Black Pussies Unleashed

"OK, OK. Maybe I can help here," I said.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"Not you. The cats. Kitties!" I called as I shook a cereal box next to the phone.

"Num nums!"

"Aaaaaahhhhh!"

Randi's scream was piercing. And continuous.

"Look, Randi. You're obviously busy. Maybe we can talk later."

I hung up.

I had read once about a Russian woman who was camping in Siberia with her father. A brown bear killed the father, and then the bear and its cubs ate the woman alive while the woman's mother, whom the woman had called while being attacked, listened for an hour. While horrible, I thought that was a tale of love that the mother would subject herself to the Hell of hearing that horror just to give her daughter what little comfort she could in her final moments. No way was I doing that for Randi.

Try to kill my cats, will you? Guess again. Lie about me threatening you? Go fuck yourself. Oh, yeah. And screw around on me? Nope. I had absolutely no love left in me and no inclination to help. She was Mr. Wonder-Dick's problem now. At least I did not have to worry about the cats starving. Or the cost of a divorce. I was surprised by how well I slept that night.

I know, I know. There are those who will say that I need help. Serious psychological help. I had talked a bit previously to a Doctor Mariverz, whom I met online, about whether therapy was a good idea, but he had this accent that I had trouble understanding. I also was not sure that he was licensed. In any case, telling a therapist this kind of stuff could well get me locked up in an institution. So, that was definitely off the table. Posting stuff on the Internet seems to help though. I like trolling shit-heads online. It is easy once you find their triggers. That lets me work out a lot of anger.

A couple of days later, I got a call from an Animal Control officer. It turned out that he was a fan of my Instagram account. He realized that he had not seen any posts for a while and put two and two together. I explained that Randi and I were in a nasty divorce and that she had been starving the cats. He had somehow not heard all the details beforehand but said that my information made things clearer.

The Animal Control officer explained that he went to my house earlier that very day to check on the cats. He could see them in the window of the living room, staring at him. In the basement window as he passed, looking around the house, trying to find my wife to speak to her, he also saw the legs of a person who did not seem to be moving. He called the police and paramedics. They broke down the door. The Animal Control officer regretted to inform me that it looked like Randi was dead. He also suggested that I probably would not want to have an open-casket funeral. The cats had been thorough. Because of that, there was no positive identification of the deceased yet. They did not have much to work with, except for the teeth, and that kind of confirmation would take a while.

The bottom line, after this tale, was what Animal Control would very likely have to euthanize Hagrid and Hermione, or they would, if and when Animal Control caught them. The minute the house door was opened, both cats were out of my house like two hypersonic missiles and up the tree onto Gus's roof.

I thought that I might be able to grab Hagrid or Hermione before anyone noticed, given that everyone was focused on my now deceased wife. Mind you, I had not decided whether I wanted to live with the beasts, now that they had promoted themselves to the top of the food chain, but that was a problem for another day. So, I headed over there. I wanted to be stealthy about it, so I left my phone at my mother's house. No need to have anyone tracking my movements.

My plan was to park on the other side of some park land at the end of our street, cut through on foot, and come in behind Gus's house, where I hoped to be able to get the cats down from the roof. It did not quite work out that way.

When I got near my house, it was well into the afternoon, and the sun was going down. More snow was coming, which was keeping most people inside. I could not see my cats at all on the roof of Gus's house when I peeked out of the woods. I did, however, see that a lot of police and fire vehicles were still in front of my house. It was probably the month's most interesting death. They would all be talking about it for years, wowing the rookies with the story. I saw no point in trying to get near my house.

I gave up trying to find the beasts and went back through the woods down to the canal, taking the long way to get back to the car. Snow was everywhere. I came to a spot that looked over a canal aqueduct. It had been built to carry the canal and its towpath over a large stream that entered the river a short distance away. In dry conditions, it was always a dicey proposition to cycle over because the path was so narrow. You were supposed to walk your bike instead. Now, with new snow and ice, it was probably worse.

I realized then that my cats were on the aqueduct. They were staring down at the running water in the stream below. I also realized that Gus was on his bike on the canal towpath, happily riding through the snow, about to cross the aqueduct, headed my way. To do that, he would have to pass the cats, who were partially hidden by a railing and by the fading light of the setting sun. At the last minute, the cats saw Gus, and Gus saw the cats. They all reacted at the same time with the cats running in front of the bike, and Gus swerving, then skidding on the ice. He hit the railing, flipped ass over his head, and went sailing down into the stream with his bike tumbling down behind him. His phone, which I am sure was recording his ride statistics, flew into the water in a graceful parabola. I ran over to the aqueduct and saw him trying to get up from the creek bed. It was already darkly shadowed down there. The water was not very deep, but Gus was obviously soaked with cold water, and he also obviously had a badly injured leg that would not support any weight. Another issue was that the banks of the creek were very steep and slippery, so there was really no way to climb out, especially not with a leg that did not work properly.

He looked up, saw me, and called out for help. The snow muffled his call.

I called back, "Maybe you can call Randi for help."

That is when he recognized me. He had been trying to climb up the creek bank but slumped. I decided that I needed to be somewhere else as soon as possible. I turned around to head back to my car and saw both cats in the path looking at me. Their faces showed recognition, but all three of us realized that we were going to go our own ways. They scampered off into the woods. I guessed that, when they got tired of playing, they would shelter in the crawlspace under Gus's house. Hopefully, they would find a nice family to eat in the future. Maybe a family with kids.

A few days later, when I was back in my house, after having the master bedroom and basement deep-cleaned and the bed replaced, I heard from a neighbor that a hiker had found Gus's body on the creek bank. Gus had frostbite on his extremities and had died of hypothermia. They say that hypothermia kills quickly and painlessly, like going to sleep. Not my ideal way for Gus to make an exit, but I would accept it under the circumstances.

Thinking about all of this, I do not understand why people believed that black cats were unlucky. My luck with them has been pretty good so far. But I think my next pet will be a goldfish. Or a rabbit.