What the Orange Cat Knew

She wasn’t supposed to be there. Not that late at night, not that part of town, and definitely not the combination of the two. How many times had she been told—lectured, really, and for good reason—by her parents, her former college roommate, and even, especially even, really, the guy that had taught her self-awareness class just two months prior. Yet there she was, skulking about like a common criminal, tiptoe-dashing from dumpster to doorway, following the little fluff of orange that had first caught her attention all the way back at Llyod Park. It had been light then, not so very many minutes ago (or was it longer?), and the flick of an excited tail had somehow drawn her to itself, beckoning her to follow. It all made no sense, really. She didn’t like cats. In fact, she was highly allergic to them and had fairly sworn them out of her life purely from a sense of self-preservation.

Yet, again, there she was. She fingered for the dozenth time the canister of mace in her pocket and told herself she’d have plenty of time to react if someone unsavory approached. Situational awareness. Eyes constantly moving. Phone ready to dial 911 if needed. Well, two out of three would have to do; her phone battery was near dead. Dead. Not the right word at that moment. All she could think about (beyond chasing the fluffy orange tail of a stray feline through the dark streets of Milwaukee, of course) was Jack the Ripper, the serial-strangler from long ago. Or was it knives? The mist rising from the storm drains on the sultry August night created an almost fog-like atmosphere that menacingly reminded her of London. Not that she’d ever been to London. But she’d seen it in the movies, and the more time passed and the deeper she got into the bowels of the city’s Triangle North, the more she felt like she deserved whatever fate met her that night.

The tail occasionally paused as the cat took furtive yet somehow purposeful glances backwards, almost seeming to have divined her presence. Was this cat intentionally keeping her within close enough distance so as not to lose her? Was he trying to get her to follow him to wherever he was going? Was she really trying to read the mind of a cat? Regardless, the pauses in the cat’s movements provided time for her to recheck her surroundings, so she was thankful for them.

Unlike what she imagined a cat would do normally if left to itself in the mysterious alleys and corners of the city at night, this fellow wasn’t stopping to sniff the myriad foul-smelling dumpsters or investigate unidentifiable piles of detritus that she was trying diligently to avoid stepping in. Other than the frequent breaks to look back in her direction, the cat seemed on a mission to get to wherever it was he was going with as little delay as possible.

She watched the cat make a left turn at an alley about 100 feet ahead, and she scurried up to the place as noiselessly as she could. She peered around the corner when she reached it and glimpsed the cat’s tail once more as it glided into an open door of a building that, judging from the boarded-up windows, was not currently tenanted. The feeling of being the tragic dupe of a horror flick returned and she found herself questioning what to do next. She had already broken so many of the “stay alive” rules that night, how could she not follow this through to the end? End. Another poor choice of words. Yet she struggled mightily to make her feet move from where she stood. The doorway was just ahead on the right, not fifty feet away. She could tell it had once been green, but graffiti, rust, and flaking paint chips had turned it into rather more of a mosaic display than any one solid color.

A sharp burst of laughter from somewhere deep inside the city startled her and somehow pushed her into action. She needed to wrap up this silly jaunt through downtown and get back to the safety of her bungalow apartment. She considered, just at that moment, turning and beginning her weary way back home, but the orange-brown head of a cat poked through the doorway and, with the imperious look that only cats can give, demanded that she catch up. So the game was up. There was no denying at this point that the cat had craftily lured her to this place for some premeditated purpose that had overridden all his other cat instincts and predilections. With resignation, she stepped towards the door and offered the cat a salutation of, “Well, kitty, I may need one of your nine lives shortly, but here I come.” She knew the police detectives would have a head-scratch when they found her bloody, broken body in a week or two, and she had the fleeting urge to jot down a quick explanation to leave behind.

Realizing her words to the cat would have given her away to anyone lurking inside, she abandoned her pretense at stealth and continued forward with nervous determination. Reaching the door, she attempted to switch on the flashlight on her phone but realized with dread that the battery had not made it this far along the journey. She shoved it back in her pocket, trading it for the canister of mace, and, finger at the ready, poked her head around the corner and into the room beyond.

Not in a thousand years—cat or human—would she forget the next few moments of her life. A dirty but unbroken skylight spilled moonlight into the bedroom-sized abandoned room. Apparently, this had served as a sort of storage area in the most-recent iteration of this space’s existence. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noted wilted remnants of cardboard boxes clinging to rusty metal shelves that lined every wall, the boxes spilling uncountable sheaves of what seemed once to have been glossy cardstock advertising flyers. The room reeked of cat urine and the mustiness of disuse.

All of this she noticed later, however, for slumped in the opposite right corner was a figure not unlike one of the urchin characters from the production of Les Misérables that she had seen at the Marcus Center late last year. Yet, here, in this neglected hovel, far from the brightly illuminated glass walls of the MPAC, her overwhelming emotion was not one of maudlin sentimentality but rather of the deepest, sorrowful empathy for a suffering human being. Forgetting herself, she dashed past the now-incessantly-pacing cat and collapsed in front of the unmoving form in the corner. A child! Not more than 10 or 12. Dropping the mace, her fingers brushed skin wet with sweat and warm from fever. Not dead! Oh, not dead! A tear of relief escaped her eye as she sought to rouse the child. Slowly, ever so gradually, she tilted the boy’s chin upwards until she gazed fully into his face. Eyelids quivered and then tentatively opened.  Torpor gave way in sufficient measure to relief and…something else, as a weak but definite smile transformed the dirty, sunken face. Tears of joy now brimmed her eyes as she instinctively scanned the boy for injuries. Finding none, she sought to communicate with him, asking his name and introducing herself. Those pleasantries would have to wait, however, for, having been infused with this calming, sure ray of renewed hope, the boy fell peacefully asleep in her arms.

She sat in the window seat of her breakfast nook—the feature of this otherwise bland rental that had made her sign the lease contract the day she first saw the little bungalow—studiously typing out her shopping list on her phone. A sudden sneeze prompted her to add “allergy medicine” to the growing enumeration of household needs. Able really to move only from the waist up, she stretched toward the table to her left and grabbed a tissue. Sitting back, she read over her entries, and the corner of her mouth turned up when her eyes landed on “cat food.” As if aware that he was the subject of her current reverie, the orange ball of fur stretched tall in her lap and began kneading determinedly at her jeans. Her smile broadened as she stroked the cat’s velvety tail, causing him to turn and bunt against her knuckles in placid contentment. As she had done countless times in the past three months, she let her mind stray back to that August night when three lives were changed forever because she had inexplicably allowed a strange cat to lead her in a bizarre version of follow-the-leader through the nighttime streets of the city.