A short story, that isn’t cute & fluffy
It came from nowhere and sat outside our back door. Abby loved him at once but I didn’t. It was a mistaken love that resulted in tragedy for us all.
I noticed we were buying extra milk which I resented since our mortgage was costing an arm and a leg and I had not had a pay rise for ages. The milk was for Gollar who haunted the house like a ghost. We hadn’t seen him when we came to view the house. If we had I daresay I wouldn’t have agreed to buy it but then that would have resulted in another row with Abby with whom I got on splendidly till now. Until this year we had been living in a cramped and unsuitable flat and since we wanted a family we knew we would have to move somewhere more suitable. Eventually we settled in a nice area which was reasonably quiet so I could concentrate on my writing. I was due to get some more content out there soon, including a book on thought transference and the collective unconscious. I thought such stuff was bunkum but you can’t argue with popularity and people go for this rubbish in a big way so when I was asked to write and research thought transference and the collective unconscious or whatever drivel readers like then I would hardly refuse if the price was right.
Abby certainly was all practical and she certainly didn’t believe in anything that could neither be touched, tasted, smelled or seen and heard. She even ridiculed telepathy between twins.
Maisie Mellors was the previous owner of our new abode. Ninety if she was a day, she loved the place but had to go into a nursing home when this one got too much for her. Her husband had died a good six years before her and according to their daughter, loved Gollar who used to sit on his shoulders while he ate, purring contentedly into his ear and we wondered why he had not been called Collar but apparently they had adopted him as a stray. Maisie bought him tinned salmon and even smoked salmon and bottles of milk and all sorts of other things. He had started presuming on his welcome by coming into the kitchen, then the dining room and finally up into Maisie’s bedroom once she became a widow. Abby would have continued the practice had I not insisted the animal stay outside. I felt sure that Abby let him in and let him take liberties once I was absent.
Bruno, a whacking great beagle from about two doors away also started visiting. When Abby erected the bird house loads of them came as well even though Gollar patrolled the garden. Bruno wagged his tail at them although we didn’t let him into the garden. A substantial number came to the front door as well. So it went on until the selection of animals became almost great enough to represent another ark. I used to joke that soon it would rain for forty days and nights and soon bigger animals would come, two by two and I was starting to get scared but couldn’t say why exactly.
During the summer holidays when Abby was off work as she was a teacher and the schools were closed, she went away for a couple of weeks to look after her mother who had just been in hospital for a minor op and although she was perfectly fit enough to cope, Abby wanted to be with her which suited me in a way as I then had time to write. The animals were thankfully absent when she was away and even Gollar appeared to be either invisible or at the very least, scarce. A day or two before her return he made his appearance and I did no more nor less than chuck a bucket of water over him and when he tried returning again, turned the hose on him while watering the garden. He shot straight into my study and sat on my office chair and left his calling card. I chased him out with a broom and he stayed away then till her return, purring round her legs and meaowing for milk and was rewarded with a tin of sardines, bought especially for him and a collar which he seemed to appreciate. It had his name and our address on it so if the awful blighter got lost, people would know where to return him.
Mrs Monk who, appropriately cleaned the church but that was the nearest we had to a monastery in our part of Cornwall, told me as she had told Maisie to:
“Get rid of that sinister brute. If he likes you then all well and good but if he crosses you then you pay. Maisie’s husband had tripped over him when he was losing his sight and fell down the stairs more than once although Gollar seemed to like him well enough to sit on his shoulders while he ate. I couldn’t quite believe Mrs Monk when she told me that Abby should have nothing to do with him since it was she who the cat had taken to and vice versa.
“Tis always the ones you loves what gets hurt and always the one who hates what gets punished by that filthy evil moggy. Witches used them as familiars you knows”.
Our last row happened when I put an embargo on Gollar whom I said must never visit the house again. Abby thought I was being unreasonable and, try as I may, there he was and then I started thinking about his behaviour when I saw him hanging around our garden shed. A few more dogs, birds and squirrels as well as hamsters seemed to be around as well so when my editor suggested I go up to London for a meeting about my research I was happy to go. I even lied and made out I was taken poorly with a cold while staying with him as he had invited me to do so I could have a break from this menagerie.
My last book had been a success so I took the opportunity to phone Abby and tell her that I was going to spend some time reading it for free and would be visiting the RNIB studios in Camden in order to carry out this task. Strangely, Abby didn’t phone while I was absent. Normally she would have done because however much we argued over Gollar, she always knew our marriage was sound and I knew that, too.
My editor woke me from my nightmare after I woke him. I’d been screaming because of what I dreamt about. Hordes of mice swarmed down his road in a huge procession along with other assorted animals as well as dogs, birds pecking at overhead power lines and leading them all was Gollar. Roy said the dream was based on my hatred of the cat as well as my visit to the RNIB talking book studios probably linking the nursery rhyme about three blind mice with what the charity did and who they helped.
When I left, which was as soon as I could, I returned home to a scene of absolute horror. Downstairs were small dogs, mice everywhere, birds sitting on the windowsills and the roof and from upstairs was the plaintive meaowing of Gollar. When I went up there I saw her. Both eyes were missing, probably torn out either by Gollar himself or other animals and half of her had been dismembered by Bruno whom she also let in and fussed. As I lifted the lid of the lavatory so I could be sick, an army of rats, some as big as cats came up from the bowl, squeaking, running and scurrying everywhere as if just having been liberated from prison. Then into my head came words as if spoken by a human:
“This is my home. You are the interloper who threw water at me, chased me with a broom and begrudged me milk and food”.
Then I heard the voice of Ada Monk:
“Told you they always hurts them they hates by punishing them by hurting them what the have loved”.
I think it’s safe to say I have completed my work on thought transference and the collective unconscious. Had not that cat mobilised animals he normally hated such as birds and dogs and had he not somehow either ordered or encouraged them to carry out their destructive and horrific work? Cats can’t talk so how else but by thought transference and telepathy could he have done what he did?
Do be careful if a cat makes a friend of you won’t you and never ever make an enemy of a cat or else you may well find yourself in the strange position of envying the blind if you are ever exposed to sights like those I saw. Oh and look out for Gollar. As T. S. Elliot once said about the mystery cat for whom everyone looked but each time they did, he simply wasn’t there.