Urns

It’s a strange thing following a cat. Excruciating waits melt into bursts of activity, forewarned by nothing more than a shift in the air too subtle for the human senses. But the cat feels it, or hears it, or smells it, and trots off, puffed up with purpose. It takes tortured, serpentine routes that dive under and squeeze between and double-back, avoiding the road most traveled for hazy night-reasons. The cat must know it is being followed, but it neither runs away nor explains where it is going, nor why it’s going there so very slowly. To follow a cat is to understand the difference between body and brain. Soft fur and a paintbrush tail are qualifications enough for companionship, but the intelligence within is so alien as to be repellent. A dog asks to be followed, knowing every scavenger hunt needs a worthy crew. A cat has greater matters to attend to and does not always warn stubborn followers away in time.

Having trundled through the quiet neighborhood of Wubbon-Moy long enough, the cat stopped and sat on the sidewalk, staring through the darkness at Thomas with baleful eyes. Its fur was black and entirely without sheen; at night and from a distance its shoulders faded indistinguishably into its haunches as not a single hair caught the light, its body separable from the dim surroundings only by the vague impression of movement. Perhaps in a happier environment the cat would have been easier to track. But Wubbon-Moy was a matte splotch of a town itself, suggesting a kind of convergent evolution where given enough time, all things trended towards a grim gray.

Dowdy brick homes hunched over the pavement on both sides, as if to crowd passersby off the walkways. Most of these houses sported prim front lawns, expensively manicured save for the tiny plastic signs warning pedestrians away, as if the modest town had somewhere else one could possibly go. Ornamental plants curled in their baskets, brown with winter but tidy. Two houses down, the cul-de-sac gave way to the beginnings of the knobby forest that cupped around the wilting town. Thomas loathed the houses and their tiny signs. The cat was surely indifferent.

All this to say, Wubbon-Moy was the sort of place that family only visited for a funeral, or at least that was Thomas’ experience. He had arrived two nights ago to act as his late grandmother’s executor, a power vested in him, he assumed, mostly in deference to the brief period in his childhood when she was his primary caretaker. This occurred at a young enough age that the only thing Thomas really remembered was being terrorized by Katie, his grandmother’s striped tabby. Katie was at least twice the size a cat ought to be and toggled between spite and condescension, finding no real need for any other modes. Her favorite trick was to lay across a sunny windowsill humming softly, face folds crinkled around mismatched eyes, luring her victims within swatting distance like a fat siren. To make matters worse, young Thomas soon developed a nasty contact allergy to the dander that streamed off of Katie’s back and clung to the small spaces of his grandmother’s house. He swore his first curse words at that cat, slapping at the beast as Katie hissed and spat.

As it turned out, those curses eventually worked. Years later, organizing his grandmother’s empty house the evening before the service, Thomas had discovered by degrees that the only remaining traces of Katie were a simple gold urn on the mantle and long scratches in the paint below the front window. He realized he didn’t know if she had been young or old when he lived there. Practically, the gold urn was a bit sticky. Throwing it away felt needlessly cruel, but the thought of bringing it home with him at the end of the week made Thomas feel sick to his stomach. He thought about getting it appraised, as if a dollar value could clarify the moral dilemma. He thought about two gold urns sitting on the front windowsill, watching the sun come up in a quiet house. He left for a walk.

And now, the black cat. Thomas had started following the ink blot of a stray some thirty minutes ago, for reasons he couldn’t easily articulate. He was certain it must be going somewhere, but now after dragging him all around the shabby neighborhood, the cat seemed to have given up on whatever mission it might have once had.

“You would’ve liked Katie, I think. She was kind of an ass too.” Thomas swung his right leg half-heartedly, kicking at nothing in particular, not ready to think about the piles of stuff lying dormant in his grandmother’s house.

In response, the black cat wriggled its head in irritation before bounding forward, causing Thomas to recoil lest the cat touch him. It scampered across the road and down the opposite sidewalk, streetlights never seeming to properly illuminate its form, skittering over vegetable boxes abandoned for the season. It stopped at the treeline, peering at Thomas expectantly for a moment, before diving headlong into the forest.

“Don’t be like that,” Thomas muttered, but his feet were already moving, drawn to the trees.

Isolated copses of scraggly hawthorn and crab apple soon gave way to respectable woods, swallowing what little light remained in the day. Thomas held his cellphone high above his head, panning the flashlight’s beam to detect any flutter of movement that indicated his feline guide was still nearby. The cat ran on silently, or at least stealthily enough that Thomas could not hear it above his own thrashing. He was constantly caught up in long grasses and tripping over concealed roots, having dedicated his only available light source towards keeping up with the black cat. In the dark, he drove his foot through a rotten crab apple, the fruit squelching in protest. Somewhere, an owl called out. A dim halo of light behind him confirmed that Wubbon-Moy carried on its dismal way, but Thomas found he didn’t care anymore. Black fur flickered in his periphery vision, little more than a memory of a shadow, and his feet followed.

Eventually, the cat slowed to a traipsing canter, cocking its head as if looking for a hard-to-find turn. It did not allow Thomas to fully catch up, but where he had been lucky to glimpse a tail swishing in the brush, he now maintained a clear view of two pointed ears. Those ears were in constant agitated motion, swiveling, waiting. The cat vocalized sharply, perhaps satisfied with its findings.

After a moment, harsh mewls of every pitch and register rang back, startling Thomas as he had not seen another cat, let alone several. As he continued walking, the cacophony grew louder, animals shouting out their recognition in creaks and drabs. The trees thinned abruptly and he stumbled into a clearing, the black cat once again seated and waiting for him several yards ahead. 

The clearing was oblong, like two water droplets merging into one, and no larger than a soccer pitch. If it ever had been a pitch, it was beyond disrepair, an unpleasant mixture of brown, wilted grasses stamped flat and stony debris. At the far end where a goal might have stood was instead a strange metal pylon, at least fifteen feet tall with spindly anchors that snapped into the earth to hold it upright, and a red beacon that shone and faded in time with the sound of a distant hum. For the first time tonight, Thomas could see a crescent moon.

In moments of quiet stillness, Thomas might have believed he was alone. But then another animal’s yelp would pierce the night and other cats would respond, pacing and jockeying for the most desirable spaces. Estimating their number was impossible - dozens, thousands? The more Thomas looked, the more cats he noticed, each with the same flat, black coat of the cat he followed and impervious to the light of the moon. Their chattering swelled, intermixing with the dirge coming from the pylon.

After a moment, Thomas crept out from the cover of a gnarled crab apple tree, fighting an overwhelming sense of exposure. Nearby cats chirruped, as if expecting something. His cat blinked, then sauntered across the field towards the pylon, not bothering to look back and ensure that Thomas followed.

Before Thomas could take another hesitant step, a woman’s voice called out to him. He spun around, shocked to see another person emerging from the woods.

“Are you going to follow him?”

She was younger than Thomas but maybe not by a lot, with brown hair thrown into a messy bun and square glasses. She kept talking to him, but kept her eyes fixed on a cat that had wandered some distance out into the field.

Thomas recovered himself enough to answer. “Oh, I guess I haven’t decided yet.”

The insistent thrumming of the machine filled the silence between them.

“I think I’m going to follow mine,” she said softly, “It’s so strange. She looks just like the cat I had when I was a little girl.”

“What was her name? Your cat, I mean.”

“Cinnamon. I couldn’t say it though, I was too young and I had a terrible lisp. My mom has these old videos of me calling to her, ‘Cimahmum, Cimahmum,’ like that. I thought she was my sister.”

Thomas smiled and looked at the pylon and the twin black ears steadily approaching it.

“That’s really nice. I’m sorry, but do you know where we are?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t think that really matters.” She seemed flustered by the question, eager to change the subject. “Did you have a cat growing up?”

“No. I don’t really like cats.”

“Oh.” She worried at her bun and chewed her lip, continuing to watch the cat that wasn’t Cinnamon.

The hum had pitched up into more of a whine, like a ripcord engine. More cats were drifting towards the pylon and Thomas could see more people poking out of the trees, probably emboldened by watching him and this mystery woman. He realized that his legs were shaking.

The woman nodded to herself in resolve. “Guess I’m off.”

She began to walk towards the pylon. Thomas wanted to ask her another question or at least wish her luck but the words stuck in his throat and he just stared as she moved deeper into the field. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the growing crowd of people sheepishly hugging to the shadows of the trees, the cats urging them on, the faint glow of Wubbon-Moy hovering somewhere beyond the forest, and the tower flaring red. The hum radiated off it, filling his stomach.

Time to go.

All at once, Thomas bolted from the clearing back in the direction he came, crashing through fallen branches in a desperate tangle of limbs. The cats snarled, suddenly feral and wild, but Thomas dared not risk looking back. He could barely look front with his light bouncing madly from limb to rock, a kaleidoscope of hazards half-rendered. The noise coming from the pylon ratcheted into an aggressive buzz that shook his teeth. He felt a thousand padded feet running alongside him, scrabbling against bark, hoping to trip him up and take him back.

His breath shot out in painful bursts, but he kept running, pushing back against foes real and imagined. Somehow, he surfaced in that unfriendly cul-de-sac, grateful to feel his shoes slapping against concrete once again. Two blocks later and he was back at his empty grandmother’s house, empty but full of things. He slammed the door and bolted it shut, turning the tumbler as hard as he could even after it caught.

Thomas climbed the creaking stairs to his old bed, the room frozen in time by virtue of being on the second floor and thus mostly inaccessible to his grandmother in her final years. He didn’t bother with his clothes or shoes and lay face-down, trying not to see more of the bedroom than he had to. After a moment, he stood and walked back down the stairs to the living room. With a deep breath, he lifted the golden urn from the mantle and returned to his bedroom. Knees folded in bed, he clutched his prize tightly, wrapping both arms around the urn and pulling it into his breast until the fine details cut into his skin and slept.

Morning always came early to his grandmother’s house, as sunlight had no trouble bursting through her flimsy shades. Thomas unfolded himself gingerly, wincing at the marks left behind when separating urn from body. He put on his best suit and set the gold urn on the windowsill before leaving, pausing to rest his hand against it for just a moment.