A Taste for Things

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

A Taste for Things

By Plot Roach

I knew something was up when the cats kept disappearing. You have to understand, we live out in the rural part of the city. A fringe section not so much ’country’ land, as abandoned industrial buildings gone back to nature. Broken walls and sunken roofs sprout up like mushrooms out here. The only reason we have a home out here at all is because we converted it from an old trailer that the wrecking crews had used for an office before even they gave up the ghost and made for greener pastures.

My husband Jacob has tried to get us to move for years now, saying that the land is no good for our family, now that the little one can walk. But I keep an eye on Jacob Jr., making sure he doesn’t fall in any holes or stick himself on any rusted bits of debris while we’re touring the old buildings looking for scrap to sell at the local flea market.

Living like a scavenger isn’t what I had hoped for when I dreamed of my adult life as a child. But it’s kept a roof over our heads when others in this fair city have gone homeless through no fault of their own. I refuse to make my child live life on the road, in a derelict car. And I will not have us traipsing about like gypsies from one shelter to another while government workers look down upon us like human cockroaches.

So I keep and eye on the boy, you better believe I do. He’s the apple of my eye and sometimes the only thing that keeps me sane at night when the wolf of debt and past woes sings at the door for our bones to gnaw upon.

And besides, if we left, who would take care of all the cats? Sometime after we put down stakes out here, the cats came to us. A few at first, mostly feral things with little more to them than a scrap of skin hanging on their bones. But then people started noticing that a cat colony had started, so they dumped their unwanted pets out here for us to feed them. Sometimes a former owner will stop by, see if his ’Fluffy’ is still around and breathing. The best of those who pass through drop off a pound or two of dry cat food so we can keep feeding them. It gets hard just taking care of my family, but I try to take care of the cats, too.

So at one time we had ourselves somewhere around thirty of the furry miscreants, running amok and catching their prey in the abandoned buildings if they weren’t getting a handout from yours truly. And then their number started thinning out. Just a few at first, something I hardly noticed except that a favorite of mine, Latiffah, hadn’t come to her morning feed when I called for her.

And then another one of my favorites, Joxor, showed up with deep furrows scratched out of his sides. I pulled him inside a few days, dosing him with antibiotics I had from when a passerby ‘donated’ them for the kitty cat cause. But even with all of my knowledge of raising animals and looking after them over the years, he passed away. It was a hell of a battle for the little guy, I tell you that. He was running a fever something fierce, and though his wounds healed over nicely -something that happened way faster than it should have, he still gave up the last of his little kitty lives.

But that final night I watched a change come over him, almost like there was another cat fighting to break out of him. Something fierce and not of this world. Like some genetic throwback to a time when big cats roamed these lands instead of greedy industrialists and shattered buildings.

One night I heard a ruckus and thought to myself that whatever got my poor little friends is about to try and have seconds with the survivors. Jacob Sr. was off at work and I was alone that night with only Jacob Jr. to keep me company. And I couldn’t go out into the night and leave the boy by himself. Just my luck, he’d wake up while I was gone and pull himself out of the crib to go exploring by himself. And then next thing you know, he’d be gone the way of the cats.

So I put on his little chest harness. You know, the one that end in a leash. I felt embarrassed about using it, but I decide it’s better than letting the boy run loose beside me while I’m trying to aim a gun at whatever is chewing on the cats.

So with the leash on one wrist, the one holding the flashlight. The other hand holding the gun. Me and the boy went out into the night, heading for the sounds of snarling and yowling. Whatever it was, it had one of the cats wounded and cornered in a tree. I creept up slowly, the boy following on my heels, too tired from being woken up in the night to make much noise just yet. Which is just as well because I want to catch this critter in the act and fill it full of lead.

I turned off the flashlight, and let the noises guide me to where the altercation was happening. I clicked the ‘on’ button of the flashlight and immediately wished that I hadn’t. Standing there -yes, STANDING there! Is the biggest damned dog thing that I have ever seen. It’s got a calico trapped in one of the lower limbs of the tree. Poor thing is missing half of its side and one eye, but it somehow made it into the tree -for all the good it will do it. If it has the same infection Joxor had, it will be dead in less than a month. But all this passed in my brain for only an instant and I can’t be worrying about a cat when the thing facing me looks like it might want to take a bite out of me or Jacob Jr. instead.

It turned, snapping at the hand holding the flashlight. I dropped it to the ground, snatching my hand back -but also dropping Jacob Jr.’s leash in the process. But I still held onto the gun. I unloaded the full clip into the creature’s torso, like my daddy taught me back when I was just a girl of five. But nothing stoped the thing. It just kept advancing on me. I tripped and fell, like one of those damned wimpy girls you see in a horror movie, trying to put my hands over my face like it will save me.

But the killing blow never landed. The creature turned to face my boy, who leaned forward and licked the damned thing on the nose. The nose! The look on that creature’s face when my boy did that was priceless. Like somehow it never thought that there would be something out in the wide world that would have a taste for the hunter like it had a taste for its prey. It made this weird whine and dashed for the bushes, and disappeared into the darkness. I snatched my boy up and locked the trailer door behind us, blocking it with the sofa just to make sure that the thing couldn’t come in after us.

I followed Jacob Sr.’s wishes and we moved out the following day. We lived in a shelter for a week or two. Then moved into my sister’s place for a month until we could afford a place of our own again. I can’t look at a cat without thinking back to that night. And as for Jacob Jr.? He doesn’t seem too shook up from the events of that night, if he even remembers them. But every once in a while I catch him eyeing the neighbor’s snarling dogs and licking his lips.