully by the time they got to the new house they’d be over it. Guilt didn’t cross his mind. If they’d listened to him then they wouldn’t be wasting their time searching.

Mark arrived half an hour ahead of the men in the removalist truck. Their new house was not so different from their old place. A single story weatherboard home with three bedrooms. The neighbourhood felt more crowded than their old place, the landscape flatter, with less trees, their yards dry and dusty. The backyard was bigger but backed onto someone else’s fence instead of a strand of trees and mud. Inside looked largely similar though, the carpets threadbare, the walls scuffed. With his new job, Mark was determined that he’d find them somewhere better in the next couple of years. As long as they cut back on unnecessary expenses like the kids’ activities. Getting rid of that fucking cat had been a good start.

Mark directed the movers. Furniture and boxes piled up haphazardly in every room. Jessi and the kids still hadn’t arrived by the time the movers finished although she’d texted him when they left the old house. They didn’t get there until well after dark, all of them looking exhausted.

“Welcome to your new home, guys!” Mark said. “You want to see your room, Liz? Maybe we can paint it?”

Lizzy and Zac hadn’t even seen the new house yet. They’d stayed with their grandparents while Mark and Jessi made the trip to check it out. Lizzy, however, didn’t care.

“I want to go home!” Lizzy said.

“This is your home now!” Mark said.

“I want to go home! I want to find Kitty!”

Lizzy broke down in a tantrum. The crying set off her equally tired brother while Jessi tried to console them both. Mark seethed. Eventually, Jessi got them settled and in their beds.

“Mr Dunn said he’d look out for Kitty, and hold onto him for us until we go back to visit my parents,” Jessi said when she returned. “If he turns up. Still, Lizzy didn’t want to go.”

“That stupid cat!” Mark said. “If you hadn’t wasted all that time looking for him then the kids could have seen their new rooms before the movers got here. We could have had dinner as a family, first night in the new house!”

“We’ll do all that tomorrow, Mark. I’m sorry, please, they’re really tired. We’re all just tired.”

xXx

Things were rough for the next few days. Lizzy was inconsolable over leaving Kitty behind at the old house, as far as she knew. Jessi was upset as well, although she refused to discuss it with Mark. Kitty had been her cat, technically speaking. She had found him in the parking lot at her old job and fed him for a couple of weeks before adopting him. She’d paid for his medical bills out of her ‘fun money’ even though Mark had insisted the money could go toward something better. Zac was upset about the move, displaced from the only home he’d known, and the moods of his mom and sister reflected on him. Meanwhile, Mark had been hoping for a fresh start at the new place and was bitterly disappointed by the dark cloud hanging over it all. It was almost enough to make him wish he hadn’t gotten rid of the damn cat after all. He buried himself in setting up the house but there were so many boxes and so much junk that he felt like it took forever to find anything he was looking for.

After a few weeks though, things had settled. Mark enjoyed his new management role and Jessi fit in well at her new job. Lizzy and Zac had come to like the house. It was summer break so Lizzy wasn’t in school but she was looking forward to starting again in a new place. While she had mostly gotten over Kitty’s disappearance, she brought him up often. Repeatedly she asked her mother if she had spoken to their old neighbour, Mr Dunn, and whether she would call him just to check he hadn’t forgotten. Jessi’s parents lived near their old house and Lizzy kept wanting to go visit them so they could go looking for Kitty some more. It annoyed Mark, he wondered if she would go on asking about him for just as long if he disappeared. But, everything else was going so well that he figured she would forget in time.

Then, Saturday morning, the kids played in the front yard while Mark and Jessie sat on the front porch and scrolled on their phones. It was cooler in front of the house in the mornings. Dust hung in the air. Lizzy was trying to build a zoo with a bunch of plastic animals, instructing her little brother in the correct order for its exhibits according to her own internal logic, but Zac kept picking them up and tossing them across the yard, giggling, to her growing frustration.

Suddenly, Lizzy started screaming. No, squealing, a piercing dog whistle sound that only children could make. Mark assumed she’d finally lost her patience with Zac but his head snapped up all the same. It took a few moments to realise that Lizzy wasn’t shrieking out of anger or frustration, she was screaming in happiness. She pointed at the corner of the yard.

“Momma! Momma, it’s Kitty!” Lizzy screamed.

It couldn’t be. Following Lizzy’s pointing finger, Mark saw an undeniably similar cat limping along the side of the road. A grey tortoiseshell, roughly the same size as Kitty although much skinnier. Similar markings on its back. It couldn’t be the same cat, that was impossible, and yet Mark felt his heart climbing in his chest. Acid burned the back of his throat as if he was going to throw up. But there was no possible way the stray could be Kitty.

“Lizzy, wait!” Jessi shouted.

Ignoring her mother, Lizzy shot to her feet and went racing across the yard. Zac was left behind surrounded by plastic animals. Jessi ran after Lizzy. Paralysed, Mark remained glued to his chair with his phone in his hand.

Stray or not, the grey tortoiseshell appeared extremely tolerant as Lizzy dropped on top of it. She wrapped her arms around the cat and hauled it off its paws. Jessi ran to separate the two of them before the cat freaked out and started biting or swatting. The cat did nothing of the sort, however. It let the six-year-old pin it to her chest without a single sound.

“Kitty, you found us!” Lizzy squealed. “I missed you!”

Mark found the strength to pull himself out of his chair and stagger across the yard. Zac followed the rest of his family.

“Sweetheart, it’s not Kitty,” Jessi said.

“It is! It is Kitty!” Lizzy said, one arm wrapped around the cat’s throat.

“It can’t be, we left him at the old house,” Jessi said, but she didn’t sound sure.

Mark loomed over Lizzy and the cat. The animal looked an awful lot like Kitty. The same grey tortoiseshell pattern with black blotches on its back, brown and white fringing its stomach. It looked more like Kitty when Jessi had first brought him home, a skinny bag of bones, fur matted and mangy, as if he’d been on the road nonstop for the last few weeks.

“No, no, it’s not him,” Mark said. “It can’t be.”

“It is, it’s Kitty!” Lizzy said.

“It’s not, put it down!”

Stray or not, the skinny cat purred against Lizzy’s chest. Jessi hesitated over separating them. Sneering, Mark grabbed for the animal. Immediately, it reared back and hissed. One paw came free and swiped at him, claws extended. Mark snatched his hand back. Amber eyes glared at him with shocking malice.

“Get rid of it!” Mark snapped.

“No, it’s Kitty!” Lizzy said.

Lizzy hugged the scrawny animal. It immediately settled again into a deeply satisfied purr. Mark hesitated for a few moments then stomped back to the house.

A little while later, Jessi and Lizzy brought the cat and Zac back inside. Mark avoided them for reasons he couldn’t articulate. It couldn’t be Kitty, it couldn’t be the same cat, but then Kitty had come to them as a stray so Jessi didn’t mind feeding this one, cleaning it up a little, and making plans to take it to the vet for a checkup. Lizzy was totally convinced it was Kitty and was overjoyed. She would have screamed bloody murder if Mark tried to take him away. Mark didn’t get a chance to talk to Jessi about it until that evening after dinner.

“It’s not the same fucking cat!” Mark said.

“I know, it can’t be,” Jessi said. “But, well, look at it.”

Jessi brought up a picture of Kitty on her phone. The new cat was in Lizzy’s room, sleeping on her bed, but even so Mark could see the patterns on both cats’ backs were identical.

“Our old house is five hundred miles away!”

“He looks like he’s been on the road for a long time though? You hear those stories, you know, about pets making these huge journeys to find their owners again, right?”

“I’m pretty sure most of those stories are bullshit! And even then, the pets are, like, finding their way back to some place they’ve already been. The fucking cat has never been here! It’s an animal, it doesn’t know how to track us down at a new address or whatever!”

Mark, of course, knew another reason why it couldn’t possibly be the original Kitty. The animal was dead. He’d made sure it wasn’t breathing. He’d buried it himself. It was dead. But he couldn’t help imagining the cat wriggling back to life as the painkiller he used to poison it wore off. Imagined it clawing its way out of the garbage bag and then through the dirt and mud, bursting free from under the ground. And then, somehow, impossibly, making its way five hundred miles across the country, along roads and freeways, to find them again.

Jessi shrugged. “I know it’s impossible, but Lizzy thinks it’s Kitty and it makes her happy!”

“It’s a stray, it could be diseased! It sure as hell shouldn’t be sleeping on her bed right now!”

“We’ll get it checked out first thing in the morning. Unless there’s some other reason you don’t want to?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mark felt suddenly fearful.

“I mean, I know you didn’t want us to have a cat in the first place. And you wanted to get rid of Kitty before we moved. Before he, you know, disappeared? You said cats were stupid and dirty and selfish, and cost a lot of money for nothing?”

“Whatever! No, I don’t really want another cat but if it’s going to be some big issue, fine, she can keep it!”

After Jessi went to bed, Mark prowled the house. Mentally, he kept comparing the picture on his wife’s phone to the new stray. He told himself it couldn’t possibly be the same cat but their patterns were both unique and yet looked exactly the same. And the way the cat had reacted to Lizzy, like it already knew her. Like it was glad to see her after a long journey.

Mark stopped outside Lizzy’s bedroom. The door was ajar and he nudged it further open. In the corner of the room was a nightlight which faded between different colours, green to blue to a soft red. Normally, he didn’t like it. He thought it was unnecessary and a waste of electricity to power it all night every night, and that Lizzy should grow up and stop using it. He was glad to have it now though as his gaze swept the room. Lizzy was a vague lump beneath her bedcovers and he could see the shape of the cat tucked under her arm. Listening, he could hear its rumbling purr from all the way across the room. Kitty had a loud purr like that, like an idling truck. More and more he had to tell himself it couldn’t possibly be the same cat, even if Kitty had somehow lived.

Eyes flicked open in the darkness. Pupils caught the soft red glow of Lizzy’s nightlight and he could see burning orange rings in the middle of the cat’s face. Mark actually gasped and staggered back, hitting the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. Fear was followed almost immediately by anger. Embarrassment and rage that a stupid, skinny, stray cat had actually frightened him. He started forward again but found he couldn’t cross the threshold into Lizzy’s room. He was still afraid. The simmering eyes blinked and closed, dismissing him, and the cat nuzzled into Lizzy’s arm.

xXx

The stray’s recovery over the next few days bordered on miraculous. Jessi had packed all of Kitty’s things for the move so they already had cat food and kitty litter and a cat tree which Kitty had never used. Fed and brushed, the new cat filled out quickly and his coat took on a glossy sheen as if its shine had just been hidden under a layer of road dust. Jessi took him to the vet and confirmed that he seemed to be in fine physical health. They’d never had Kitty microchipped though, so there was no way of confirming or denying that it was the same cat.

Lizzy continued to insist the stray was actually Kitty. Jessi claimed she didn’t really believe it but wound up playing along. Mark insisted on correcting Lizzy every time but he struggled to really deny it to himself. Zac, of course, had no idea what the distinction was. Regardless of whether the stray was a different cat or the same one, everyone was soon referring to it as ‘Kitty’ as well.

Mark actively avoided the cat and yet Kitty seemed to show up everywhere he went in the house. Glaring at him from the corners of the room or from open doorways. At night, the cat would either be in his daughter’s room or he would hear it stalking around the house. Its footfalls sounded like an accusation. And even when he wasn’t in Kitty’s presence, there were reminders of it everywhere. Its bowls in the kitchen, taking up space, festering with germs. Its litterbox in the laundry. He never used the washing machine himself but bits of litter got dug up and flung into the hallway. Those same greasy patches on doorframes and cabinets, rubbed off of the cat’s face, began appearing like in their old home.

Worst of all, however, were the little footprints and clumps of brown material that started appearing around the house. The first time Mark saw some of it on the carpet he was outraged, thinking it was cat shit. Outraged but also vindicated, thinking it was the perfect excuse to throw the animal outside. Bending over though, he found the little pile had no smell and its texture looked wrong.

“What the hell is this?” Mark said.

Dark material streaked the carpet and he could see one distinct paw print. After a few long moments of hesitation, he touched it. The filth was wet and gritty. Dirt, mud, tracked into the house from outside. Except, rubbing it between his fingers, he was certain that it didn’t match any dirt from the yard or anywhere around their new house. Their yard was dry and dusty. This felt more like the kind of heavy mud he’d buried the cat under back at their old place. Yet still wet, tracked in fresh from the grave.

Mark looked up. The cat glared at him from the doorway of Lizzy’s room. He felt a frisson of fear again. Kitty retreated out of sight. Worrying about what his family might think, he cleaned up the muck on the carpet rather than leaving it there to complain about as he might have done otherwise.

Mark found similar messes in different spots over the next few days. Sometimes first thing in the morning or when he got home from work. Paw prints stamped the foreign mud like signatures. Kitty wanted Mark to know it was him. The cat was growing in arrogance. Having recovered so much weight and lustre from its time outside, Mark worried he had allowed it to regain its strength. He should have done something about it the first night when it returned, while it was weak, and gotten rid of it again right away.

After cleaning up a mess one morning, Mark walked into the kitchen to be confronted by Kitty on the counter. A couple of coffee mugs were already set out and waiting on the countertop. Kitty met Mark’s eyes evenly. Frozen in the kitchen doorway, he watched the cat. Sitting upright, it raised a paw and batted at one of the mugs.

“Don’t you fucking do it!” Mark said.

The coffee mug was Mark’s favourite, with the name of a lumberyard where he used to work printed on the side. The cat batted harder and the mug slid right to the edge of the counter. Mark started forward but something, fear, stopped him again.

“Don’t!” Mark’s voice pulled tight.

Kitty refused to break eye contact. With a final push, it knocked the mug off the counter. It hit the linoleum with a dull crack and broke into several pieces, spinning across the floor in different directions.

“Motherfucker!”

Mark jolted forward too late to save the mug. The cat spun and leapt off the counter. Mark clawed at the space where it had been. Barefoot, he realised there were bits of crockery bristling across the floor all around him.

“Fuck!”

Watching his footing, Mark teetered across the kitchen. Suddenly, the cat reappeared. It threaded between his ankles and almost tripped him. He staggered forward, arms windmilling. Kitty streaked out of the room.

Jessi heard Mark cursing and stumbling around. “What is it?”

“That cat, it has to go!” Mark said.

“What’s wrong?” She saw the pieces of broken mug across the floor. “Oh, your mug? He broke it? I’m sorry.”

“It’s not just the mug! It’s-, it makes a mess! And we don’t know where it came from!”

“We didn’t know where the original Kitty came from either.”

“I didn’t want him either, you forced me to-,”

“Forced you to, what? Forced you to what?”

Mark looked away. “Nothing. I mean you forced me to keep it. You said we would just hold onto the thing for a few days then take it to the animal place, but we end up keeping it!”

“Lizzy fell in love with him! And then we thought he’d gotten lost and-, and, I know it’s not him but if you want to get rid of this cat, well, you go tell your daughter that!”

“You actually think this is him, the original Kitty, don’t you? That he somehow made his way back to us.” Mark sneered. “It’s childish.”

“So do you,” Jessi shot back. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but you think it too. It’s like a miracle or something but for some reason it frightens you. Why are you afraid?”

Mark scoffed but the image of Kitty clawing his way out of his muddy grave flitted through his mind again. He couldn’t help but think of the dirt he’d cleaned up that morning. That dirt that kept appearing as if from nowhere. And the way the cat looked at him with more knowing and intelligence than an animal should possess.

“This is ridiculous, I have to get ready for work,” he said, and stormed off.

xXx

Over the next several days, the cat grew even bolder. Any time Mark was alone, he’d find it staring at him from some shadowy corner. And if it wasn’t staring then it would repeat the trick of threading through his feet, throwing itself against his ankles, to trip him. He couldn’t even get away from it behind closed doors. Twice, while stepping out of the shower the cat was suddenly there, brushing against his wet legs, in spite of the fact the bathroom door was closed. And then it would disappear just as mysteriously as it had appeared. To the rest of the family, it was only a cat. Lizzy kept loving on it and sleeping with it, not questioning how Kitty had found his way to them over five hundred miles. In spite of her own questions, Jessi seemed to find Mark more suspicious than the animal.

Things culminated in the middle of the night two weeks after the cat reappeared. Mark woke up with a weight on his chest. The fucking cat, as arrogant as could be, was curled up directly on top of his ribcage and was stifling his breathing.

With a wordless yell, Mark sat up and swiped at the animal. Kitty leapt free and skittered into the darkness. The bedroom door was closed but obviously that hadn’t been enough to stop the animal. Jessi stirred beside him but didn’t wake.

“No more, no more!” Mark snarled.

Scrubbing his face, Mark threw himself out of the bed. He knew cats were meant to be attracted to people breathing in their sleep but Kitty had never done that before. There was an old wives’ tale that cats sat on your chest to steal your soul or something, he thought. He’d have dismissed that as nonsense before Kitty’s reappearance but now he wasn’t so sure.

Mark snatched his pillow off the bed. Without waking Jessi, he stormed out of the bedroom and shut the door behind him again. Staggering through the house, he slapped on several lights.

“Where are you? Where the fuck are you, you little shit?”

Another garbage bag wouldn’t be enough. The last one couldn’t hold Kitty. Mark ripped his pillow out of its case and tossed it aside, keeping the pillowcase to use as a sack.

Mark found Kitty in the kitchen again, on the counter. The cat glared but didn’t look quite as arrogant. It looked ready to run. Mark jumped across the room, swinging. Kitty skittered backward and his fingers only gouged the cat’s haunches. He grabbed again, nearly getting a hold on the animal’s tail before it jumped off the counter. It fled across the kitchen and Mark gave chase, the two of the circling and crashing. Mark’s elbow knocked a stack of cereal boxes to the ground. The cat yowled as Mark lunged and nearly stomped on him. Mark knocked into the kitchen table but managed to trap Kitty in the corner of the room.

“Right, get in the bag!”

Mark fell on top of the cat, shoving it against the wall. Kitty shrieked and thrashed, and bared its claws. Several lines of white hot pain sliced across Mark’s palm. He yanked his hand back instinctively, as if he’d touched a hot stove. Blood welled in the lines. He doubled his efforts, shoving with the pillowcase and trying to scoop Kitty into it. The cat hissed and bit and swiped. Thin, burning lines covered both of Mark’s forearms and punctures from its teeth sunk deep into his hands. The animal showed no supernatural ability to defend itself, however. Perhaps all it had were little tricks and fear on its side after all. He should have done this sooner. Finally, Mark managed to wrap the pillowcase around Kitty and turn it inside out, bagging him.

Mark straightened with Kitty kicking and yowling inside the makeshift sacking, rocking in his hand. He looked around, worried he might wake Jessi and the kids, but the rest of the house remained silent. Tatters of skin hung off his forearms and hands. Blood sheeted down both arms, staining his t-shirt and the pillowcase. His adrenaline was running so high though he almost couldn’t feel the injuries.

“Fuck you, Kitty!”

The cat howled. Mark swung the wriggling pillowcase into the nearest wall. Kitty whined and kept kicking but fell silent. As best Mark could, he knotted the top of the pillowcase closed then dropped it on the kitchen counter. It writhed like it was full of snakes. Turning to the sink, he washed his hands and forearms then daubed them with paper towels. More blood soaked through the damp material.

Taking the pillowcase, Mark looked around the kitchen. He needed to end this, leaving no doubt, no possibility of the cat coming back this time. His first instinct was to take a knife from the block by the microwave but stabbing felt too intimate and too easy to screw up. With a sudden burst of inspiration, he moved to the kitchen junk drawer instead. They hadn’t unpacked everything yet, there were boxes scattered around the house, but they already had a drawer in the kitchen designated for all kinds of odds and ends including random tools. Sliding it out, he retrieved a cheap claw hammer. Experimentally, he gave it a couple of short, sharp swings. The head hissed through the air.

Mark pulled on some jeans and boots, and collected his wallet and keys, then started toward the front door. A small shape at the foot of the hallway made him jump. Zac, wandering around out of bed again, stared at him openly.

“Daddy?”

Mark hesitated, with blood dripping down his arms and the pillowcase wriggling in his hand. His car keys and the hammer were bunched in his other fist.

“Go back to bed!” Mark barked. “I’m not joking, go!”

Leaving Zac behind, Mark headed out to his truck. He tossed the wriggling pillowcase on the seat next to him along with the hammer. He had no idea what he was going to tell Jessi. Even without Zac seeing him leave, he would have to explain the lacerations on his hands and forearms. He no longer cared. He had to protect himself and really he would be protecting them as well, it was for their own good.

Near Mark’s new workplace was a dumping ground. Not an official garbage dump but a shallow gully on the edge of town that was used, illegally, for the same purpose. A few burned out cars rusting amidst piles of building waste and old furniture. Sometimes, locals used it as a place for bonfires or even as a shooting range. He’d been warned about coyotes that sometimes hung around the place at night. That sounded perfect to him. He’d make sure the job was done on the cat and then the coyotes could get rid of the evidence.

Mark stopped the truck and got out at the edge of the dump, carrying the pillowcase with him. He took the hammer in his other hand. Kitty began to mewl pitifully from inside the case. To Mark, they sounded like cries for mercy. The cat would find none from him. Since the adrenaline had begun to wear off, the scratches really started to sting. The dumping ground was dark, lit only by moonlight. He stomped his way to the rough centre of the gully and slung Kitty onto the hood of one of the wrecks.

“This will do,” Mark said.

Kitty howled as Mark raised the hammer over his shoulder. Just before he brought it down, Kitty’s cry was answered by another warbling miaow out of the darkness. Mark craned his head around to look for the source of the noise. A hiss came from an entirely different direction.

“What the fuck?”

Silent paws padded across the dirt. Mark set the hammer down for a moment and reached for his phone. Using the light on the phone, he swept the dump. Eyes gleamed in the shadows. Glowing orange and green irises ringed all around him. Kitty miaowed inside the pillowcase and more animals responded. A cat darted across Mark’s foot. Suddenly, a black cat appeared on the roof of the wreck next to him and hissed.

“No, no! Get out of here!”

Mark swatted at the black cat and it quickly retreated. He snatched the hammer. In sheer panic, however, he pitched it at the first sign of movement he saw rather than using it defensively. It bounced off the dirt past a skittering tuxedo cat and disappeared into the dark.

A cat slipped under the wreck behind Mark and slashed through the leg of his jeans. He cried out. Another lunged and savaged his right arm, slicing the inside of his wrist before retreating. He spun but a third landed on his shoulder. White hot pain erupted as it tore open the side of his neck and the lobe of his right ear.

Howling and spitting, cats swarmed. Mark tried to run for his truck but his feet were knocked out from under him. A dozen more cats fell on him from above. Claws like hypodermic needles raked his skin. Tiny but agonising bites were ripped out of his flesh.

On the hood of the burnt out wreck, Kitty writhed. The knot on the pillowcase slowly unwound. Mark screamed and rolled around in the dirt the entire time. When Kitty finally slipped out of the case, largely uninjured, all that was left of the man was a red and ruined mess. Both his eyes were blinded, lips and ears torn away, the ends of his fingers raw. Cats filled the dump, over a hundred of them coming and going. Any coyote happening upon the scene would have fled in terror.

Kitty hopped down from the wreck. Flipped onto his stomach, Mark tried to crawl in the direction of his truck. The other cats drew back. Climbing on top of the man, Kitty padded the length of his spine. After a moment, he sunk his fangs into the back of Mark’s neck.

xXx

When Jessi woke up the next morning, she wasn’t surprised to find Mark missing from the bed. Discovering blood and wadded paper towels in the kitchen, however, she quickly became concerned. None of her calls to him connected. His truck was gone. She assumed he might have hurt himself somehow and driven to the hospital but she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t woken her or found the time to send her a single message. While she paced the house, Zac appeared.

“Zac, have you seen daddy? Have you seen your dad?” Jessi asked.

“Daddy go,” Zac said.

“You did see him?”

“Daddy go.”

“Go where? Where did he go?”

Jessi tried but couldn’t get any more answers from her half-awake son. Finally, she burst into Lizzy’s room.

“Honey, have you seen your dad this morning?” Jessi asked.

Lizzy wiped sleep from her eyes. “No? Why, where’s daddy? Is something wrong?”

“No, no, honey, everything’s fine, okay? I’m sorry, go back to sleep.”

As her mother left, Lizzy snuggled back down and reached for Kitty, curled up at her side. The cat let out a deep, rumbling purr. With feline patience, he lapped his front paws, working his tongue between the claws. Stippled in the cat’s grey fur, traces of blood disappeared with every lick.

======

Sean: Feels like being nasty to animals is never a good idea in my stories, whether they’re chickens, or goats, or cane toads, or pokémon, I mean wallécre which are legally distinct from pokémon and protected under parody fair use. You can’t even be mean to trees if you want to be on the safe side!

Actually struggled with getting inside Mark’s head for this story. I don’t do a lot of character study stuff but I do think when you’re writing you’ve got to get inside your characters’ heads to write actions and reactions that make sense. Now I can get inside the head of a voyeuristic stalker or maybe a young father driven to psychosis by rage and sleeplessness no problem, but getting into the head of someone who hates cats enough to want to kill one? That was genuinely tough.

My own cat was genuinely sitting across my lap for most of the time I spent typing this. I had to build a little stack of pillows to support the laptop, which is a pretty common occurrence. He’s a very clingy boy despite being a big, tough, old tomcat who’d lived on the streets like Kitty in the story.

Find more from me on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, and pictures of that same clingy cat on Instagram.

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