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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.

Cats can see the orbs and specters, and apparitions, and other unfathomably horrible things that humans can’t see. Cats see beyond the realm of the living, past the curtain where the levers and cogs of the universe operate, and understand that they, like humans, are just specks in a void. But cat specks get fed milk and are given little bits of string to play with, so they are okay with the occasional demons or poltergeists so long as the spirits stay more or less in their place.

Which is why, in the cemetery of nearly perpetual night, there were cats to keep the ghosts and demons at bay. One cat for each grave—three-hundred forty-seven in all—some of them feral and some pampered pets who snuck off to purr at ghosts when their humans went to work.

Their leader was a sleek, black shorthair named Pawdrey Hepburn (because people are cruel like that). Pawdrey had long since graduated from chasing orbs, those irritating little bits of energy that buzzed around fresh graves. She’d outlived all the toms and queens before her. And probably even outlived the old woman who had named her Pawdrey Hepburn, though she’d not been home in years to find out and had no desire to go back. 

Because of her age, and the wisdom that came with it, she’d earned the right to live out the rest of her life from a place of honor. The tall gravestone was still warm from its scant hours of sunlight, and radiated heat like only a nice lap can. To Pawdrey’s knowledge, its occupant, one Myron Farnborough 1900-1976, had never tried to escape to the world of the living, and that made his stone the perfect place to nap, cozy and undisturbed.

Pawdrey lounged on Myron’s gravestone while the other cats dealt with ghosts that weren’t so well-behaved. Her paws hung off either side, and her cheek rested in a groove worn into the granite. There she intended to stay until morning, or quite possibly until the end of time. It was just that good of a napping spot. And then the humans came.

The iron gate opened with a groan of protest, and three flashlight beams swept through the darkness. Dozens of glowing eyes glared back from behind headstones, and spirits rumbled beneath the freshest graves. The nerve of people. Probably searching for a lost cat, not even bothering to consider that maybe the cat wasn’t lost at all, that maybe it had realized its purpose was more than lounging around the house or bringing gifts of dead birds to ungrateful humans.

It was probably a new “Fluffy.”

Twenty of the cemetery cats were named Fluffy—the result of a severe lack of creativity in the brains of the two-legged. The Fluffies patrolled the mausoleum together. Being trapped behind walls did ugly things to a ghost’s psyche, as did knowing that the human who claimed to love you had put all of two seconds into choosing your name, so the cats named Fluffy could relate to mausoleum ghosts.

Still, it was better than being called Pawdrey Hepburn.

Pawdrey lifted her head and watched the humans stumble their way through the cemetery. One of them, a scrawny little male, held a camera. A female wore headphones and carried something tantalizingly fuzzy on a stick. If Pawdrey had been a younger cat, that fuzzy thing would have been hers by now. The third walked with an arrogance, likely unearned, his hat turned backwards and his weaselly face so smug that he must have been a Siamese in his last life. That one, the one who fancied himself the leader, carried a wooden board in his hand.

Pawdrey sat up. Oh, hell no. It was a spirit board. With a sharp howl of warning, Pawdrey scattered the other cats and sent them to guard the most restless spirits, those likely to be stirred into reanimation by foolish humans and their insatiable curiosity. If only one ghost left the door to the other side opened, the demons would enter. She leapt from Myron’s headstone and crossed the humans’ path, hissing and arching her back for maximum ferocity. For better or worse, humans were superstitious about black cats, as well. But not, it seemed, these humans.

“Nice kitty,” the female said, her hand brushing the top of Pawdrey’s head as they walked by.

Pawdrey narrowed her eyes. It took balls to walk into a cemetery at night and condescend to its queen ghoster. Clearly these people hadn’t been neutered.

With no consideration for the ghosts sleeping underfoot, the scrawny human shouted, “There it is!” 

The humans headed for Myron’s grave and began setting up their equipment. Pawdrey ran after them, hissing and spitting and clawing at their ankles. Not Myron; anyone but Myron. Pawdrey wasn’t about to lose her prime napping spot because of a few nosy humans who couldn’t let things be.

“Rolling,” said the scrawny one, pointing his camera at the smug one, whom Pawdrey was certain exemplified what some humans called a “douchebag.”

“Welcome back to Treasures of the Dead. We’re standing on the grave of coal magnate Myron Farnborough, rumored—ow!”

Pawdrey calmly licked the blood from her claws.

“I got it,” said the female, scooping up Pawdrey with her free hand. Pawdrey fought and yowled her way back to the ground before leaping menacingly onto the headstone. “You need a band-aid, Chad?”

Chad—of course his name was Chad—checked his ankle and shook his head. “Just a little scratch.” He looked at Pawdrey and took a step to one side, and then continued his commentary. “We’ve found the grave of Myron Farnborough, a twentieth-century coal magnate, whose fortune—including what was stolen from his partner Edgar Zane—is said to have been buried somewhere in town. Many have searched in vain, but none have asked the man himself.” On that ominous note, he knelt in front of the spirit board that he’d placed atop Myron’s grave.

Pawdrey felt Myron stir as Chad muttered pseudo-Latin nonsense. Whether it was a conjuring spell or not, the intention was clear, and Myron had gone too long without human contact to let it pass without a response.

Pawdrey purred as loudly as she could and rubbed her face on the gravestone to calm the agitated ghost.

“Myron Farnborough,” Chad intoned, “are you present?”

The triangular planchette rattled on the spirit board.

“Dude,” the cameraman whispered.

“You’re not doing that, Chad?” the female asked. The microphone she held drooped as she bent forward to study the board.

“No, I’m n—hey, can someone shut that cat up?”

With the spirit growing restless, Pawdrey abandoned her purring and resorted instead to yowling at the top of her lungs. Her warbling shriek sliced through the night and rattled spines. A cry that, once upon a time, would have inspired tales of banshees and forever labeled entire stretches of forest as cursed by a mournful enchantress.

On that night, though, it was a rallying cry.

Eyes appeared from behind gravestones and between the old oaks that grew in the back of the cemetery. The cats came in droves: The nameless feral ones who guarded the unlabeled paupers’ graves. The pampered Lady and Checkers and Marmalade with their rhinestone collars and jingle bells that rang out like hailstones with every step. The old, master ghosters and the newly-weaned orb-catcher kittens. And all twenty of the mausoleum Fluffies. They ran en masse, their bodies vibrating with purrs, to congregate at the grave of Myron Farnborough and soothe his way back to eternal slumber.

The humans watched in alarm as the cats gathered.

“What are the cats doing?”

“Dude, this is weird.”

“Are you getting this?”

Myron’s ghost continued to push through the barrier between worlds. Humans are a social species, a fact that is not erased by something as insignificant as death. After so many years in the isolation of the afterlife, another human was trying to communicate with him. No number of cats could have stopped him from answering.

A ghostly hand broke through the veil between worlds, clawing up from the ground like something out of a zombie movie. The humans saw nothing. For them, spirits existed as distorted sounds and cheap visual effects on trashy television shows. It never occurred to them to look for the shimmer between air molecules, or to listen for the echo of breaths no one was taking.

But the cats… ah, the cats could see Myron, clear as if he were flesh and blood standing before them. He was handsome, Pawdrey thought; the human equivalent of an old tuxedo tom who’d been in one too many fights but still held his tail high with dignity. He was dressed in a good suit and a bowler hat and carried a cane topped with the silver head of a cat. Oh, yes. Getting handsomer by the minute. Pawdrey knew she’d liked him, and not just because his gravestone was the tallest and best for napping. He had once been a fan of cats.

Myron glanced around in a daze for a few moments before his eyes locked onto the three humans still trying to communicate via the spirit board.

“I’m here,” he announced. “What do you want?”

“Jeez, Mike, did you spill catnip or something? What are they doing?” Chad’s alarm turned to fear.

“Hello?” Myron reached out and tapped the cameraman on the shoulder.

Mike jumped like he’d gotten his tail bit by a rocking chair and swung his camera around. “Something touched me!”

“Was it a cat—”

“It wasn’t a cat, Cheri! I know what a cat feels like! This was cold!”

Myron tried again, touching Chad this time, and the scene devolved further into chaos. The humans shrieked and swore as hundreds of cats howled for Myron to return to the grave, and Myron’s frustration grew until, quite unaware of his deceased state, he began demanding the “ungrateful twerps” acknowledge his existence.

The humans gathered their equipment and ran. When they got home and set about editing their footage, they might have seen a flicker of light around the grave. They would undoubtedly post the video online and claim they’d made contact with Myron Farnborough, never knowing that their claim was true or that the flicker of light was not Myron Farnborough but something far more sinister.

Only Pawdrey Hepburn, too old to bother getting caught up in the panic, was calm and perceptive enough to notice the other spirits creeping out of the doorway Myron had opened.

***

Pawdrey hadn’t left the cemetery in years, not since her human companion was taken away in that awful van with the siren and flashing lights. The cats, and their ghosts, were supposed to stay behind the cemetery fence. But Myron ruined that, he and all the little demons he’d let out from the afterlife. They tasted like dust, the demons. Like old mothballs and dreams that never came true. But they made delightful little squeals when Pawdrey bit down on them, which made the task of hunting them far more satisfying.

Mice were good at getting into little holes where a cat’s paw couldn’t hope to reach. But demons could move like smoke, curling and twirling through screen doors and through the tiniest cracks in foundations, to invade the lives of humans and cause mischief. When demons found their way into a house without a pet door or an open window, the cemetery cats were forced to use other means of ingress. They mussed their fur, and crept low and scared up to the door, and then meowed their most pitiful meows. The proper term for what humans call “adopting a stray cat” is “inviting a con-artist into your home.” If a cat allows itself to be taken off the street and fed kibble while wearing a collar that reads, “Mr. Tinkles,” you can be sure that cat has ulterior motives.

Pawdrey watched as cat after cat chased orbs and smoke into houses; the toms and queens, the feral kittens, Cleopatra and Whiskers, and all the Fluffies. And she watched when none of them came back out. Perhaps the draw of a warm lap and a ray of sunshine was too much for them. Perhaps they had never known the pain of losing a beloved human. Well, she wouldn’t fall for the lure of soft blankets and chin scritchies. Not again.

She followed Myron, butting his leg as he drifted bewildered through the town. How everything must have changed since his death. The people he knew aging and dying, buildings being built and painted. Was it even recognizable? Perhaps so—it dawned on Pawdrey what he was doing. Assuming the twerps from the cemetery were telling the truth, Myron had a stolen fortune buried somewhere in town. That kind of unfinished business was catnip to ghosts. Poor Myron must have been waiting in the afterlife for years, hoping for a ritual or a wayward spell to strengthen him and give him that little nudge out of the grave. Pawdrey regarded the ghost with pity. Cats don’t have unfinished business. If they die without catching a certain mouse, then they were never meant to catch that mouse. This is one reason why no one sees the ghosts of cats. And yet Pawdrey couldn’t help but recognize something in Myron’s face, an eternal sadness she couldn’t place, like there was something she should have done differently. A wrong she should have set right long ago.

She stopped in front of a familiar house. Myron kept walking.

It was a little house. A cottage, really, with white with blue trim. In contrast with the cemetery that always seemed dark, every window in the cottage drew in the sun. And there were always mice in its walls, and a nice lap, and a can of tuna . . .  Until there wasn’t. Pawdrey didn’t need to look in the windows to know the old woman wasn’t there. Too many toys in the yard and too few flowers. She followed after Myron.

***

It took hours of aimless wandering, but Myron finally found a tree that he seemed to recognize. There he stood, clawing at the bark with his ghostly hands, unaware that he wasn’t strong enough to interact with the real world. 

With an irritated twitch of her tail, Pawdrey climbed. Her joints ached and yowled; she hadn’t climbed a tree since . . . well, since she watched the flashing lights take the old woman. Maybe she should have gone back to the house after that, seen if the woman survived. She’d never found the woman’s name on any of the gravestones, but that meant nothing. Humans didn’t always bury their dead. Still, the woman had been good to her. Perhaps she should have gotten back.

Pawdrey found a minuscule knothole in the tree, so small that no human had bothered to look inside for the past forty years. In the knot was a small glass bottle with a piece of paper rolled up inside. She looked at Myron inquisitively. His face lit up, and she pawed until the bottle came loose and tumbled to the ground. Her landing was less graceful than she’d have liked and sent jolts of pain up her back legs. These were not the problems of a young cat. Hiding her discomfort, Pawdrey picked up the bottle and gave a muffled meow. After a moment of confusion, Myron shuffled off again, following some instinct only he understood. 

They stopped at a large brick building, the sign out front proclaiming it “Whispering Oaks Senior Living.” Ah. It was coming together now. Myron stole from his partner, buried the fortune, and hid a note or a map in the tree. And Myron regretted it and wanted to give Edgar the money. If Myron was old when he died, Pawdrey figured Edgar Zane must have been ancient by now. She purred her compliment; how smart of Myron to know where they put old humans when they couldn’t live on their own anymore.

She followed Myron up the ramp and summoned all her charm, smoothing her ragged fur, and curled her tail around her feet just so. She meowed, sweetly at first, then louder and more demanding, until the door finally opened. Pawdrey went in without waiting for an invitation, and let Myron lead her to a frail-looking man in a rocker. He glanced up as Myron approached, as if sensing his old partner’s presence. Pawdrey jumped into his lap, her hips and knees protesting, and dropped the bottle in Edgar’s hand. She gave Myron a narrowed glare, the one that made even the most disobedient kittens take notice, and he dissolved into nothingness.

About time, Pawdrey thought, and left Edgar to head back to the cemetery. With the others choosing to stay with the humans, she would be the only cat keeping the spirits at bay. It would be a lonely life, but who needed company anyway? On her way out, she passed a room that stopped her in her tracks.

The door was ajar, and a woman lay in bed with tubes connecting her to gently beeping machines. She didn’t smell like Pawdrey’s woman; she lacked the aroma of coffee and soil and that awful perfume. But it was her. Pawdrey knew it deep in her heart.

Pawdrey poked her head into the room and meowed softly. Would she be mad that Pawdrey hadn’t looked for her?

Helen stirred, and turned her head. She squinted, too tired to reach for her bifocals, and a small smile crept across her face. “Well, if it isn’t Pawdrey Hepburn,” she whispered.

Pawdrey hesitated. Helen’s spirit was already preparing to leave, and she wasn’t sure she could stand to say goodbye after all the years and then finding her again. It was easier to think Helen had never missed her, and to pretend humans weren’t worth her time, and that it hadn’t hurt to lose one.

But no warm headstone could ever compare to a good lap.

Pawdrey ran and leapt onto the bed, enjoying a brief moment of feeling like the lithe kitten she’d been when Helen found her. She snuggled into the best lap there was. Pawdrey and Helen napped in a sunbeam. Somewhere in her heart, Pawdrey knew it was the last time, and she purred extra hard to calm Helen’s spirit. The cemetery could take care of itself for a little while.

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Host Commentary

And we’re back! That was The Cemetery Cat by Jennifer Lee Rossman.

If you liked this story, you can check out her collection Allosaurus in Wonderland and Other Tales of Avalonia.

I love all the happy endings in this story – the ghost gets to make amends to his partner, the partner gets the buried fortune, Pawdrey and her person get a reunion, a bunch of cats get homes, and a bunch of families get cats. I’m sure many of us have heard of the Cat Distribution System – you know, the system that determines when a cat will show up on your doorstep and find its way into your life – but this is the first time I’ve encountered the idea that it’s run by demons.

I asked the author whether she had any cats, and she had this to say:

“I am sadly now allergic to cats (gasp), but I miss my two tabby cats, Moby with the 2 extra toes on each paw and Alexandria Pinhead aka Kitty, both strays we rescued as kittens. They were so full of personality and would’ve fit into the Cemetery cat community perfectly. Kitty would’ve been a perfect successor to Pawdrey.”

Come chat with us! If you’re a Patreon patron, you can join the Escape Artists Discord server automatically through Patreon. Or you can find us on Bluesky as @catscast.org.

We’ll be back next month, but in the meantime, you can find more narrative goodness on our weekly sister podcasts: Escape Pod for science fiction, PodCastle for fantasy, PseudoPod for horror, and Cast of Wonders for YA.

Today’s episode is brought to you by audio producer Dave Robison, associate editor Tarver Nova, and me, editor Laura Pearlman.

Our opening and closing music is Easy Lemon by Kevin MacLeod.

CatsCast is a production of the Escape Artists Foundation, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit. This episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license, which means you can’t change it or sell it, but you can share it as much as you like.

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Thanks for listening, and until next time, we wish you all the purrs.