Irregular Creatures Read online

  “The orange cat…” I said.

  ”In the garage. Brian said you call her ‘Cat-Bird.’”

  “Yeah. Yes.” This was all too strange.

  “I wish you would’ve told me. I know I was a jerk about the cat, but I didn’t know it was a – well, whatever it is that it is.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. Maybe we should think about what we’re going to do with it, er, her.”

  A little voice, not mine, whispered somewhere in the dark corners of my head: I almost died tonight. Don’t make the wrong choice, Dad.

  “No thinking,” I blurted. “No. I know what I need to do with that cat. Don’t concern yourself with it. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “You go to bed. I have something to take care of, and then I’ll be in, okay?”

  ***

  First, I got a fresh pillowcase from the linen closet.

  Next, I climbed the fence next to our property, and in the darkness, skirted the neighbor’s pool. I found their pool skimmer near the shallow end. I grabbed it, and hiked back over the fence.

  Cat-Bird was waiting, sitting on the hood of my car.

  “Mrow,” he greeted me.

  “Yeah,” I said, and swatted down with the pool skimmer. The blue mesh caught the cat over the head, and I pressed down, trapping it. Then I fished out the pillow case, and inched closer to CB.

  “Mrow?”

  “I don’t know what happened tonight,” I said. “And I don’t really care. The way I see it is this: You really ticked off some evil cats. Maybe you stole their wallets. Maybe you insulted their mothers. Whatever the case, I figure your cuts and scratches were from scrapping with those bad kitties, yeah?”

  “Mrow.”

  “Mm. Yeah. Well, I took you in, and little did I know you were poison. Your presence put my family in danger. My son, my wife. Not to mention me. I can still taste cat hair. I hurt. It could’ve been Brian, or Missy. Or all of us.”

  I was finally at the end of the skimmer. Cat-Bird’s face pressed against the blue net, distorted like in a funhouse mirror.

  “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what they were. But I know it’s starting to freak me out. And you have to go. For our sake.”

  “Mroooow.”

  “Too bad, CB. You almost had me reconsider cats. Almost.”

  Then I slid the cat into the pillow case. He wriggled. I felt wings beat against Pima cotton.

  I popped the trunk of my car, threw him in there, and closed it. I hesitated before going back inside, wondering if I was doing the right thing. He was some kind of a miracle cat. Would he survive the night in the trunk? He could surely breathe. I didn’t tie him up or anything. I almost went back and let him out.

  That’s when I remembered the whole dream. Brian’s words, a face full of devil cats, and death.

  I put the keys back in my robe and headed inside.

  ***

  Temptation, compassion, and a dollop of self-loathing made me look in the pillow-case before I dropped it off at the animal shelter outside of town. At first, I couldn’t do it. I itched at the thin-strip band-aids covering my face and arms. I fidgeted with the index card note I’d written, a simple affair that read FREE KITTENS. Then I opened the bag.

  Cat-Bird sat inside, front legs folded up underneath. Her wings had gone again. That made me believe she had some idea of what was coming, if only in a small way.

  She looked up at me, and didn’t bother to mrow.

  CB just looked sad. And maybe a little confused.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was surprised that I barely managed to get the words out. It wasn’t like I stuck her in a garbage bag and threw it in a river. Growing up, I heard friends of my father talk about stuff they’d done to cats. Shot them, drowned them. One tossed a tomcat in a wood chipper. I’m a dog man, but I’m not those guys.

  The cat would be fine at the shelter.

  They loved animals at the shelter.

  And with her there, my family would be safe.

  I bundled the top, pinned the note to the fabric, and left the package there at the front door. I knocked and ran for the car.

  ***

  The temp agency was a sterile, simple place, disturbing in its minimalism. White walls, gray carpet, buzzing fluorescence. The only art in the place was a motivational picture on the wall of some dude sail boarding into the setting sun. A single word captioned the piece: Horizon. I couldn’t help but envision a shark leaping out of the churn-capped waves to bite that dummy in half. I felt ill.

  Peggy, my “career assignment agent,” stood next to the poster. Arms crossed, she stared at me with a lemon-pucker face, eyes narrowed to thin slits.

  In front of me: a computer test. As I took it, she watched me like a disapproving hawk—not hungry, not on the hunt, merely contemptuous. I didn’t know anything about spreadsheets. Pressing me on how they were any different than bed sheets was a fruitless endeavor. It didn’t stop me from lying about it, though. I told Peggy I was awesome with spreadsheets. “I am the king of spreadsheets,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t make me take a test. Then she set me up on the test.

  Didn’t matter. I couldn’t concentrate.

  My cuts stung. I thought about Brian, and how glad I was that he was safe. And Missy, how I was doing the right thing for her – for us – so we could be happy. I pictured that piece I was working on, and reminded myself to dismantle the damn thing when I went home. No good would come of it. It was only a jagged reminder of those awful black cats and poor, stupid (and entirely impossible) Cat-Bird.

  I blinked and looked at the screen. Five minutes had passed and I hadn’t done anything. Spreadsheets seemed to be some kind of grid. A matrix of rows and columns, lined with little data-hungry boxes. I started highlighting some. I drew little pictures with odd characters like @’s and %’s. I made some of them into angry faces. The computer booped and beeped at me. I didn’t care. I felt sad.

  I heard a hushed voice say “Debby!” It was Peggy.

  She was flagging someone from around the corner, past a hive of gray cubicles.

  The aforementioned Debby came into view. The two women were nearly mirror images of one another – frumpy pink blouses, slacks the color of boredom and boardrooms. Peggy was white, Debby was black, but they were united in monotony and tedium.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peggy point at me.

  “Look at him,” I heard her whisper far louder than she probably thought she was whispering. It was rude, but more interesting than spreadsheets. I kept quiet.

  “Ew,” Debby said.

  Am I that ugly?

  “Those cuts,” Peggy said.

  Oh, the cuts.

  “They’re strange.”

  “That’s not the first time I’ve seen someone all scratched up like that.” Peggy stuck the tip of a pen in her mouth and worked it with her pearly whites veneers.

  “That’s sad.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. A boy across the street – well, not across the street, but caddy-corner, you know? They found him dead by the pool one afternoon. They couldn’t tell the cause of death or anything, and it couldn’t have been the cuts. But he was covered with them, Lord a-mercy.”

  My breath caught in my chest.

  “What are they?” Debby asked.

  “Don’t know for sure. My one neighbor, Gretchen, said they looked like cat scratches.”

  My guts tightened. I stood. I had to know.

  “Weird part was –“ Peggy was saying, but then saw me coming and clamped up. An awkward smile crossed her face. “Are we done, sugar? How’d the test go?”

  “Piss on the test,” I blurted. “The weird part was what?”

  “Was what what?”

  “The cat scratches!” I was yelling, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I waved my hands in front of her face. “The kid? That died? What was the weird part?”

  Debby and Peggy looked at one a
nother like they were being held hostage by Charlie Manson and Osama bin Laden.

  “He wasn’t the first,” Peggy peeped.

  “Wasn’t the first what?”

  “Wasn’t the first who died like that.” She looked real scared now, like she was dealing with a bonafide crazy person. Maybe I was. I rolled my hand in a gesture for her to keep talking. “A little girl died a few towns over, in Royersford, the same way. Scratches and all.”

  Every liquid in my body turned to ice water. Blood, bowels, spit, all of it.

  I saw Brian’s face.

  Those black cats weren’t coming for Cat-Bird.

  They were coming for my son.

  I sprinted off.

  ***

  “The orange tabby, I need him – her – back.”

  The guy behind the counter, not even a guy but some late teen with acne scars and a mop of red hair, blinked.

  “I don’t know that cat,” the kid said.

  “Jesus,” I said, “I just left the cat here like, four hours ago.”

  The shelter was dead quiet except for the distant barking of dogs behind doors. The place smelled of antiseptic and deodorizer. Beneath it: a funky layer of urine.

  The kid flipped through a book. An older woman sat at a desk behind him, typing something into a computer, hunt-and-peck style.

  “Wait, you were the one who left the cat here in the pillow?”

  My heart leaped. I drummed my fingers on the counter. “The pillow case, yes. So you have her?”

  “That was a jerk move, dude.”

  “I know, I get that now, I’m repenting. I need the cat.”

  The kid frowned and squinted at the book. “Can’t do that.”

  “I’ll pay, okay? I’m trustworthy, I just made a mistake.”

  “The cat’s dead.”

  I felt like a hammer just hit me in the temple. Like a cow at the slaughterhouse, an air gun blasting a bullet through my brain.

  “What? No. No. That’s not possible.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re an animal shelter! Shelter means to protect!”

  “Got a lot of cats, man. We can’t take many more, so we put them to sleep if we don’t think we can move ‘em.”

  The woman behind the kid looked up, her face scrunched.

  “You had her for four goddamn hours!” I yelled. “Did you even try to place her? Or did you just take the pillowcase out back and beat it with a shovel? You don’t know what you just did. My kid – Brian. Brian, oh, God.” I planted my face in my hands. I didn’t know what to do. Cat-Bird? Dead? He was there to help us, not hurt us. I screwed up. You made the wrong choice, a little voice said, and I tried to stuff it into a dark box in the back of my head. The voice didn’t stop: Now your son is in danger. He’s probably already dead, clawed by black cats and burning up with Cat Scratch Fever! He’ll be dead like those other little kids… Good job, Joe!

  As I stood there, contemplating what to do next, the woman emerged from her desk, put on a pair of reading glasses, and sidled up next to the kid. She was looking through the book.

  “That cat’s not dead,” she said, clucking her tongue.

  “But –“ the kid said.

  “Ronnie here’s a jackass,” she said, and she patted the redhead’s shoulder like she pitied him for this. “He’s right, we have too many cats, but we haven’t put the orange tabby down.”

  My soul played the Hallelujah Chorus.

  “Oh! Good. No, great! I need the cat.”

  “I’m not a jackass,” Ronnie mumbled.

  “We already gave him away already to another shelter,” the woman said. “Sorry.”

  “What shelter?” I asked.

  “Can’t say. Every morning, a representative of the state ASPCA shows up and takes any overage or problem animals we have, and they take those animals and put them in whatever shelter has room. Could be any shelter within 50 miles.”

  I felt my teeth grinding together. I was reminded of Missy.

  “Do you have a phonebook?” I asked.

  The woman dug around underneath the desk and handed it over. I thanked her and said: “How about a cell phone?”

  “We have an office phone –“ the woman was saying, but Ronnie had already produced his cell phone from his pocket. He really was a jackass. I grabbed it, yelled another thank you, and ran for the door. I was at my car before Ronnie realized what had just happened. Sorry, dude, I thought as my car sped away, the phone book open in my lap. Brian would be home from school in three hours. I had precious little time to recover our feline savior.

  ***

  Using Ronnie’s cell phone, I called six different shelters. They all had orange tabbies. None with wings, though, and none that had just been taken in that day. The seventh – a dinky animal sanctuary in Pecklerstown – said they had an animal matching Cat-Bird’s description (again, without the wings).

  I spent nearly a half-hour on the phone.

  And Pecklersville was a half-hour away.

  I drove like I was being chased by the Devil himself. Or, at the very least, a flock of his wayward cats. Over and over again, I pictured those black fiends with their red eyes and greasy wings. What was I thinking getting rid of CB? I stepped on the gas, praying no cops would catch me along the way.

  The man at the shelter was an obese fellow with an ironically delicate look about him, as if his flesh were formed from a clumpy pile of unshaped porcelain. He produced a cat carrier and thumped it on the counter.

  Jubilant, I looked inside. The cat that was clearly not Cat-Bird looked at me and hissed.

  “That’s not Cat-Bird – er, Catbert. You said you had my cat.”

  “This is the orange tabby I was talking about.”

  I bit my lip. I’m not a violent person, but I wanted to punch this man so hard his face broke open like an egg.

  “You’re wasting my time!” I yelled.

  And just then, from somewhere in the back, I heard it:

  “Mrow?”

  “Wait,” I said, holding up a finger. “Cat-Bird. He’s back there. Go look again.”

  “Mister, I –“

  Hell with it. I launched over the counter, using his broad shoulders as a handle, and shouldered my way into the back. I was met with a chorus of dogs yipping, howling, their collar tags tinkling, but then I saw her: Cat-Bird. In a cage.

  I sprung the latch and took her into my arms. She looked up at me quizzically. Cats, as I’ve mentioned, feel superior to humans. That may or may not be for a reason. The look in CB’s eye was one that said, quite simply, “Thank you for rescuing me. You are an idiot, but I appreciate it nevertheless.”

  I took her back to the front of the shelter where the big dude was staring, slack-jawed.

  “Found her,” I said.

  “Uh. Okay,” the big man responded, sliding over a clipboard with a pen. “There’s a sheaf of forms there I need you to fill out.”

  “Forms,” I repeated. “But, I –“

  “It’s a formality. Oh, and there’s a fifty dollar fee.”

  “Fifty dollars?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  Cat-Bird in one hand, I fetched my wallet with the other. I opened its leather mouth, and saw four one-dollar bills. Nothing more.

  I looked at the form. Not just one page, but many.

  Gently, I took out the cash, and further crumpled it into a little green boulder. Then I faked a sneeze and tossed the money over the fat man’s shoulder.

  “Oops,” I said.

  “Bless you.” He turned around and struggled to bend over.

  I ran.

  ***

  “We’re like Bonnie and Clyde, you and I,” I said to Cat-Bird, who sat in the passenger seat. “Except you’re a cat, and I haven’t killed anybody.”

  She said nothing. In fact, she looked downright nervous, licking her paws, shifting uncomfortably, turning around and around. Not long after we left, her silky wings eased silently from her fur. She flexed them and preened them
. Occasionally she tossed me a glance, and a quiet “Mrow?” I tried to reassure her, telling her we were on the way.

  I looked at my watch.

  It would take a half-an-hour to get home. And Brian was out of school in an hour. We had time. The Devilcats couldn’t attack him while he was in school, could they? Those buildings were like big bomb shelters. But the bus? They could attack the bus. And all those other kids on it. I pictured a dark cloud of evil flying cats descending like a swarm of flies, sucking the breath from countless grade-schoolers, scratching and biting the poor children. Maybe the cats could only attack at night? I looked at Cat-Bird for answers, hoping maybe the miracle-feline could somehow telepathically pick up my distress, and would place a gentle, affirming paw upon my shoulder and tell me – psychically – that it was going to be all right.

  It didn’t happen.

  Then I realized what I had to do.

  I would pick Brian up from school myself. Forget the bus.

  I snatched the stolen cell phone from the dashboard, and dialed Missy’s number at work.

  “This is Melissa speaking.”

  “Missy!”

  “Joe? Where are you calling from?”

  “A cell phone.”

  “You don’t have a cell.”

  I’d long denied getting a cell phone, making up some nonsense excuses about cancer caused by electromagnetic whoozawhatsit. But really, I just didn’t want an electronic leash. “I do now.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “Great. How’d it go at the temp –“

  “Never mind, I have to pick Brian up from school.”

  She paused. Suspicion dripped from the phone. “What? Why?”

  “Well, I just figured with all the troubles, you know, me being stupid and getting rid of Cat-Bird and him getting grounded, I’d do something nice and pick him up.”