My flatmate Chris was being bothered by a cat.
Every night it came and sat on his windowsill at four in the morning, and tapped at the glass with its paw and howled.
Chris’ bedroom was right next to mine, but I never heard the howling. He told me all about it though. He told me how every time the cat visited he would try to ignore it. He would try to drown out the noise by pressing a pillow over his head, but the cat would go on and on, in that utterly determined way that cats have, and eventually Chris would snap.
That was the bit I did hear through the wall. I would hear a great, angry roar, and the thump on the floorboards as Chris launched himself out of bed and stormed to the window. Then, the fiddling with the latch, and the shrieking noise as he ripped the window up in its frame to grab for the cat and end its noise forever.
He never got it. He tried and he tried but he never succeeded. The cat was always too quick. I found the whole thing pretty funny at first but then it kept happening, every night, over and over. Chris said the cat was trying to drive him insane. At first I thought he was taking it too personal, but I agreed with him after a while. I was as sick of it as he was. The cat’s noise didn’t wake me up but Chris sure did, shouting:
“YOU FUCKER!” out into the night at the hidden, withdrawing feline.
Neither of us was getting any sleep, which was playing havoc with my schedule. The cricket was on TV and I wanted to watch. Instead I was sleeping all day. When, finally, I dozed through an entire innings, I sat Chris down to discuss ways of dealing with the problem. He sighed deeply and said that he had tried everything already.
It was possible that he was right. Before the cat, Chris had lived his life with a natural efficiency and directness. He’d been one of those people for whom there is never an insurmountable problem, only direct and immediate action. It had kind of annoyed me in the past, and in the initial days of the cat visits I have to admit I found it gratifying to see Chris a little shaken. It proved to me that he was human. In the first days of knowing him, I had always thought of him as supremely confident in his own abilities, gifted and brash, certain of the future. Now, he was overwhelmed by an unassailable, even paranormal opposition, seeing no answer. I thought that in this state, there might well be possibilities he hadn‘t thought of.
“Talk me through what you’ve done so far,” I said.
So Chris outlined his countermeasures.
At first he’d glued drawing pins all over his window ledge. But on that night, the cat appeared as usual, right there at the window, howling into the darkness. Chris sprang out of bed to catch it and it slunk off, escaping his clutches once more. When he checked the windowsill he found all the pins intact.
This led to much discussion between the two of us about the hardness of cats’ paws, the possibility of the cat being able to project its voice, and of the cat hanging from some point above. But we poked our heads out his bedroom window and inspected the wall above and couldn’t see any place for it to be dangling from – and anyway, were we seriously saying that this cat was suspending itself by some kind of mutated prehensile tail? Besides, Chris was adamant that the cat had been sitting right there on the sill.
Then he told me about his other vain attempts to trap or disable the cat, through booby traps and obstacles that got him nowhere and came at quite a cost. He’d placed mousetraps on the windowsill, but, wrenched awake by the cat‘s howling, had sprung out of bed to find the traps undisturbed and the cat gone. He’d drenched the windowsill in inches of Ultima-Glue, but again without success – the cat had not even left a single paw print to account for its visit. For a while he had tried sleeping during the day and waking at night, so he could stay up and catch it, but he could never keep his eyes open beyond four in the morning.
This got him even more worked up. He thought the cat was somehow causing him to fall asleep.
“I think we’re getting into dangerous territory with that kind of thought,” I said.
He looked at me desperately, hoping I would have a solution, but I was stumped. We sat, bleary-eyed and smoking for a while, mulling the problem over.
“There is one thing you could do,” Chris said eventually. “You could stay up to help me catch it. Stay up with me tonight, and when I fall asleep, you get by the window and stab the fucker with a bread knife before he realises what’s going on.”
“I’m not going to stab it.”
Still, I agreed that another person on the case might help resolve the issue. Besides, this was a big step for Chris. He always sorted his own problems out. He never asked me for help with his work, or for money, or for a lift. He had enjoyed complete control over his affairs in the pre-cat days. So, slightly flattered at this request for aid, I assented to camp in his room that night for a stake out.
We set ourselves up with a white plastic kettle, a jar of instant coffee, a pack of sugar, and forty Marlboro reds. Chris wanted to get speed as well, just to be sure we would be twitchy and on the ball, but we didn’t know where we could get any. So we just sat there in the hard, wooden kitchen chairs, not really talking, just sipping the coffee and quietly smoking. Chris looked at me occasionally, checking for signs of drowsiness.
The hours passed slowly. I was sure that I could break the four o’clock barrier, as I regularly went right through to the morning watching movies. But the next thing I knew I was waking from a deep sleep, stirred by a noise, or a presence nearby. As I began to open my eyes, I saw a glimpse of whiskers and white paws, and heard Chris yell:
“There it is!”
He leapt out his chair, grabbing for the cat, but missed.
“You see?” he screamed. “It’s not interested in anything but waking me up! It puts me to sleep just so it can wake me up! It’s insane!”
I tried to calm him.
“Maybe it just wants to get in.”
“Get in? I’ve had the window open. If he wants to put me to sleep for the whole night and wander around my room, fine. He can go through my cabinets if he likes, I just want him to do it without waking me up. But he won’t. He doesn’t want me to get any sleep!”
“Why?” I asked him.
“How do I know?”
“Right,” I said. “That’s it. You’re sleeping in another room.”
The old Chris would never have surrendered like that, but in his exhausted state he agreed without a fight. He would sleep on the sofa in the front room.
I was happy with that. We agreed that the cat had some kind of supernatural connection with his room, and that we should not try to combat it with mortal means. We cleared the windowsill of all obstacles and locked the window shut.
So, onto the sofa went Chris. He lay there all day, while I watched the cricket. England were getting pasted, but Chris didn’t seem affected by the tension. Instead, perhaps convinced that he would be left in peace now that he’d surrendered his room, he drifted off at about seven. I crept out and retired to my bed, determined to keep silent. Chris had to sleep. His eyes had become red and wild.
But then, later that night, the roaring of Chris’ voice came again. I heard him tearing about the flat, banging and slamming doors and tipping things over. I walked into the hall and found him standing there in his boxers.
“What are you-”
“Sssshhh!” he held his finger up to his lips and his eyes danced about the ceiling and walls. “Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Purring. I woke up and felt it on my chest. It was purring. I went for it but it got away, but it hasn’t stopped purring. I’ve been chasing him. I think I’ve got him cornered.”
I listened carefully but I couldn’t perceive anything. I checked Chris’ room, and freakily found that the window was open. There was a dead dormouse on the windowsill. I picked it up, brought it into the hall and showed it to Chris.
“Some kind of cat mafia message,” he said. He ran his hand over his head and stumbled off into the front room, giggling in a way I didn’t like.
Over breakfast the next day, he finally discussed moving out. I was concerned, because if this room was experiencing some kind of curse it would be difficult to rent. If it defeated Chris in a month, it would have others out in a week.
There was no more talk about it for a few days. He stayed over at a few mates’ flats, and didn’t appear at all. I assumed he was looking at other rooms, but didn’t want to chase him for fear of bringing things to a head.
Then, the next week, on the first morning of the second test match, he came home. There was a parcel for him on the mat. He took it into his room with a little excited jig, and slammed the door behind him. He obviously wanted privacy. I went into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee and a slice of marmalade toast, then took a seat in the front room to watch the cricket. Then Chris walked in, fiddling with something in his hands. He sat down on the sofa and pointed it at the television.
“What the hell are you doing with a gun?” I asked him.
“I’m going to kill that cat,” he replied.
I didn’t comment, but it was a little worrying. I had never seen him killing it that way. He was a big monster of a man, Chris, brick shaped and strong armed like a bodyguard. People backed away from him if they got him annoyed. Every time that cat turned up and I heard Chris leaping out of bed to get it, I imagined him grabbing it right by the throat and sheer throttling it to death. Maybe I should have known better. Chris owned a machete and brass knuckles. A gun was the logical next step.
“Is it a cap gun or something?” I asked him.
“No, it’s the real deal.”
“Where did you get it? Isn’t that illegal?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a silencer.”
I didn’t find that re-assuring. Chris brought out a thin metal tube and spun it onto the end of the barrel. Then he drew it into his lap, and felt around in his pocket. He produced a clip, which he carefully slipped into the gun’s empty chamber with a nice ‘click’ sound.
“I ordered it off the internet,” he said absently.
“Seriously?” I asked him.” How much was it?”
“None of your business.”
He finished loading and again pointed the gun towards the telly.
“Well, I’ve got him tonight,” he said.
I didn’t like the way he swung the gun around on the end of his fully extended arm. He didn’t directly point it at me, and I was fairly sure Chris didn’t mean me any harm, but his mood was erratic and the gun looked old and easily mis-fired.
Still, it was a gun.
“Can I have a go with it?” I asked him.
“What do you mean ‘have a go with it’?”
“Can I hold it?” I asked him.
He thought about it for a moment but then passed it over.
“Wow,” I said. “Heavy brute.” There was something satisfying about holding it. “You’ll have to be a bloody good aim to get him, won’t you?”
“No,” said Chris. “I’ve got it all worked out. He always sits in the same spot, and I have accurately mapped out the trajectory from a fixed point where I sleep. I’ve built a brace which the gun rests in. All I need to do is pull the trigger and it’s bye-bye possessed insomnia cat.”
“You’re sure you’ll get him?”
Chris nodded vigorously.
“Positive. I’ll at least wing him, and if he comes back again, he’ll not make as quick a get away.”
I shook my head and frowned.
“There must be another way.”
Chris turned his wild, red eyes on me.
“What? Tell me another way.”
Seeing that I had no response, he placed the gun on the table and regarded it like a new sweater laid out on a bed. I didn’t think it was a good idea at all, but I didn’t want to lose the rent. He disassembled the gun, and packed it back into its box. Then, gathering it up under his arm, he marched off into his room.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to desperately, as I didn‘t wish to be party to the murder of a clearly supernatural being. I longed for the cat to use its power one last time and drape me in slumber before Chris blew its head off with his illegal firearm. But I was wide awake. I made myself a cup of cocoa and read one of my dryer history books but nothing would work.
Eventually, for the first time in a long time, I found myself looking at a clock reading 3:59am. Then, I heard something outside.
Or perhaps I didn’t hear it. Perhaps I felt its presence with some long neglected sense inside me that the cat had in spades. Whatever the case, I knew it was out there on the ledge.
Then it began to make its noise: an awful, wailing, plaintive, discordant meow. I expected Chris to shoot without hesitation, but he didn’t. I realised that he was wide awake in his bed, in the dark, making absolutely certain of the gun’s balance in its brace, probably holding his breath with exhilaration and fear. I looked at the clock again. Then I heard the window smash.
It had taken him seven minutes to shoot.
I bounded out of bed and went to my window. In the dark I couldn’t make out much. All I saw was something big, much bigger than a regular cat, diving into the trees from Chris’ window ledge. I peered through the moonlit branches trying to spot it, but it vanished in a second.
I put on my dressing gown, went out into the dark hall, and knocked on Chris’ door. It was silent in there. I heard no whoop of joy; not even the usual screams of frustrated anguish. I tried the handle and the door swung open.
The window in front of me was wide open, the freezing wind blowing in hard. A lamp was on by Chris’ bed. The sheet was ripped back. The brace was still in place, the gun strapped firmly within, smoking a little at the barrel. The room smelled of cordite.
There was a quiet but regular sound, like a small diesel engine turning over. Looking around for its source, I pulled back the sheets, and there, lying on its side and purring noisily, was the cat. It had white blotches around its eyes and white paws, and a white belly. Everything else was black. It looked briefly up at me and blinked. Then it closed it eyes again, and continued the important business of purring. I couldn’t say for sure, but I thought it was smiling.
I went out the room and into the kitchen, and opening the fridge, poured the last of the milk into a saucer. I took this back into Chris‘s room and laid it on the bed next to the cat. He sniffed at it a little but turned away without drinking.
I went over to the window and stared out into the black garden. It was quiet and still. I could hear the cat washing itself noisily.
He obviously didn’t expect Chris to come back.
© 2010 Jon Wallace
–
Jon Wallace lives in London, England. In the last year he has been published in First Edition Magazine, Even More Tonto Short Stories and Absent Willow Review.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.