A Black Cat’s Halloween

October 31st — wherever and whenever we are.

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

The laughter of the younglings always spooks me at the worst times. The woman with the two trees in her yard always leaves out sustenance for me — but not tonight. As I creep along the faded grass, I see strange faces peering back at me from the porch. The smell of rot and fire comes to my nostrils; these things were once alive, tied to the vine of the earth, but now they are just empty facsimiles of what they once were. Candles flicker from their insides, and I shy away from the light and the heat.

I watch from the belly of a bush as the younglings, so odd in their fashions, tramp up and away from the door. Their glee is like a scent on the wind; if I could taste it, it would probably be sweet like sap from a tree. My eyes trace their movements, ever so wary of how humans sway and jolt and spin, but not one has spotted me. For once, I can relax.

“Oh, what a cute kitty!”

My eyes flash open as I see a girl crouched down, her gloved hand out for inspection. But I don’t wander out and sniff because everything smells foreign around her. Danger, danger, my senses scream, and my mouth curls open with fangs and spit ready to fly —

But the girl withdraws, and I don’t lift from my crouch until she is out of sight. Then I scamper back along the edge of the house, away from the noise and the girl who might have been a friend in another life, one away from the din of the outside world.

Out across the street I dash, and those strange metal boxes screech and honk and I am scared nearly out of my skin for how loud the ruckus is.

But soon I find cover under another porch, this one of the man who once owned a fellow cat who would stare at me through the living room window. She’s been gone for a season, and I can’t say I miss her steely looks threatening me if I ever dared to come closer to her refuge and abode.

The air is alight with more sounds, all from the younglings who frighten me more than I would like to admit, and I am watchful, poised, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

“Don’t like Halloween, do you?” a voice comes out from the ether.