Imagine your bedroom, dear reader. Go on; picture it in your head. A big warm bed with a comfy duvet. Your duvet. A wardrobe full of your clothes, hand picked to express your personality and make you feel good about yourself. Personal effects and trinkets from your travels both far and near sit on shelves and windowsills as neat little reminders of happy times.
Your bedroom is a place of sanctuary, of safety. Your own space in which you can recede when you have a crappy day and will at least help make you feel better. Nothing should encroach on this hallowed ground.
Which is why I have such issue with the cat that’s fucking up my personal space. It’s not that I don’t like cats, but this one is peculiar. It upsets me. In the darkest watches of the night. In my own bedroom. I don’t feel good in my room right now.
Physically, it is nothing out of the ordinary. A tail. Two eyes. Two ears. Four legs. Black, as cats in these sorts of situations often are.
What keeps me wide eyed from my pillow and compels me to write as I watch it and it watches me is…everything else.
The reason I can see this cat – this black cat – in the pitch darkness of my room is the eerie, almost lamp-like light that trails it. When the cat moves, the light follows it in the manner of a comet’s tail. When the cat stops pacing, the glow settles around it like a soft, source-less backlight.
Cats are well known for the practiced disinterest with which they observe you. I mentioned that this one was in no way physically abnormal; well, that is save for its eyes. They are ruby red and when they look at me and I look back, they seem to burn me. And when it opens its mouth to let forth a cute kitty sound, all I hear is the most terrible static. Fierce white noise that makes my ears hum and my jaw ache.
I can’t leave. It sits in the middle of the carpet between my bed and the door. I daren’t try to cross its path. So I wait.
Hours pass as we watch each other. The glow of the rising sun has hit the top of my blinds now. I reach for the cord; I long to let it in. As I open them, the glow surrounding the cat appears to reach for the warm new presence in the room.
The sun rises further and touches the cat. The cat is hard to see now. Its fur begins to almost melt away and flow into the sunlight through the open window. As the last of it slips away, my legs find themselves again and I move towards the window.
Looking out at my back garden, I see the cat again, flowing back into view as water into a mould. It now sits under a shady tree. Something feels different though. When it looks at me now, I feel only sadness and pity. After all I have felt these last hours, it is strange to not resent the cat. As I watch, it begins to paw the ground at its feet mournfully.
Something compelled me to go out there. I want to say it was sympathy, but for what I don’t know. When I got out there, the cat was gone. I haven’t seen it since.
I dug where it had been sitting. I got the feeling it had wanted me to. My fingernails became dirty, but I didn’t have to dig for long. Soon frayed hessian threads came into view. When there was something I could grab onto without it coming apart in my hands, I pulled. A sorry little sack popped out with a clatter.
Inside was a collection of bones. I can’t say for sure, but an educated guess tells me they were cat bones. There was a length of twine tied around the opening of the sack.
Why it decided to haunt me all night I do not know. Poor thing just wanted some company I guess. I took one of the bones out and put it on a shelf with my keepsakes.
Now the cat is part of my sanctuary. It should be safe here.
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