Cat Tales Issue #3

by Steve Vernon

“Well just when was the very last time that you ever saw a barrel with its very own built-in light bulb?” the Preacher asked. “It’s dark inside barrels, which makes it easy to hide in.”

  The boy didn’t have an answer for that question on account of he had never actually seen a light bulb before, let alone in a barrel, but he was getting awfully good at going away from wherever he was at, so he packed his two or three belongings and said goodbye to the church.

  He walked on down that long old road, listening to the sound of that big old church bell ringing goodbye behind him and thanks for all those cats. He thought about going back home to his Daddy and Momma only he was scared at what they might have to say to him so he figured that he would better off all alone.

  He was alone for two and a half days and he was getting hungry and his feet were sore when he met himself a stranger, a little old man with a belly just as round as a wheel of cheese and a cavity-riddled smile that kind of looked like a little bit like a half-fallen stoved-in picket fence, sitting in front of a campfire happily eyeballing a bubbling tin of pork and beans, rumbling to himself like he was thinking all about just how good those pork and beans were going to taste in his stomach.

  The funny thing was that the old man was camped outside of a great big old rambling wreck of a mansion. The boy wondered to himself why the old man didn’t go on inside of that mansion where it looked to be all warm and cozy. Maybe that old man didn’t want to risk burning the place down, by lighting himself a campfire.

  “Hey there old man,” the boy said, remembering his manners just long enough to not drool over the smell of that hot and bubbling tin can full of pork and beans.

  “Hey there yourself, young man.” the old man said, rubbing his chin against his hand and making that rumbling sound like it just felt good. “Didn’t your Momma and Daddy ever teach you not to talk to strangers?”

  “The only thing my Daddy ever taught me was how to say goodbye and good riddance,” the boy said crossly. He wasn’t all that mad at the old man, you understand. He was just mad at the memory of how his Daddy and the Preacher Man had both saw fit to tell him to hit the road for drawing too many cats. “Besides, I don’t see anyone else around here to talk to, stranger or not, so I figure I might as well just talk to you.”

  “Well sit yourself right on down and warm your poor travelling bones at my campfire,” the old man said. “You look like you have been walking these roads for quite some spell.”

  The boy allowed that he had been walking for quite some spell and that the warmth of a campfire was going to be welcome indeed.

  “Have some beans,” the old man rumbled. “They’ll warm you up some.”

  “That there sounds like a fine idea.” The boy said.

  So the two of them set in to eating that tin full of bubbling pork and beans and by the time they were finished eating the two of them leaned back on their haunches and bubbled in their very own kind of way because beans will do that to a body, once you’ve eaten them.

  The boy picked himself up a stick and he scratched out a sketch of big old dirt-colored cat in the dirt around the campfire.

  “Now that is a fine picture of a big old dirt colored pussycat,” the old man said. “What else can you draw?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to brag but I can draw myself a black cat or a gray cat or a tuxedo cat or a long skinny Siamese cat or a big old Persian cat or a blue cat or even a polka dot or striped cat or an orange cat – only painting with orange juice doesn’t work out too well, freshly squeezed or not let me tell you.”

  “I’m guessing that you must really like cats,” the old man said. “Or else you just like drawing them.”

  “I like cats just fine,” the boy said. “I like drawing them even more.”

  The old man rubbed his chin against his hand and smiled just a little.

  “So how do you get them to hold still long enough for you to draw them?” the old man asked.

  The boy shrugged.

  “I just look at them whenever I can and I do my best to hang onto their memory inside of my mind.”

  “That’s the best way to do it,” the old man agreed with a smile. “Memory is how a body can live on forever.”

  The boy smiled right back, stretched his arms until his back cracked, and then yawned sleepily.

  “Are you tired?” the old man asked.

  “I’ve been walking for a few days,” the boy said. “Some sleep would be good.”

  “Why don’t you go on inside the house?” the old man asked. “It’s warm and quiet and you’ll sleep soundly. Some folks say that the house is haunted, but I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “I’m not scared,” the boy boldly replied. “Ghosts are nothing more than memories that don’t know how to just stay put.”

  “There you go,” the old man said with a happy smile, stretching himself out and curling up by the fire.

  “Aren’t you coming inside as well?” the boy asked.

  “Not me,” the old man said. “Maybe you’re not scared of ghosts, but I sure am.”

  Now at that point of the story the boy could have just as easily have taken the easy way out by curling up around the other side of the fire, but being as he was young and bold he felt that he just could not allow himself to admit that he might be more than just a little bit scared of ghosts himself.

  He turned around once, at the porch of the big old empty house, and he looked back towards the flickering campfire to wave goodbye or goodnight to the old man, only all that he could see was a great big old cat stretched out around the campfire, rubbing it’s chin against its paws and most likely purring.

  “Huh,” the boy said aloud.

  And then that boy went on inside of the house.

  The boy knocked at the door, because he felt it would only be polite. Actually, it was more of a tap than a knock, but just as soon as his knuckles hit that big old wooden walnut door the sound of his knocking boomed and echoed like a roll of summer thunder.

  “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BA-BOOM!!!”

  The boy jumped just a little and he turned and he looked back at the old man but all that he could see was the crackling flames of the campfire.

  “I’m not letting him know that I’m scared,” the boy told himself. “Not one little bitty bit.”

  He reached out and squeezed the big brass door knob and shivered at the cold of the metal. He twisted and then he pushed and that great big old wooden door swung open with a long and lonely c-r-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-a-k-i-n-g sound.

  The boy stepped on inside and he was swallowed by the darkness as the great big old wooden walnut door c-r-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-a-k-e-d and slammed SHUT behind him.

  The boy jumped so high into the air that he almost floated away up into the darkness and then he landed on his feet with a heavy thump.

  He closed his eyes and squeezed them shut, letting the darkness pool up inside of them until he could see in the dark just a little bit.

  That was a trick that his Daddy had shown him a long time ago. Thinking about his Daddy and how many things his Daddy had taught him made that boy just a little bit lonely for his home but he was here where he was at and there wasn’t a single blessed thing to be gained by hanging onto to his loneliness and sorrow, so he settled for a little bit of honest wonder.

  “Wow,” the boy said. “It is sure dark in here.”

  He stretched out his left hand into the darkness and just as quick as you can say spit his fingertips felt a great big old solid silver candleholder being pushed into his grasp. The boy knew that he had just happened to reach out and touch it and he figured that his fingers had closed up instinctively, but to him it still felt as if something out there in the darkness had pushed that candle stick at him.

  Just as soon as he had hold of the candlestick, the wick lit up as a tiny little glimmering candle flame crackled and danced and illuminated the whole entire room.

  The boy stared at that candle flame and it looked to him just like a tiny little flickering pussycat danci
ng upon the end of that long beeswax candle stick.

  “Whew,” the boy breathed out, stirring up the hundred year old dust that had gathered upon nearly everything in sight.

  And that was when the boy noticed the walls.

  The long wide white-painted walls, standing there like great big picture canvases, just begging for a brush.

  “I wish I had me a pencil to draw with,” the boy said.

  And just like that the boy felt a great big Ticonderoga #2 pencil, sharpened at just the perfect thirty-five degree angle pushed into his open right hand.

  Now, a grown-up would have felt all scared and been all worried by all of these solid silver candlestick holders and Ticonderoga #2 pencils coming at him out of the darkness, but because he was just a barely grown boy he just looked happily at that pencil and that flickering candlestick and thought to himself that it was time to draw – and if you have to stop and ask me just what that happy boy drew, well then you haven’t been paying nearly enough attention to this story, now have you?

  The boy drew cats.

  He drew them because he loved to.

  He drew them all over the walls of that big old dusty haunted house, not stopping to worry about ghosts or witches or rattling bones or creaking doors or anything at all.

  He drew cats until his eyes grew heavy and he felt very, very, very sleepy.

  So he looked around for somewhere to sleep.

  He saw a couch and it looked comfortable and all, but it was turned the wrong away around and he wouldn’t have been able to see all of those cats that he had drawn on those perfectly white walls.

  So he looked around a little bit longer.

  Then he saw a big old bed, but it looked all green and moldy and he kind of had the feeling that if he lay down upon that big green moldy bed that he would sink down into the mattress and never come out again.

  So he looked around a little bit longer.

  And that was when he found that barrel and he remembered to himself what the preacher had told him to remember, which was namely - “If you find yourself sleeping out at night, find yourself a big old barrel to hide inside of because no one ever thinks about looking inside of a barrel at night.”

  So he tipped that barrel on over on its side and he crawled on into the belly of the barrel. The barrel stank a little bit of pickles and a little bit of apple cider, which was almost a clean and peaceful kind of odor. He found a knothole in the barrel and he peeked on through and he could see nearly all of the hundreds and dozens of cats that he had drawn on those perfectly white walls and if he wiggled just a little, just enough to rock and roll that big old pickled apple cider barrel he could see the rest of those hundreds and dozens of freshly drawn cats.

  Then he tried to count all of those freshly drawn cats and he dozed off at somewhere just a little bit past two thousand and thirteen thirty three.

  Very late in the night and or maybe very early in the morning the boy was awoken by the sound of a voice that sounded just a little bit like a squeaky wheel fighting with a screech owl.

  “I smell boy meat,” the squeaky wheel voice creaked out.

  So the boy hunkered down just a little bit more into that barrel.

  “I smell boy meat, and it smells r-e-a-l-l-y close,” the squeaky voice creaked on out.

  The boy held his breath.

  “Boy? Are you here? Are you close?” the squeaky voice asked. “Are you cooking in the festering reek of your very own scare sweat?”

  The boy closed his eyes.

  “Holding your breath and closing your eyes doesn’t help one little bit,” the squeaky voice said. “I can hear the beating of your scared little heart, just as loud as a yell in an emptied-out silo.”

  The boy squeezed his fist up against his heart, only while he was lying there in the barrel darkness he felt that Ticonderoga #2 pencil just a’quivering and a shaking in his hand.

  The boy tried his very best to keep that hand of his quiet - only nothing seemed to work. That pencil kept on shaking and faster than you could say Vincent Van Go-figure, the boy started to draw inside of the barrel. He drew a cat that was bigger than even that great big old gigantic barn cat that had got him into so much trouble. He drew a cat that was even bigger than that gigantic cloud cat that he had drawn across the ceiling of the church.

  And then the boy felt something grabbing onto the outside of the barrel.

  “Boy,” the squeaky voice said. “I got you now.”

  And then a long gray claw-like hand reached down into the barrel and the boy stabbed that big sharp Ticonderoga pencil right straight into the open palm of claw-like hand, and the claw pulled back and then all of a sudden there was a blur and the dark went even darker and the darker-than-dark shadows made sounds like the lightning was fighting with the crack of dawn.

  After a long time everything grew quiet.

  The boy lay there in the darkness of the barrel and he felt that big old barrel cat curling around his scared young body and he almost swore that he could hear that barrel-drawn cat purring and rumbling with happiness.

  When the boy finally worked up enough nerve to creep up on out of that barrel the sun had come up and was shining through the glass of the windows. The first thing the boy saw was a gigantic rat-goblin, nearly as big as a brahma bull, lying dead on the floor and torn into pieces more twisted and skinny than the skinniest piece of squirrel jerky at the bottom of a wintered out root cellar.

  He looked around the room and he could see that all of the hundreds of dozens of cats that he had drawn on those perfectly white walls were grinning with smiles that were red and wet with something that looked a whole lot like freshly drawn blood.

  Or red barn paint.

  Years later, the boy grew up to become a very famous artist – but no matter what he painted or drew he always remembered to place a very tiny smiling cat in the bottom corner of each and every work that he sold.

  The End

  Gilroy and the Kitten

  By Jamie Ferguson

  Gilroy jumped up on the window seat and landed on a small pile of papers that Breda had thoughtlessly left there, piled next to a short stack of books about candle magic. He batted at the papers with one orange-and-white-striped paw and watched them drift lightly to the red tiles of the kitchen floor. He sprawled out on the now uncluttered wood and looked out into the yard, his eyes narrowed to tiny slits in the bright summer sunshine.

  It was a beautiful morning in early August. A light breeze carried the scents of mint and rosemary through the screen. Bees buzzed around the flowers just outside the window. A couple of birds poked around in the patches of thyme, safe in the knowledge that Gilroy couldn’t get at them through the window screen.

  They were wrong, of course. But it was time for his nap.

  Gilroy licked one of his front paws, and then yawned. Breda had left to spend the day with her sister Almha, who had just gotten a new crystal ball, and wouldn’t be back until dinner time. Or at least Breda had promised she’d be back by then. She’d better be, because he’d figured out how to open the refrigerator the other day, and there was leftover turkey inside it. All he had to do was grab the towel that hung from the handle and pull just so.

  And even if Breda happened to see him in the crystal ball, she wouldn’t be able to make it home before he’d had his fill of the turkey.

  He stretched out as long as he could, his belly turned toward the window, and closed his eyes.

  He had almost fallen asleep when he heard a soft creak.

  He opened his eyes and looked out the window. His back stiffened as he watched Breda’s grandniece Delaney slip through the back gate and pull it shut.

  Delaney was only seven years old, or maybe eight, and was too young to be allowed to walk to Breda’s house by herself, so she must have snuck away from home because she appeared to be alone. She wore a white dress embroidered with red and yellow flowers, and her dark brown hair was pulled back in two ponytails. She sang to herself as she meandered down t
he flagstone path, stopping occasionally to look at one of the herbs. Her sandals made soft chuffing sounds on the stones.

  Gilroy had never enjoyed being around children, but did his best to tolerate Breda’s younger relatives. This usually involved sitting on the top of a cupboard or shelf when they came over, since that would allow him to watch and listen without having to put up with one of them rubbing his fur the wrong way, or accidentally stepping on his tail. Delaney managed to annoy him by doing both every time she visited. And that was with adults in the room doing their best to keep an eye on her.

  He sat up, his whiskers perked forward and his eyes narrowed, and watched the child wander around the garden.

  Delaney touched the leaves of a big bushy sage plant, bent over to sniff the flowers of a clump of marjoram, and stopped and stared at something in a patch of thyme. She picked a piece of lavender, spun it around with her fingers, and then skipped across the path toward the house. Her face brightened as she saw Gilroy sitting in the window. She grabbed the handle of the back door and tugged.

  Fortunately, the door was locked.

  “Hi, Gilroy!” she said. She pressed her face up against the window screen. Her collar was smudged with dirt and something pink and sticky-looking. She smelled like strawberries and sugar and the sprig of lavender she held in her hand. “I came over to visit you and Aunt Breda.”

  Gilroy blinked at her, and then gazed out into the garden, his head held high and his body as still as if he were a statue.

  Delaney knocked on the door frame. “Aunt Breda, are you here?” After a minute, she wrinkled her brow and pressed her little lips together so they formed a thin, rosy line. “She must not be home. Gilroy, can you let me in?”

  Gilroy kept his eyes fixed on the top of a clump of hyssop and waited for the child to get bored and go away so he could get back to his nap. If she’d managed to walk all the way here from her house on her own, she could walk all the way back.

  Delaney rattled the door handle.

  “Come on, Gilroy,” she said. “I know you’re just a cat, but you know how to unlock the door, don’t you?”