Firecoat’s Irreparable Witch

by Aaron Canton

There had been a time when the world had reshaped itself at Firecoat’s command. A snap of his paw was all it had taken to drive a horde of mice out of their hidden warrens and send them scurrying away, a flick of his tail had forced potion ingredients to drop from their shelves into the hands of the magician who needed them, and even the tiniest twitch of his thinnest whisker had flipped the pages of grimoires until they opened to exactly the right spot. But now, when Firecoat slipped into the worn study and then hopped onto the little wooden table where his witch was scratching out a new spell on some parchment, nothing happened. Not even the woman at the table reacted to his presence.

Firecoat’s sleek fur, normally a brilliant orange which promised warmth and light to those he loved and blazing destruction to his foes, appeared faded in the study’s dusty air. It would have been trivial to make a window fall open with the mere inclination of his head and thus let in some fresh air to cut through the dust. But the last time Firecoat had tried that, his witch’s only reaction had been a bitter tirade about the sudden draft, so instead he just walked up and nestled against her arm. She flinched, and Firecoat’s green eyes widened as he felt a surge of aggravation building in her heart, but then her gaze focused on him and she caught herself. 

(Continue Reading…)

This story originally appeared in From a Cat’s View: An Anthology of Stories Told by Cats

Night crept into the cemetery earlier than in the rest of town, and dawn came later than usual.

Perhaps the mountains to either side snatched up the sun in late afternoon and held it ransom until long after breakfast. Or maybe Nature, lover of all things atmospheric, decided a glorified skeleton farm was too unsettling a place on which to bestow so many hours of daylight. Gothic iron fences and chipped granite angels looked best in twilight, after all, especially when the fog blew in from the river to wind around the gravestones like tulle.

Whatever the reason, geology or spookiness, cemetery nights were longer, and people avoided cemeteries at night. As if ghosts and ghoulies only worked the late shift, and the daylight would protect them from invisible echoes of the past and the dark things that hovered at the corners of their eyes.

Nonsense. It was the same superstitious thinking that made otherwise rational people toss spilt salt over their shoulder and say their prayers at night. But if they believed the nonsense protected them—and kept them from admitting they were nothing but helpless specks of carbon and water floating in an infinite void of evil that wanted to steal their souls and wear their faces like Halloween masks—so what? If a little nonsense keeps society from falling apart, more power to them.

But cats know better. (Continue Reading…)