A Cat Named Cat

Even as a young child, Mary knew that her grandparents put zero thought into naming their cat, Cat. It wasn’t indicative of their love for him though. He was a spoiled, fat cat, who ruled the house ... as cats tend to do.

Mary’s fear of Cat wasn’t necessarily unfounded. Her grandparents warned her often of getting too close. He was abused at his last home by young kids, or so they claimed. He was fine with adults, but whenever a child came near, he would scratch and bite. Mary had never witnessed this, but she had no reason to not believe her grandparents.

After hearing the warning one too many times, Mary began to draw wild visions of Cat in her mind. Her imagination created a super cat who would go out of his way to murder children whenever given the opportunity. He wasn’t just defending himself against again precocious children, he was exacting revenge on all of them. Had Mary been consulted during the creation of Pet Cemetery, there would have been a few more wild scenes. Ironically, she hadn’t even seen the movie or read the book. The visions of Cat were made entirely by her overactive imagination.

Trying to rationalize with Mary would have been useless. Once the nightmares began, they took over. She loved sleepovers at her grandparents’ house but accepted that doing so meant rough nights and horrible starts to the day. Every morning meant staying in bed for as long as possible, fully believing that if her grandparents were not awake yet, she would join the rest of the children murdered for the sins of children of the past.

On the horrible chance that Mary would have to get out of bed before anyone else, she stood on the end of the bed closest to the door and calculated how hard she would have to jump to make it to the hallway. The hallway was safest she thought, much safer than the bedroom where Cat could be hiding under the bed, holding his breath to not be noticed, claws and teeth sharpened for full effect.

She rarely made it to the hallway as it was a good ten feet away from the bed’s edge, but the closer the better. Each time, sweat dripping from her face, Mary ran as fast she could to the living room, jumping on the couch for safety, seemingly playing a version of hot lava where Cat was the lava.

Her grandparents often noticed the sweat and heavy breathing, but she refused to tell them the truth in the event that Cat was listening and would be increasingly rageful over her outing him.

Cat died when Mary was 10, just as the irrationality of the fear began to come to light for her. He was buried in her grandparents back yard, near the area that she used to play with friends due to a giant stump being easy to scale. She stopped playing there immediately as the fear of Cat killing her morphed into a fear of Cat haunting her. Murderous nightmares turned into soul-sucking zombie cat nightmares.

Whenever a situation arose that made her walk to the area of Cat’s final resting place, Mary hurried there and hurried back, careful not to step on his grave and trigger a haunting. Balls thrown in that direction were either caught or left to die along with Cat. The toys weren’t worth chancing fate.

Though her fear of cats in general died down, Mary didn’t have any pet cats until her early 30s, and only then because her husband had the exact opposite feelings on the pets. He grew up loving them, probably lacked grandparents’ nonstop warnings. Mary tolerated her husband’s cat, but never bonded. If the cat jumped up on her, she refused to move, worried about claws digging in so deep they’d have to be surgically removed.

Her kids grew to love the family pet, the three of them never giving the cat a moment of rest. She too warned her kids, as her grandparents had done to her, but in less of a fear-inducing way. Instead, she nagged them to, “Leave that fat cat alone!” Her husband feigned hurt feelings for his baby, claiming the cat was big boned. Her bones were not big. She was fat, as cats tend to be.

The family would get a second cat, who was apparently born addicted to catnip, as she was always climbing the walls, literally and figuratively. Mary grew to love the second cat, which at first glance, didn’t make any sense as she was always causing damage. However, her grandparent’s cat was a fat, lazy cat, much like the family’s first cat. The second was openly crazy, less likely to sneakily kill kids.

When the first cat was ten years old, she passed away in her sleep, found the next morning by Mary’s middle child. The family was devastated by the passing, especially her children who had no memories of not having her in their lives. Mary was surprisingly sad, but perhaps more saddened by her family’s grief.

Much like her grandparents’ cat, Mary’s family buried their cat outside in the back yard. A cross marked the spot, making Mary remember the cross in her grandparents’ yard. The children didn’t play near the grave originally, out of respect and sadness. However, time heals all wounds as they say, and the crazy younger cat made the family’s loss a little less extreme. She kept them entertained with her antics at all times.

Warm weather finally reached Mary’s family three months after their first cat passed and the kids began playing more nonchalantly near the grave. Mary hadn’t paid much attention until the day that the family was playing football. A ball passed her son, and he ran after it as quickly as he could, not noticing that he was running right towards the cross.

Mary hadn’t heard herself yell, “Don’t cross over the grave!”, but her husband later told her that he hadn’t heard so much fear in her voice ever before that. He said it gave him the chills and the kids all stopped where they were without moving for a long while. Mary didn’t notice any of that because she flashed back to her old fears of Cat turning into a zombie cat after his grave was disturbed.

“How silly.” Mary thought to herself when she snapped out of the daydream. “I am NOT scared of a Cat who died decades ago.”

But the next morning, she was forced to admit that she was still scared. She remained in bed for hours after waking up, waiting until her husband was awake to ensure that she wasn’t murdered by her youngest cat. They got her when she was a year old. Who knows if the cat had been abused by the wife of the family.