Gwen sealed her hazmat suit, the county humane society’s blue and red logo on each shoulder. She slid a ventilator over nose and mouth, secured goggles over her eyes, snugged the suit’s hood around her face, and slipped on the head lamp. “Can you hear me?”
“Luke, I am your…mother.” Chloe breathed heavily through her ventilator. “We sound like Darth’s spinster aunts.”
“Funny.” Gwen pulled on gloves and turned on the light. “Ready or not, in we go.”
They stood on the sagging front porch of an arthritic little house as gray and rotted as an exposed corpse. Chloe unlocked the weather-blistered door, shoving the cranky-hinged thing open with a grunt. She peeped in and shuddered. “Yuck! I hate this.”
Gwen followed her assistant into the shadowed interior, the condemned home of the Richfield Cat Lady. That was the media’s name for the poor old woman who died alone in the house, her body discovered a month ago. Their entrance stirred the air, clotting it with swirling floaters–motes, dust, and other minute things Gwen didn’t want to think about. Thank God for ventilators.
“Damn,” Chloe said, “It’s still a landfill in here.”
“Last sweep, I promise. I need to be sure we found them all.” Gwen shouldered the deformed door, which scraped against warped floorboards and growled in defiance as it closed. Gwen focused on her responsibility—to make sure no living thing suffered one extra minute in this lost house.
The miasma of mold, rot, cat piss stains, feces, and upchucked furballs was nearly visible in the gray light and would have overwhelmed them without the protective gear. Bugs fat as slugs crawled, climbed, and crept on every surface.
“Right there, on that davenport, they found her.” Cloe pointed to a slumped and torn couch in the junk-stuffed room. “What was left of her—ugh.” Multihued tufts of feline hair sprouted like discolored grass everywhere they looked. “Surrounded by a couple hundred well-fed cats. Gross.”
“One more look around before they take down this place.”
“That’s what you said last time and, surprise, here we are—again.”
It took an entire week to recover two hundred and six cats Rose Weiss had kept in her house. Tiny as it was, several of the nearly feral animals managed to elude Gwen’s volunteers for most of that time, bounding from room to room, floor to floor, finding one hidey hole after another. Despite her staff’s thoroughness, Gwen never shook the feeling something was still in the house. The thought an innocent creature might be left behind, to be terrorized and probably killed when the contractor demolished the house tomorrow horrified her.
Not on her watch. “We’ll start in the basement and work our way to the second floor.”
Rickety stairs led them to a cramped place full of low hanging pipes spidering from a decrepit furnace glowering mid-room like a Toltec head. Even the ventilators could not mask the vinegary-sharp stench of the enclosed place.
Gwen and Chloe ducked beneath sooty pipes, peered around stacks of cat-soiled boxes, old magazines, and disabled furniture. Everything lacquered in dust thick as sand. Rodent bones were in every crevice.
Rose Weiss lived her eighty-nine years exclusively in this house, the local TV stations loved to repeat, isolated in the middle of six unkempt acres on the edge of the village. No one ever fully realized the extent of the squalor she lived in.
Gwen was familiar with animal hoarders, had read about the disorder. She’d dealt with them twice before, but never on a scale this bad. It was as if Rose Weiss subsumed all that was human in her to serve her cats—literally, to her last breath.
How do you explain something like that? Gwen shook her head.
They found no sign of anything alive amid the trash in the basement.
The first floor was worse. Darkness did not cloak the thick clumps of filth and clutter strewn throughout the three tiny rooms, the bathroom black with mold.
“How could she live in this?”
“What’s more to know?” Chloe said. “She was nuts.”
The kitchen looked ransacked, cupboard doors spread like wings, exposing vacant maws. Dishes smeared with blackened shreds of past meals choked the sink. The door of the broken-down refrigerator hung open revealing remnants of foodstuff spoiled beyond rot.
A bag of cheap cat food sprawled on the floor beside the fridge, eviscerated, crumbs of kibble scattered like pea gravel. The entrapped cats found ways to feed themselves—even on the old woman’s dried out corpse, or so they heard.
Gwen shivered at the thought. She leaned over the torn bag of cat food.
“You okay?” Chloe asked.
“Fine.” Gwen studied the ripped bag. “Look.” She pointed at its innards. “Something’s been trying to eat out of it. Today, I think.”
Chloe bent over the bag. “How can you tell?”
“From too many years feeding cats at the shelter, that’s how. See the broken bits, the way the food’s pushed around? There’s at least one cat still here.”
“That’s impossible. We swept this house a dozen times, caught them all.”
“There are plenty of places a determined cat can hide.”
“And it takes a determined animal rescuer like you to find it, right Gwen?”
Gwen chose to ignore Chloe’s comment. “I’ll get the box trap and a can of food from the truck. You keep looking around. If you find it don’t touch.”
“I have done this before, oh Obi-Wan.”
When Gwen returned they searched every crevasse within the mounds of junk. They moved furniture, tumbled towers of trash, and found nothing.
“Upstairs,” Gwen said, “Has to be.” She wished she could remove the hazmat gear to mop off the sweat dripping down her body.
“There has to be more to it,” she said as they trudged up the stairs, her gear getting bulkier with each step.
“More what?” Gwen carried the box trap and cat food.
“Rose Weiss, this place, it’s not just crazy. What makes a woman hoard two hundred cats? Isolate yourself like that. She was a slave to these cats, wasn’t even taking care of herself. That’s more than crazy.”
“Crazy is good enough for me,” Chloe said. “Let’s find that cat you think is still here and leave. I need a shower, a very long, very hot shower. Plenty of soap, too.”
The second floor was a narrow hall flanked by three doorless bedrooms and an enclosed stairwell to a claustrophobic crawlspace above. Except for paw and foot smudged dust this floor was almost pristine, each room layered with pillows, blankets, cat climbers, toys, boxes, all for the cats to sleep in comfort while Rose Weiss lived in their filth below.
It did not take long to search the bedrooms. No cat.
Standing in the hallway Gwen looked at the ceiling. “Hear that?”
“What?”
“In the attic, something’s moving.”
“Ears like a cat. I don’t hear anything. I’ve been up there, it’s empty.”
The steep stairs to the attic were narrow and Gwen’s hazmat suit scrapped against the bare wood walls as she climbed. Heat thickened like soup with each step until Gwen’s every breath filled her mouth with a grit-seasoned broth. Panting, she stopped, gloved hands braced against the steps.
Behind her, Chloe touched the back of Gwen’s boot. “You all right?”
“I’m okay.” Gwen took a deep breath. The heated air stung her throat. Even with the ventilator she could taste the filth of the house, dry and chalky. She forced the disgusting thought from her mind and focused on her search. “Stay there. There’s no room for both of us up here.”
Sweat stung her eyes. She forced herself to climb.
She raised her head so the lamp spread it’s bluish beam into the crawlspace beneath the sloped wood-beamed roof. Dark and stifling, it was impossible to stand, hardly space for three people to lay head to foot its entire length.
Gwen stood on the stairs and slowly swept the light’s beam north to south. “Whoa!” She startled, almost slipping down the stairs.
“Gwen? What?”
“Found the cat.”
Eyes like gold coins shimmered in the light’s beam surrounded by a shapeless gloom.
“You need the trap?” Chloe shouted.
“Don’t think so.”
Slowly, Gwen’s eyes defined the outline of the large cat. Long-haired, a deep smoky gray, its shaggy shape blended into the darkness around the puddle of light. Calmly, the cat sat and stared at her with shimmering eyes. It was only five feet from Gwen’s face.
Got to be over twenty pounds.
The cat did not move. Its sides softly rose and fell with each breath. Even through the hazmat hood Gwen could hear its stuttered purr, deep and resonant.
Gwen wondering what to do next. Calm, unafraid, it made no effort to threaten her or shy away. As big as it was, Gwen knew the animal could inflict considerable pain if it wanted to.
“What’s going on, Gwen?”
Those eyes were like gold pools, irises black slits in the flashlight’s beam. Yet it never turned away.
“Gwen?”
Years of experience capturing feral animals told her to have Chloe hand her the long-poled live snare she could loop around the cat’s neck and safely drag it downstairs and into a cage.
But those lovely eyes…
Slowly, she reached out a gloved hand. One hiss and I get the live snare. The purr stopped and so did Gwen’s outstretched hand. The cat looked down, then slowly walked toward her, head lowered, nostrils flaring as it sniffed. The closer it got the bigger it looked. Thirty pounds, maybe.
Gwen’s heart thumped. She did not move. Those eyes, those marvelous, beautifully warm gold eyes, like jewels. The cat stopped inches from her open palm. It sniffed her fingers and took another step. Gwen could see patterns within the shaggy gray fur, subdued hues in roaming bands and hieroglyphic swirls that seemed to move by themselves.
It raised a paw nearly as big as her hand and Gwen sucked a breath. Claws sheathed, the cat touched her hand twice, gentle as an infant. Then it lowered its head once more. A pink tongue flicked at her gloved fingers and the purr returned, loud and soothing.
“Gwen, what’s going on?”
Gwen reached out both hands and picked up the massive beast, heavy as an overfed toddler. She cradled it against her chest.
“Gwen—I’m coming up…”
“I’m fine. Got it. It’s way friendly. I’m coming down.”
“Call the zoo! How the hell did we miss that one? She’s enormous.”
Its bulk warm as an embrace, the cat’s motorous purr vibrated through Gwen’s arms and filled her chest with a languorous rhythm that seeped down to her thighs.
“How heavy is she, you think?”
“It’s male,” Gwen answered, stroking the cat’s wide head. He licked her gloved hand.
Downstairs, Chloe scolded her for breaking procedure and directly handling an unfamiliar animal. Gwen did not care. “I just reacted, over and done. Let’s move on and save this victim.” Those gorgeous eyes—she could not get them out of her head.
“Victim?”
Gwen hesitated. “This cat, he—all of the cats we found, they’re victims, too, of Rose Weiss’s sickness.”
“A true animal lover. Can PETA crusader be far behind?”
They left the house, squinting in the bright late-afternoon sun, and headed to the back of the humane society’s white rescue van. Gwen cradled the purring cat in her arms, scratching his neck.
Chloe flung open the back doors of the van, then stepped aside and removed her hood, ventilator, and goggles. Sweat streaked her face. Her blond hair was stringy and soaked as if she had been caught in a downpour.
Gwen gently placed the cat into the largest cage they had in the back of the van. He offered no resistance and circled the cramped space a few times before lying down. He faced Gwen standing between the open doors, eyes locked on hers.
Chloe gasped. The sound jarred Gwen and she turned to her assistant. Stripping off her hazmat suit, Chloe sucked air as if she just surfaced from a free immersion dive.
“Hot! Hot! Hot! I feel like a melted Popsicle, all sticky and goo—and I stink.” The society’s blue and white shirt, her khaki slacks were matted to Chloe’s slim body. “Gwen, get out of that suit before you die of heat stroke.”
“Yes.” Gwen removed her headgear and felt the coolness of the summer breeze stroke her cheek and sweat-glued hair. She glanced at the cat. He watched her strip off the rest of the hazmat suit. Gwen enjoyed the unfettered freedom as the breeze touched her sweaty body.
With towels from the van, they mopped off. Chloe hopped into the driver’s seat while Gwen went to the back to close the van doors.
“You going to stand there all day or are you going to secure the van and hitch a ride back to the shelter?”
“What?” Gwen reluctantly tore her gaze from the cat’s placid face.
“You’re just standing there, Gwen. Close the doors and let’s go. I’ve had enough of this stink hole. Let’s call it a day, huh?”
Gwen barely heard her. His calm golden eyes, the gentle sea-like rise and fall of his purr, they called to her. She realized her knuckles were pressed against the cage mesh. His pink tongue flicked out and touched her skin. She smiled. Before she could react, he struck her hand with a clawed paw, a quick touch that stung like a needle prick.
“Ow!” Gwen pulled her hand away and spun into the late afternoon light. Three red welts rose across her middle knuckle. One tiny pinprick of bright blood welled from a welt. Instinctively, Gwen raised her hand to her mouth and sucked at the wound.
Chloe was beside her. “Let me see that.” She grabbed Gwen’s hand and examined it. The blood was gone.
“What’s wrong with you today? First you handle a wild cat, now you let it scratch you like this without wearing gloves. You forget the manual? Oh, sorry Gwen, you wrote the manual. Good thing the cat didn’t break the skin. Still…”
Closing the doors, Chloe led Gwen to the front of the van where she pulled out the first aid kit, scrubbed the scratches with an antiseptic wipe, and stretched a Band-aid across them as best she could. “There, that should take care of it. But you should see a doctor just in case. There’s always potential for cat scratch disease.”
Gwen laughed. She felt lightheaded. “I don’t think it’s anything, but I’ll get it looked at. Promise. Okay with you, doc?”
Her scratched knuckle throbbed, but in a good way, Gwen decided. Mellowing warmth seemed to flow up her arm.
Chloe smiled. “Let’s go. This place creeps me out.”
In the back parking lot at the humane society shelter, Gwen told Chloe she would take the feral cat to the quarantine building. “It’s late. I’ll arrange the exam, contact a vet for tomorrow.” She smiled. “You look beat. It’s been a long day. Go home. Take that hot shower you’ve been pining about. Thanks for your help.”
Chloe agreed and headed into the shelter to collect her things and fill out her timecard. Gwen watched her go inside.
Opening the van’s rear doors, Gwen gasped as she again saw the beauty in the cat’s golden eyes. He remained prone in the cage, legs hidden beneath the swirls of colorful long fur. His lovely eyes followed her. Somehow, it seemed comforting.
Gwen lifted the cage from the van, both hands holding the grip. Heavy as he was in the clumsily large cage, she appreciated it would be a short walk to the quarantine building. It would only take a few minutes to transfer him into a holding cage isolated from other animals in case he had some infection.
It surprised Gwen when she found herself at the back of her car, lifting the hatchback and sliding the cage inside, covering it with a blanket. It surprised her even more when she found herself driving home with him in the back, listening to his soothing purr as if it were music.
Gwen rented the second floor flat of a large old house owned by an elderly woman named Connie who lived on the first floor. Connie loved birds, owned a few, and did not care for cats. It was a condition of the lease that Gwen could not have a predatory pet in the house. So, the humane society animal rescue coordinator settled for an aquarium filled with tropical fish and a terrarium filled with a lethargic vegetarian lizard.
For the past three years that had been enough animal life for her. Not anymore.
Gwen opened the cage and he walked out of it into her arms. Covering the cat with the blanket, Gwen hurried up the back stairs to her apartment, the thrill of smuggling contraband electrifying her spine.
Lowering him to the floor, Gwen filled one of her good soup bowls with water. On a plate, she diced up some leftover roast chicken from the fridge and slid that next to his water bowl in a corner of the kitchen. The cat ate heartily, occasionally granting Gwen a glance of his wonderful eyes.
A cardboard box became a makeshift litter box. Gwen yanked plants from pots on a windowsill and dumped the dirt into it.
Tomorrow she’d take a day off from work and find proper food and litter for him.
Gwen grinned as she watched him patrol her apartment and seemed to approve. He jumped onto her tidily made bed, curled into a ball in the middle of her white flowered comforter, and immediately fell asleep as if he’d lived there all his life.
Gwen could hear Connie moving about downstairs. She’d probably just returned from a shopping trip and was putting away groceries.
Gwen frowned. She’d have to find a way to convince Connie that he would not be a danger to Connie’s pet birds. She’d promise to keep him in the apartment and not let him roam or stalk the wild things that flitted about Connie’s meticulously kept, bird-friendly backyard garden. For now, she’d keep him secret and find a way to reveal him to Connie at the right time in a few days. Once she saw the cat, how could Connie not fall in love with him? It was easy, he was so beautiful.
Tired but exhilarated, Gwen went to bed at midnight while the cat made another perimeter patrol of his new realm. She lay beneath the sheets, sleep nibbling her consciousness. The darkness of the room was thick and warm like an extra blanket.
Gwen considered how best to approach Connie about him. She touched her bandaged hand. Darkness seep into her.
She tensed. He was in the bedroom. There was no noise yet she sensed the cat’s presence, could feel him pause inside the bedroom door for a moment, then slowly walk to the foot of her bed. She trembled, expectation almost too much to bear. The mattress moved as the weight of the cat landed. Gwen could feel each step as he approached her. The room was too dark to actually see him but in a moment she felt his breath on her cheek, the wet touch of his sandpaper tongue, and she heard his melodic purr begin.
The cat settled next to her, Gwen enjoying the warmth of his bulk pressing against her shoulder. She smiled and felt herself slip into sleep.
She opened her eyes at the touch of his fangs on her throat. There was enough jaw pressure Gwen felt needle sharpness press against her windpipe but not enough to actually break the skin. He held her throat for what seemed like minutes and then released her. He backed away and sat next to her hip. Even in the dark his eyes glowed warmly.
She touched her throat, felt the slickness of saliva coating it. Gwen smiled.
Cats were solitary predators with limited ability to communicate their feelings. It was a cat’s nature to express its relationships to others with a simple “I could kill you if I want to but I didn’t” gesture. He had just told her he loved her.
“I love you, too.”
Tomorrow, she would invite Connie upstairs for tea. Gwen would let her see him. Let him touch Connie. She was sure he would convince her landlady how harmless he really was, how beautiful he was, and how he needed them to take care of him.
Yes, he would have a good home here for a very long time.
Gwen knew she would do everything to make sure this would be a safe home for him. She smiled at the thought. It was the least she could do, care for him as long as she and Connie still lived.
About the Author
Published author, editor, and recovering journalist, David J. Rank is director of the nonprofit Novel Bookcamp educational programs he founded in 2014. His 33 dark fiction short stories have been published in regional publications, online magazines, and five anthologies. A member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, he organized the HWA-Wisconsin (USA) Chapter in 2018. Oh, he also spies on things found in the deepest shadows. www.facebook.com/davidjrankwriter, www.novelbookcamp.org, Amazon Author.
Rank and his wife of 50 years live in eastern Wisconsin. He enjoys reading, making guacamole and chili, and sharing life with his three grown children and four grandchildren.
About the Artist
Yasmine Essence Soria is a photographer and writer born and based in Chicago. She is a first-generation Mexican-Honduran-American woman aiming to pave her path in the world. She received a BA in Creative Writing with a Minor in Photography at Columbia College Chicago. She creates work that expresses the core aspects of her identity while concentrating on opening and forming new perspectives of the world. Her photo work has been published in Mystic Owl Magazine, Outlander Zine, and displayed in the For Women, By Women Gallery from 2022-2024. Follow her on Instagram @yasmine.essence.
