My mother must have sensed something horrible was about to happen to us, which prompted her to leave my father and to move to my grandmother’s house. It was hard to get by. I watched painfully my mother drifting off to her own world after a hard day of work. My Grandma had a meagre pension which barely fed her and the army of stray cats whom she called her’s. Me and my brother were two more kittens who joined her troop. My mother, a college graduate, found herself inadequate after the years of abuse. She took up the job of a waitress at the local diner. I was at an age where I was still a child chronologically but a grown up mentally. My brother who was much younger pulled inwards and one day forgot how to speak.
Our Grandma was the only spark of life and light we had. Her spirit kept us alive. I believed that if she was with us no one could harm us. Before I turned eighteen, my mother slowly drifted away from reality so much that she had to be admitted at a psychiatric facility. Grandma held us close like her kittens. I dropped out of school and took up my mother’s job.
My brother, a sensitive soul, couldn’t take it anymore. He found solace by hanging himself by a yard of rope. Grandma was too old to bear this tragedy. She suddenly seemed tiny and fragile. I took care of her with such fervour as if I was holding onto my last breathe. But one day when I came home I found all her cats waiting outside the door. I didn’t speak their language but I could tell they were sad. I opened the door to let them in, only to find that grandma was no more and her cats had gathered to say goodbye. I fed them fish as she would have, but they didn’t eat.
I was, for the first time, truly alone.
During the funeral, my father showed up after years of no contact. My relatives were pleased by his display of affection. They joined in with him while he blamed my mother for leaving him. I doubted they knew my father well or was it just their reluctance to take me in for a few months until I turned eighteen, I will never know.
My father pretended to move into my grandma’s house to take care of me. He would sit around with his friends whole day while I earned a living. I would return each day to find my grandmother’s belongings in a disarray. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was searching for the documents of the house and valuables to sell. I found solace in my grandma’s fur babies and staying out as long as I could. The stealthy search turned into open rummage and further into violence. I found it more and more difficult to stay alive.
I would sit out on the park swing until I saw my father’s friends leave, cussing and singing drunkenly. I would hold onto the cats and cry silently all the while praying to whoever was listening. One of such days I had fled from the house from the lustful grips of one of my father’s friends and went on to cry at my usual spot. A ginger cat jumped on to my lap and looked at me with such intrigue. Since it was not unusual for a stray to visit and console me, I wiped my eyes and looked back while trying to stroke behind her ear.
“I am not here to be petted” I was startled at the source of the voice. It sounded like a mix of human and cat. If it were a video I would have played it again just to be sure. It spoke again, this was the cat for sure.
“I have friends who can help.” It offered. “You have to make a deal now or else you might end up in the canal.”
I faintly remembered my mother mumbling about drowning in the canal in one of her half-conscious rambling.
“You have to feed us the human.”
Is this an ancient God sitting on my lap that my grandma had appeased by feeding daily? I looked at its citrine eyes and couldn’t still make out if it was real. Was I already drowning? Was the lack of air causing these hallucinations?
I jumped up from the swing with a sudden jerk. The cat jumped off and sat on the ground unbothered by its lose of a high chair.
“Do you promise to feed us?”
This time it was multiple voices, cat like but speaking human. A person hearing from a distance would have thought it as a collective howl of stray cats. But now that I was up, it was very real for me.
My life flashed before my eyes. “I will feed you”, I replied with surety, there was no room for a second thought.
Next day, I came back from work to find a clowder of cats feasting on my father’s face. He was alive and struggled to free himself from the cats without much success. I watched in horror but froze, not knowing what to do. There was a brief instant of pleading eye contact and muffled screams before he turned into cat food.
I was at the same time relieved and horrified beyond words. I was shaking and shivering but at the same time slept soundly after many a long nights.
Today, I woke up early in the morning startled by a loud scratching noise from outside my door and it sounded nothing like a cat. An un-cat like howl followed which I understood loud and clear. It warned me that I was to continue my Grandma’s pact.