By R. J. Quisenberry
I am The Sacred Cat. That is what my human calls me. He sometimes shortens it to Sacred. When he is frustrated with my actions, he calls me Sac.
When I was a mere kitten (this time) the mistress came to me. For those of you who do not know, she is a sort of patron of felines. Not a goddess… Just a patron… She guides us in our journeys from life to life. We love her. We know that God put us here to obey her requests.
She told me to lick the nose of one of the humans who would soon come to select a kitten. She told me that this would make him pick me and that I was to protect him. When I did it, he smiled and named me there and then. Humans are odd.
We have been fast friends ever since. So far, he has not considered spaying me. For that I am thankful! Little do the humans know, we felines are reborn after death so long as our bloodline continues… And you were thinking we only had nine lives! I only hope I can manage to have a litter before something awful happens.
We live next door to a lovely male Siamese named Ra… Oh, and his human Sarah is not ugly either. She is very nice to me when I visit. Her apartment is filled with odd substances and objects. Humans call her an artist. She often makes shiny things that Ra and I can practice killing on. We like her.
My person, Robert brought a strange woman home several different nights. She seems nice on the outside, but I get a bad feeling about her. For one thing, she smells wrong. She smells like a different person each time I see her. Her hands are also too cold when she pets me. (I try not to let her too often.) Robert is very fond of her. I hope they do not mate.
Tonight, when the strange woman comes into the house this time, she smells worse. I smell a weak odor of rotting meat and blood. I can tell that she is trying to cover it. Her perfume is fresher than usual and she has used more of it… At last, I know why I never liked her. I also know why the mistress sent me to him.
Luckily, Robert took a course in photography (that he never finished) a while ago. He still had chemicals in the house. While she works on charming him, I carefully work my way through the closet until I find the bottle that smells right. I had once before met with someone like this woman when I was one of the palace cats long ago in Egypt. I knew what to do to get rid of her.
I carefully push the bottle over on its side on the shelf. Once I have the end of it hanging over her beautiful wool coat, I begin chewing through the plastic lid. It tastes horrible! I soon have the nasty, clear liquid trickling out of the bottle onto her coat.
Once the bottle has poured as much as it could onto the coat, I push it off the shelf to break on the floor. I hear the shout I expect from the couch as Robert and the woman pause the DVD. She is there just before Robert. She glares her hatred at me. Her hungry eyes dart to Robert as he
arrives at the closet door. “Sac! How could you be so bad! You know you are not allowed there!” he yelled. As expected, I slink out the window in the kitchen too fast for either of them to catch me. The mood is ruined. Now for part two.
She can tell that she needs to go home and regroup before she can move on with her plans for my Robert. I know she will have to put on the coat and walk home. She will be almost too easy to follow.
I go straight to Sarah’s apartment. She is asleep, but Ra helps me find the package of special clay. The smell is quite distinctive. I bite the package open and rub my teeth and claws into the clay. I roll in the mess I have made, and even swallow some of the stuff to be thorough. I nuzzle Ra one last time, hoping that it will not be truly the last. My fur caked with bits of clay, I hear the exit door at the back of the building slam shut as the woman swears in pain.
Leaping down the stairs of the fire escape, all three floors flashing past in my haste to catch her, I can smell her as her flesh begins to burn. Her kind never could stand silver. Her coat was soaked with silver nitrate, she must be in horrible pain. Good!
I manage to leap onto her head as she flings the expensive coat to the ground. Now I smell the real scent of her. Vile fumes of decay that were unnaturally held at bay by consuming the lives of others. I bite and I scratch. Now she is bleeding a fluid that reeks of rot.
At last, as I knew she would, she catches me in her hand. She sinks fangs into my belly and smiles for a moment. Then, she screams and drops me. She did not realize that there was silver all over and in me. Thank goodness Sarah had that special silver clay!
As the thing writhes on the ground, I tear its throat out. I am not sure how much blood she took, or how badly I am hurt. I only know that this is what the mistress wants of me. At last, all I can do is vomit from the pain and the stress of it all. A wad of the silver clay from my ejection lands on her eye and begins melting through her head. She stops moving totally after a few moments.
Dragging my torn body to the front entrance of the building, I pass out as I wonder if Robert will miss me and if there is an afterlife for me since my line will end with me.
I awake to a nasty smelling place of too much light. It’s that place Robert takes me for shots. I hate it here! Robert is scratching my ears and Sarah and Ra are here. He explains that I was found when he started yowling and led them to me. It has been 12 hours and I have been operated on. He has checked about the body. Friends of ours saw the sunrise in the morning burn the remains away. That nasty blood drinker is gone forever.
Sarah and Robert are looking at each other in a funny way. I smell pheromones! I am happy.