Black Pussies Unleashed

Made you look. I admit it. The title is a thirst trap. But here you are. So it worked. That is the effect of social media for you. And let us be honest. You are not here because you thought it necessarily would be a good story. Even though it is. To me at least.

I'll back up.

This is a story about pussies, i.e., Felis catus, not vaginas, although one human vagina has a role. That vagina being that of my former wife, a woman who never liked my cats. And my cats never liked her straight back. And that is why our marriage ended. Indirectly. And ironically.

See, I like cats, but that affection does not blind me to the fact that they each have a brain the size of a walnut and less common sense than teenagers after a couple of beers. I had never wanted a cat in the first place. My family never had pets when I was growing up, and any kinds of pets seemed like a lot of work. But a former girlfriend decided we needed a cat, and I wanted pussy--the other kind--so I agreed. Then we broke up, and she moved somewhere that would not allow pets, and I got stuck with the beast. It was a tabby that trashed everything in my place. As much as I wanted to hate it, when it cuddled up at night and purred, I could not be angry anymore. Manipulative little shit. It eventually got sick, and I had to euthanize it. By then, I realized I liked them, so I got a pair of kittens, a brother and a sister. That was before I got together with my wife.

Both cats were pure black. The female had blue eyes, and the male had green eyes. The male was also bigger but easy-going. His sister was high-energy. Since they were pure black, they needed witchy names, so I chose Hermione and Hagrid. The names fit the personalities. I never considered using Harry. That is a stupid name for a cat. Ditto Ron or Weasley, especially for a cat without any red fur. Of course, their real names were, interchangeably, STOP THAT! and GET DOWN! Not that they ever responded or obeyed.

But like I said, my wife did not like the cats. She pretended to tolerate them while we were dating and engaged but, after we got married, she tried to make me get rid of them. I refused. It was our first big fight. I won, but her spousal passive-aggressive behavior started soon after.

I must own up to the fact that I was probably responsible for that. My wife Randi confessed to me in the middle of the fight that she did not like cats because, when a teenager, she had read a story about some crazy old cat lady who died of a sudden heart attack. The lady was a recluse and, by the time anyone had thought to check on her, her ten cats, driven mad with hunger, had turned to the most obvious meat source around, stripping large sections of her corpse down to the bone, particularly the face, which was not covered by any clothes. They apparently started with the nose. As a result, my wife was afraid that the same thing would happen to her someday when I was out of the house.

That story obviously came from a place of great vulnerability, and her telling me reflected deep trust. My hysterical laughter and editorial comment that her fear was stupid were, in retrospect, unhelpful. Probably not one of my most emotionally supportive moments.

We both apologized. I acknowledged her fear and assured her that I would keep the beasts well fed so there would be no problem. She said she would learn to live with them.

I still thought her fear was silly. And it turned out that Randi was lying. Her favorite thing to do was to leave the door open and pretend that it was accidental, hoping that they would run away and never come back. See, I kept the cats inside because I was convinced that they would get killed or injured outside, given the walnut-sized brains. But Randi proved me wrong. Somehow, the gods or saints looked out for Hagrid and Hermione because they would get bored after an hour of running around the yard, climbing the trees that flanked the house, and would come home to eat and then sleep.

Things changed after I started watching Instagram reels. I saw videos taken from collar-mounted cameras worn by cats. I thought those were funny. I decided to do the same. I usually let the cats out whenever I got back from work, after I put the camera collars on. My beasts liked to climb trees and sit there for a while. Then, they would come down and chase each other around. Both cats grew habituated to the routine and, as a result, never went outside when my wife left the doors open because it was not the time to go out because I was not there, and because they knew that they only were allowed out when they were wearing their cameras. If a step in the process was missing, they would not go. And they only stayed out for about an hour and then promptly came home when I called. I could tell that the failure of her plan to drive them away made my wife crazy, but I pretended not to notice. (See? I can be passive-aggressive, too.)

When the cats got home, I would collect the cameras, which were wireless and connected to my phone, download the videos, pull short reels, and post them to social media. Silly, I know, but I had half a million followers who loved them, and it amused the hell out of me. Something about seeing their paws zipping into and out of the camera shots as they ran, looking at everything from a cat's perspective, framed by their chins and whiskers, and hearing their chirping and trilling and meowing just made me laugh. And my fans, too, if the comments and likes were to be believed. The camera company loved the publicity and upgraded me to better models for free, as long as I plugged them regularly.

The other day, I came home early from work. We were getting snow, and several inches had already fallen. Reports of the expected accumulation were all over the place and, for that reason, I was not worried about the commute because lots of folks had not bothered to go to work at all. What was exciting me was that the cats had never been out in the snow before. The past several winters had been warm. The thought of the kind of video I would get with black cats jumping in the white snow made me giddy with anticipation of what I would be able to post for the Internet to see.

My wife was not home, which was a bit of a surprise because her car was in the garage. I knew that her office had closed because of the weather. She worked for a government agency, and the radio had announced the early closures of most government offices in our area. Hagrid and Hermione did not greet me at the door, which was also unusual. I focused on them before trying to figure out where my wife was.

The reason they did not come to the garage door was because they were staring out the window, transfixed by the falling snowflakes. I gave them their walkies call--one of the few verbal commands to which they responded--and they immediately ran to the door to have the camera collars put on. I opened the door, and Hermione cautiously poked her head out. Hagrid jumped over her because she was too slow and bounded into the all-encompassing white carpet. Hermione did the cat equivalent of saying, "Ah, screw it!" and jumped after him.

They had a full-blown case of the zoomies in the front yard, racing around in circles with crazed eyes, sliding, jumping into snow drifts, realizing that snow was cold and wet, and then promptly forgetting that as they played. I made a cup of coffee and watched them for a bit. It was better than television. After about fifteen minutes, they went up the tree between our house and the neighbor's house. From experience, I knew they would be up there for a while.

I did not like the neighbor. Gus was his name. He was a general contractor who had just remodeled his home. We had been talking to him about doing ours, too. He was fit and muscled and like to flirt with Randi, who would giggle, twirl her hair, push out her chest, and flirt right back. She denied it when I confronted her and said I was insecure. Gus was also a cyclist, the particularly obnoxious type, always talking about his watts, amperage, volts, calories, and his next race. He liked to cycle on a canal towpath not too far from our house, even in the worst weather when it was muddy because, as he said to my wife's giggles, "What's the point of doing something if it doesn't make you dirty?"

Just then, Randi came back.

"Where are the cats?" she asked.

That was strange. She never asked about them. She seemed to be very agitated. As I looked at her, I realized that she was disheveled, like she had dressed quickly. Her hair, usually very well kept, was chaotic, like she had just woken up.

"Outside," I said, watching her.

She was suspiciously shifty. She seemed at a loss for something to say. Catlike, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.

"Why?" I asked.

She looked shocked but checked herself.

"Why what?" she answered, not meeting my eyes.

"Why are you asking about the cats?"

She seemed to relax a bit.

"I was worried about them in this weather."

She looked me in the eyes as she said that but then quickly looked away. Now I knew she was lying. What she would like was for them to freeze to death in this weather.

"Where were you?" I asked.

She looked frightened again. She was obviously trying to figure out what to say. She slumped a bit.

"I went over to Gus's house to discuss the renovations we want."

She looked at me to see how I reacted. I knew there was more to it than that. She looked panicked. Given all the clues that my brain was slowly processing, I could only think of one reason why she would look panicked. And I realized that reason would involve the cats. I had just remembered that, not only did they like going up the tree next to Gus's house, but they also liked jumping from that tree onto his porch roof and walking around. Normally, it was not a big deal because he was not usually home when they went on their outside excursions, but there had been a few times when I had to edit carefully because you could see right into the bedrooms if they walked by on the porch roof.

"Were you upstairs or downstairs at Gus's house?" I asked, looking down into her face.

A moment passed before she answered.

"It's not what you think."

"How do you know what I think?"

She licked her lips, and her eyes shifted all over the place.

"I think I'll get the cats back inside. I'm guessing that they have some really interesting video today."

Randi's eyes got huge, but she did not say anything.

I went on the porch, making sure that I kept my body in the door so I could not be locked out.

"Kitties! Num nums!" I yelled.

When I had started using that command, I would call the words while also loudly shaking a box of dried cat food. They got the message fast and ran back home. Then, when they came in and let me get the cameras off their necks, I would give them each a treat. After that, I would feed them. Over time, I had dropped the stimulus to the call alone but still gave treats and then fed them a short while later. Thus, today, they responded like they always did and came bounding to the door. I made sure to get the cameras off before they came inside so that Randi would not try to grab them. Treats administered, I let the cats inside. They shook off the snow, looked warily at Randi, and then ran further into the house. I closed the door. Randi's eyes were glued to the cat cameras. Finally, her gaze met mine. She looked stricken.

"I'm going down to the basement to download the video and figure out what I want to post online. Maybe you can think of some way to occupy yourself."

I turned and went down the stairs. I would feed the cats later. Synching the app on my phone with the cameras took a moment but, with a bit of quick scrolling, within five minutes, I found what I wanted. There was video of Gus banging Randi doggy-style on the bed in the upstairs bedroom of Gus's house, visible from the porch roof, with both of their faces clearly shown and Randi's eyes closed in ecstasy. Then, she opened them, realized she was looking straight into Hermione's eyes--without knowing which cat it was, of course--and promptly launching herself at the window in all her naked glory. Hermione was into the tree in a flash and descended fast, and then when Randi came running outside a few minutes later, trying to chase her, Randi chased Hagrid instead, not knowing that she had the wrong cat. Hagrid went up the tree. Hermione had seen Randi running and hid in the crawlspace below Gus's porch, where Gus had a lot of junk collected. Randi had not seen her. The videos showed Randi returning to our house at that point.

And, the second-best part from each camera was that both showed that Randi was in perfect physical health when I went down to the basement. Not a mark or scratch was on her. I had left both cameras running when I had taken them off the cats and had held them in a way that recorded Randi's face and body. We were not going to have any allegations of domestic violence in the divorce, not if I could help it.

I heard footsteps thumping down the upper staircase and promptly went up, this time with my phone's camera running. I was just in time to get yet another shot of Randi without any marks on her face or the visible parts of her body as she pulled a suitcase, grabbed a coat, and went out the front door without a word. She gave me one last guilty look as she left. I recorded her in her car pulling out of the driveway slowly onto the snowy road. She was probably heading to her mother's house.

Turns out that I was wrong though about how the divorce would go when talking about abuse. A couple of days after I had caught Randi cheating--or, I should say, after my cats caught her--I returned home after running some errands, which included seeing a divorce lawyer, to find a police car are outside my home. The sheriff's deputy gave me a copy of the restraining order that prevented me from coming within 100 feet of the house. Randi's lawyer had told the judge that Randi feared for her life because I had threatened her. Gus had submitted an affidavit in support of her allegations, claiming that he had heard the threat. What's a little perjury between friends? After some negotiating with the deputy, I got a trash bag full of clothing. When I tried to get my personal computer and cat cameras, she told the officer that I had taken them with me. When I asked about taking the cats, Randi said that they were hers, that she loved them, and that we could fight about them with the lawyers. The deputy told me it was now a civil matter to discuss in court. I knew better than to argue with her or the cop, so I just took what I could get and left. I have no idea what Randi thought she was accomplishing by stealing my electronics because the incriminating video was on the cloud. It was probably a control ploy. I was more worried about her having the cats.

I called my lawyer. There was no criminal complaint about me abusing Randi, so we would just have to go to court to get the restraining order lifted and my stuff, just like the deputy said, although the lawyer told me that by the time we got in front of a judge, the restraining order's two-week validity would already have expired. He warned me that the whole divorce process was going to suck and take forever, especially if she dug her feet in, but that he would proceed with getting the complaint ready to file soon. He also said that he would see about getting the cats out of the house, or at least getting Animal Control to do a welfare check, but he was not optimistic that anyone would do anything anytime soon.

In the meantime, I went to my own mother's place and got settled in, resolving to wait things out. I thought about posting the video of Randi and Gus to Instagram or YouTube, but my lawyer had warned me that we would be getting into revenge porn territory, and that I did not need to deal with that level of aggravation. Besides, it was a distraction from the divorce case.

I had gotten kicked out of my house on Friday. It snowed heavily on and off that weekend and the following week, keeping government offices, including the courts, closed for much of that time. The county court did not accept electronic filings at that time, so my lawyer could not get the divorce complaint filed until everything opened back up. That also meant that we could not get anything filed to challenge the restraining order. I had called Animal Control about checking on my cats, but it was not a priority for them, especially with the snow. I resigned myself to the fact that Randi was probably going to do something bad to the cats, if they had not already starved to death, and was furious that I could not do anything to stop it.

It was the following Friday when I got a call at my mother's house on the landline in her kitchen. It was Randi. I had blocked her number on my mobile phone, and my mother's phone was an old model that did not let you know who was calling. My mother had gone out during one of the breaks in the snow.

"I just wanted you to know that Gus has been fucking me in our bed since you've been gone," Randi said when she heard me answer the phone.

I wanted to record the call, but my battery was dead on the mobile, and it was all the way upstairs anyway.

"He's got a much bigger cock than you," she added when I said nothing. "And he can go three or four times in a session, not like you."

I was about to hang up when I heard desperate meowing in the background. Somehow, Hermione and Hagrid were still alive. I was mystified how they managed it.

"Oh, that's right. You probably don't even care about the sex as much as you do about your damned cats. You always loved them more than me. Well, don't worry. I'm going to solve that problem. I haven't fed them since I got you kicked out. A whole week without food. Poor kitties. They're so desperate that they are finally interacting with me instead of hiding. I'm going to give them something to eat. I'm going to give them rat poison in their tuna fish. I'll say it was all a terrible mistake. But you will not have them around when we are done all this."

The meowing got louder.

"Hey! Stop that! Get down! Get off! No! Ow! Get off my leg! Fucking animals! Ow!"

There was then a lot of hissing, cat shrieking, cat fighting sounds, and human screaming, all culminating in a great deal of banging. Then, silence.

Finally, I heard moaning.

Then, Randi asked "Are you still there?"

"Yes. But I'm sorry that you're not dead."

I had to be honest.

"They attacked me," Randi said, sounding betrayed.

The bravado was gone.

"They saw the cat food can in my hand, and both of them climbed up on me with their claws digging in. I threw them off, and they got under my feet, and I fell down the steps into the cellar."

"Oh, that's a shame."

"You have to call 9-1-1."

"You call."

"I can't," she said.

She sounded helpless.

"Why not?"

"I think I broke my back. I can't move my arms or legs. I can't turn my head. I don't know where the phone is."

She was obviously on speaker on the phone.

"I'd love to, but I'm doing some laundry, and I have to fold stuff. Otherwise, it gets wrinkled."

"Please?" she sounded desperate.

"Maybe Gus can do it."

She started weeping.

"Oh, God! The cats are sniffing at my face!"

She was panicked.

"Are you bleeding?"

"I think so."

"Oooh. The smell of blood is going to trigger some primal instincts, especially since you've been starving them for a week. I saw something like this on Game of Thrones, except with dogs. With cats, they start with the nose, don't they? Maybe the ears. Like an appetizer. I think your worst fear might come true after all. Just like Winston Smith in Room 101."

"Oh, God! Please, help me!"

While she had been talking, I had stretched the extension cord of the landline phone as far as it could go while I explored my mother's kitchen. I found what I wanted.