The town was called Normal. It was a small borough in Madison County, Alabama. A tiny school was situated smack dab in the middle of it. The school only housed 300 students and they were dubbed as ¨Normalites¨. It´s stupid, I know, but the town really is just normal. No dark history or strange events happened, well at least not before we adopted our cat, Bagheera, from the municipal animal shelter.
Normal was laid out strangely, almost like they just slapped buildings down randomly, with no particular system in mind. When I was growing up, I lived in a neighborhood with my mom, dad, and brother near the Normal Woods, a large forest surrounding the town. The town was built in 1890 in a large clearing with a long winding dirt road leaving Normal. It didn’t have many establishments except for the standard bank, Town Hall, and combined grocery and general store.
Normal did have an animal shelter called the “Kinship Kennel”, inappropriately named due to the dilapidated nature of the place. It was located right at the forest’s edge. I had visited it before with my family to look for a pet with my kid brother, Jeremy, and me. The front of the building was a small gray peeling box of a building with reflective windows on each side of the door. The rooftop looked very out of place over top of the gray, lifeless siding. The roof was heavy and splintering with a ruddy color to it, it appeared to belong to the top of a log cabin.
The staff seemed off, to say the least. They wouldn’t let us look at the cats that day due to an accident that had taken place. My family members did not seem to pay any mind to it and decided to look at the dog section. Jeremy eagerly ran to the door, he was full of beans at the ludicrous notion of getting a dog. Inversely, cats were my Achilles heel. Ironically, my nickname was Cat, so I was pretty disheartened about not being able to look at the cats. My six-year-old brother Jeremy was a dog fanatic. So, obviously, that’s what we ended up getting, a black lab puppy named Blackie. The ever-original Jeremy came up with the name of course. Blackie lived with us for three years until the so-called ¨shoe chew¨ incident happened.
My mom loved shoes, she had close to a hundred pairs of high heels from various high-priced designer brands. She usually kept her closet door shut tight as she didn’t want me discovering her collection and scratching up the wood floors in them. But today she must have been in a rush to get to her office job and she left it open.
When Jeremy and I got off the bus and rushed inside to let Blackie out, we discovered him in the closet with a look of glee on his face and pairs upon pairs of chewed-up shoes surrounding him. That was the end of us being a dog household. Jeremy was upset when we brought Blackie back to the pound, but I was secretly excited because I knew that now my mom would totally be on board with getting a pet cat. I mean, come on, nobody’s ever heard of a cat chewing up shoes before.
My dad went with Jeremy to admit Blackie back in while I pulled my mom aside and asked her if we could look at the cats. ¨Of course, we can, I had the cutest cat when I was a child,¨ I started tuning my mom´s boring story out while we approached the cat room. I peered through the window and, for a brief moment, I thought I saw one of the cats smiling at me. I chalked it up to not getting a good night’s rest and went inside. We browsed the cats, waving string for some of them to bat at.
And then I saw her. A small black cat, a bit of white dappled her chest fur. My mom and I saw her at the same time and gingerly approached. She peered up at us with jade-green eyes and blinked curiously. I reached my hand out to pet her, and she meowed playfully and pressed her face to my hand. We both agreed that this was the cat for our family and flagged down a staff member to adopt her.
The male staff member almost seemed like he was putting on an act, he approached us with a jerking gait like a cat on a hot tin roof. ¨Are you sure you guys want this one?¨ he asked with a tone I could not quite place. ¨Because she´s been here for a while and even if she does get adopted, she seems to always turn up right back here.¨I found this odd, considering how sweet the green-eyed cat acted. But my mom replied, ¨Yes, we´re sure,” matter-of-factly.
And that was it, Bagheera was coming home with us. I named her after my favorite movie at the time, The Jungle Book, the name was quite fitting for a black cat.
Jeremy and I brought her into the car in a cardboard cat carrier and situated her between us. We´d taken to calling her Baggy as a nickname. ¨Here, Baggy, Baggy, Baggyyy!¨ Jeremy called as he stuck his fingers through the holes in the box and giggled. She meowed mischievously and nibbled on his fingers.
We arrived back at our modest ranch-style home, and I took Baggy inside to show her around the house. Jeremy found some string and was running down the hall with it. She was in hot pursuit. At one point she had taken hold of the string and was dancing to and fro with it.
After playing for a while it was time to have dinner. Mom and Dad weren’t in the mood to cook so we ordered pizza. As we ate I felt Baggy brush up against my calves and paw at my toes. I even peeled a couple of pepperonis off and let them ¨fall¨ under the table for her. After dinner, I decided to set up a bed for the kitty in my room and then get some sleep.
After setting Baggy’s bed up I decided to take a quick shower. Upon arrival back to my room, Baggy was nowhere to be found. I looked under my bed and inspected any other place she could be. I was about to go ask Jeremy if he had brought her out of my room when I heard a faint meow from above me. I craned my neck to see where the meows were coming from.
I lurched back and fell on my butt when I saw the source. Baggy was walking on the ceiling, her green orbs scanned me and she walked down the walls and deposited herself on my bed. She curled up and began purring. I couldn’t believe what I just saw, my mind was racing. I came to the conclusion that I was just sleep-deprived and I imagined the whole thing. She was just a cat, cats don’t walk on walls, do they? I slid under my covers carefully, so as not to disturb the black ball of fluff sleeping next to me.
I awoke in a cold sweat, with the feeling of being watched. I looked over at my alarm clock, the time read 2:59 A.M. The events of earlier flooded back into my head and I checked the ceiling feeling like my heart was in my chest. The ceiling was bare, but I heard something coming from the beanbag adjacent to my bed. I slowly rose out of bed and saw it.
My cat was standing on the chair but there was something wrong with her body. Baggy’s neck was elongated above her body, stretching out to about three feet. Her head was moving erratically, jerking back and forth. She stared at me with those viridescent globes, I almost didn’t catch the wide smile she displayed. The cat looked amused, almost delighted at the fear she was causing me. My hair stood up on end and the entire room felt freezing. ‘What the hell was this thing?’ I thought to myself.
I woke up with deep scratches riddling my body, they were black and bloody, lining my arms and stomach. I ran to my parents to tell them what happened but I was hysterical, I showed them my wounds but they just chalked it up to me having a nightmare and scratching myself in my sleep. The last thing I remember before passing out on the floor was the ¨cat¨ sauntering towards me with her neck bobbing steadfastly, her claws out and ready to attack.
I have not seen Baggy again after that night, but I think I have an idea of where she disappeared to. I attempted to draw what it looked like. If you wish to see it, I’ve posted a picture on this account. I don’t know what that thing was; but I know damn well it wasn’t any kind of cat, whatever was wearing that poor cat as a skin was something I never want to encounter again. The scars it left me with are proof to me that this world contains things I could never understand. After this experience, I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t call myself a cat person anymore. If anything else happens, I´ll be sure to update you guys. Writing about it helps a lot.
Signing off for now,
-Cat (aka Insipid)