The Gingerbread House
by Jenny Hart
The air has only just begun to smell of autumn as I head for Gingerbread Cottage, where I am to house sit two cats for the winter. I have packed warm clothes and antihistamines, and the emailed instructions are both simple and strange. Feed the cats and clean up after them and yourself. But don’t let them out, no matter how much they ask.
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The haunting had started at 2 a.m., and my local Joann didn’t open until nine. I was in the parking lot at 8:30, and while several Joann employees passed by my car on the way to the doors, I kept scrolling on my phone, feigning disinterest, instead of begging to be let in early. Even after the night I’d had, I wasn’t going to be That Customer.
I focused my bloodshot eyes on the featured article in the Journal of Theoretical Witchcraft—something about the potency of blood moon spells—and checked once or twice on the spectral wound I’d slathered in dubious Taint-Be-Gone and expired Neosporin. Despite the mustiness of the gauze wrapping I’d found for it, the four claw-like marks probably wouldn’t fester.
In theory. Which is what I did. Theory.
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Queen of the Mouse Riders
by Annie Reed
Gurgling yowls echoed off the tiled floor in Sarah’s bathroom. Bounced off the ceiling, gaining strength, and intruded on what was turning out to be a very, very nice dream featuring the star of a movie she’d watched just before bed.
In the dream, the star turned his incredibly expressive eyes in Sarah’s direction, smiled his best enigmatic smile, and said, “Pardon me, darling, but is that your cat?”
(In the dream he’d turned British. She happened to know he’d been born and raised in the Bronx. Dreams were just plain weird sometimes.)
“Yes,” she said. “She’s apparently caught a mouse.”
Starlight the Cat had a battle cry like a two-note yodeler gargling mouthwash. She reserved that particular cry for whenever she caught a mouse. Or something that looked like a mouse. Or a mouse-shaped stuffed toy.
Most of the time she’d only caught one of her toys. Thank goodness. But on at least on memorable occasion she’d interrupted a visit from Sarah’s mother by presenting a live mouse as the third course for their lunch date.
Sarah’s mother was deathly afraid of mice.
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This month’s CatsCast episode is The Best Way to Procure Breakfast by Dana Vickerson. It’s available on the Escape Artists Premium Content feed on Patreon for patrons at the Premium Content level or above; it’s also in our premium content repository for those who donate five dollars a month by any means. We’ll be back here in the free feed next month. In the meantime, here’s a sample of what’s playing over on Patreon.
This story [originally appeared in Zooscape.
A content note: this story deals with themes of grief and loss.
The Best Way to Procure Breakfast
by Dana Vickerson.
If Mama doesn’t get up soon, we’re going to miss our chance to get off Mars.
Mama is a human, but I call her “Mama” because she says I am her baby kitty and her special boy. She is sleeping, but I am hungry.
It’s a delicate art, waking up your human. If you’re too eager, they’ll likely get cross with you, and while Mama is a sweet and kind soul, I do not like to see her cross. If you are too gentle, though, your human is likely to continue their blissful sleep while you sit on the floor with a rumble in your belly.
So, like most mornings, I start today by walking back and forth across my human’s pillow. This is less startling than just going right for patting her face. The soft rhythm of my paws around her head signals to Mama that it’s time to start the process of bringing her consciousness to the here and now, where my kibble lives.
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Blood Water
by J.A. Bryson
The blood on Zip’s hands is dried the color of rust and sticks like clay under her fingernails. Mostly, it isn’t hers. Mostly, it belongs to the man she shivved, the one who mistook her for an easy mark. Zip is gray-eyed and hunger-slight. She’s a lot of things – fast, fierce, speechless since birth – but she isn’t easy. The old timers know this. The man waiting at the pits to grab her while she took a piss, he did not know this.
He’s a newcomer. His people came when jets rained fire on their homeland. They have no code. They left their children and their old timers to burn.
Their language is violence. One needn’t words to speak it.
Outside camp, Zip finds shade in a stand of scraggly pines with peeling bark and sun-bleached needles. She drags her palms over the parched earth. The blood remains. It doesn’t flake or rub away. She thinks to spit on it, to make a paste, to paint its warning on her sunken cheeks, but her tongue is swollen with thirst. She hasn’t spit to spare.
If it doesn’t rain soon, her band will strike up camp. Better to move than to choke on dust – to become dust. She closes her eyes and swallows. Her heart beats too fast.
The man she shivved will die. Serves him right for making her sweat.
Propped against a tree, Zip drifts. She doesn’t hear Cat come. She wakes to his rough tongue grazing her knuckles. Groggily, she peeps an eye. The sun is not where she remembers it.
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Kindly, Stop for Me
by K.M. Veohongs
I rise from my spot by the window in Room 126 of the Sunny Glades Home for Health and Rehabilitation. The sun set an hour ago, so it’s no great loss. My front paws extend, claws out, before I shift my weight forward and kick out each hind leg. I don’t have the range of motion I once did — everything creaks and clicks now — but since the moment I selected my first feline host, I found there is nothing quite so satisfying as a good stretch.
I jump down and land on the tiled floor, hard. I wish they’d carpet the rooms, but that’s hardly sanitary, is it? The hop up onto the bed is more difficult still. We’re in the hospice wing, of course, and these beds are tall. I’ve still got the ups to make it, but it’s a near thing.
Finding a replacement body should be on the top of my to-do list. This one is rather past its natural expiration date, and if I don’t find a new host before it gives out completely, I’ll be as rudderless as the souls I’m supposed to help. It’s only that I’m rather attached to the form I’m currently inhabiting. I’ve been Archimedes for so long now, I’m not sure I remember how to be anyone else.
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This month we’re re-running The Cat by Nicole Walsh, which ran on our patron-only feed in July, 2022.
The cat followed him home.
Tomas Shine spent three and a half minutes in the stairwell hyperventilating. He heard Mrs Helen Acres, the widow from Unit Two, clatter and batter her way out her door, shopping bags in hand. She spotted the cat outside the stairway and reversed soundlessly into her unit.
Tomas sucked in a ragged breath, filling his lungs to the brim, and looked up. The cat waited on the far side of the glass door. Its tail lashed back and forth. Tomas used the rail to heave himself upright, then crept down the stairs. He opened the door. The cat stood, butt shooting into the air, tail upright like a comma. It mewed.
Tomas stepped aside.
The cat led the way up the stairs. Tomas walked slowly, careful not to step on it. His hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t get the key into the lock. His work bag slid awkwardly down his arm. Sweat pooled at his armpits, licking wet trails past his ribs.
The cat pressed into his leg. A small, frightened noise slipped from his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m trying.”
Nervous sweat coated his fingertips. The keys slipped free. They landed on the tiled floor with a loud clang, startling the cat. Tomas pressed into the wall, hand raised defensively.
“Sorry!”
The cat stared, tail low and flicking. Tomas crouched slowly, extending a shaking hand for the keys. For a sickening moment he was almost eye to eye with the creature. Tomas rose. He slowly and deliberately inserted the correct key into the lock and opened his door.
A small white shape flittered past his brown work shoes.
It was done.
Tomas Shine had a cat.
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This month’s CatsCast has two flash stories: The Tan One by Nathan Susnik and Alligators by Monica Joyce Evans. It’s available on the Escape Artists Premium Content feed on Patreon for patrons at the Premium Content level or above; it’s also in our premium content repository for those who donate five dollars a month by any means. We’ll be back here in the free feed next month. In the meantime, here’s a sample of what’s playing over on Patreon.
The Tan One
by Nathan Susnik
Some days I pick the white pill. Other days it’s the black. For some reason or another, I prefer the brown pill on Tuesdays. Today, feels like it’s going to be one of my bad days. So, I pinch the tan pill between my thumb and index finger, flick it into my mouth and take a slug of water. It catches halfway down, but when I swallow again, it dislodges quickly enough. As it hits my stomach, I’m already more optimistic. My cat rubs against my leg.
“Oh, hello Lionel,” I say. Abyssinians have ticked fur. It looks like one color from afar, but if examined closely, it’s actually bands of light and dark shades. I bend down, leaning hard on my cane (it’s really more of a modern crutch) and stroke him. Pain shoots out of my lower back, wrapping around my hip. But I clench my jaw, ignoring it, running my hand over the cat’s back. He purrs, and perhaps today won’t be so bad after all.
Read (or listen to) both stories over on Patreon.
This story is a CatsCast original.
Match.Cat
by Ember Randall
They say cats have nine lives, but that’s not quite right. Nine is more of an average–in reality, you get as many as Death gives you, which means it behooves any sensible cat to suck up while they can.
Or, at least, that’s what I told myself as I wound around Death’s legs, giving them my best never-been-petted meow–the unmatched quality of their ear scritches had nothing to do with it.
A snort echoed above me. “You look like one of those spoiled lap cats you’re always deriding, you know.”
I glared up at Alfonsius–Lord Alfonsius Darrowfell of the Silent Wing, to give the owl the full title he often insisted on. “Insurance is never wasted.” I was on my seventh life, and a cat couldn’t be too careful, right?
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This month’s CatsCast episode is The Absolutely True and Correct Account of the Honorable Mlle. Cassandra von Archambault, Affectionately and Begrudgingly Known to Her Friends and Family as Echo by Jolie Toomajan. It’s available on the Escape Artists Premium Content feed on Patreon for patrons at the Premium Content level or above; it’s also in our premium content repository for those who donate five dollars a month by any means. We’ll be back here in the free feed next month. In the meantime, here’s a sample of what’s playing over on Patreon.
The Absolutely True and Correct Account of the Honorable Mlle. Cassandra von Archambault, Affectionately and Begrudgingly Known to Her Friends and Family as Echo
As told to Jolie Toomajan
Let it be known I only care because of Mother. She is a good Mother who says I am her little Mar Lean Deet Trick, which makes no sense but that is fine. Motheris not stupid, but she can’t see It the way I can. Sometimes Mother can feel It; she will walk into a room and shiver, curl her nose at the burning smell, and press her hand to the walls above the light switches. Then I will look over at the corner and It will be there, mouths upon mouths upon mouths and all of those mouths are edged with the smoldering orange of burning paper. I stare until It leaves, and I don’t blink so It knows I mean business. Sometimes Mother can’t feel It at all, even when It undulates over the back of the sofa and sniffs her hair. When It drapes over her buttoned headboard at night, I almost die from fright, but It lets me chase It away. I worry about how I could protect her if It decided to ignore me, until he comes along.
Reader, he is very stupid. His shoes smell like seaweed and so does the hair on his arms, and he eats terrible food—tofu and sprouts and entire garlic cloves in vinegar sauces that make your eyes tear. Healthy, he says. As if any diet without blood could be healthy. Stupid. Mother likes him. This is disappointing, but she has other qualities (for example, her feet are lovely and cool and she keeps her fingernails at the exact right length for relaxing scratches and the song she sings for me is not too annoying).
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