Hilltop House

Maeve, Eight

There really were cats everywhere. Dottie's cats were as numerous as Maeve's ants. The house smelled like a giant litterbox, and from the look of things, the animals used it as one. Maeve had to hold her sleeve over her nose as she wandered through it, calling the old woman's name as loud as she dared. No one had seen Dottie in at least three weeks; Alan said he'd gone to check on her but gotten no response when he'd knocked, and just as they'd stood talking about whether or not to do something on a particularly chilly November evening, one of the upstairs windows of Dottie's house had suddenly blown out, showering little bits of glass onto the porch overhang below.

It was around six fifteen, and Maeve had called to her daughter, who'd stepped out the front door of their own house at the sound, to call the police. Cora had rushed inside to take care of that. But Alan had hurried the short distance to Dottie's and easily shoved in the front door. Now they were inside, Maeve having followed him, and it was clear the moment they'd entered that the cats hadn't been fed in a while. The scraggly creatures swarmed their legs, sharp-toothed mouths yowling in expectation, some rubbing up in the hope that kindness would feed them and others nipping angrily. Maeve almost backed out, but she didn't want to look like a coward. "Go on up," she told Alan. "I'll feed them." He listened to her advice, hurrying up the stairs. Dottie's house was one of the newer two-stories, too big for a single old woman but maybe not big enough for all the cats. Maeve found the kitchen, weaving through cat towers and trees and shredded scratching posts, which were more prevalent than furniture, it seemed. There were several large bags of cat food on the floor of the pantry, but they'd been ripped open and emptied. Having never had cats due to mild allergies, Maeve was unsure what exactly to give them, but she was about to lose it with the herd following her around, making it difficult to take a step without squishing a tail, causing her eyes to water and her nose to itch, so she grabbed some easy-open cans of soup and pulled back the tabs, sitting as many as she could on the floor. But there were so many cats and the cans were narrow, so after a moment, she frustratedly dumped the contents of a few more soups on the ground.

Enough space opened for her to slide out of the kitchen and hurry upstairs after Alan. She found him quickly, sitting in a bedroom, the old woman's upper body on his lap. He was talking to her as if she were a child, telling her it was all right, everything would be ok, and Maeve felt more like a nuisance or an intruder, so she stepped back out into the dark hall and pressed her back against the wall, waited, unsure what exactly she should do.

Had Dottie been lying there for days? For weeks, even? What a horrible notion, to be so incapacitated, to be so alone, nothing to do but wander the hallways of your own head.

Not that being up and walking guaranteed any sort of escape from such a nightmare. No, Maeve reflected, whether mobile or immobile, one was always alone. Human existence was, ultimately, absolutely lonely. One's mind was much like a too-big house, which no visitor would never entirely explore, and that, truly, was in the visitor's best interest. If only Maeve herself could keep some of her doors more tightly locked against her own prying.

The cats began making noise once again, having sated their appetites, and Maeve realized they probably didn't have water, either. So back down she went, dreading the animals, their smell, their twitchy eyes, their presumptuousness, as if she were there only to serve them. And it's where she was--in the kitchen, cleaning up and setting out proper food and water dishes and sneezing--when the police and medics arrived. She quickly directed them upstairs, and there was a to-do for about thirty minutes as she responded to their questions, as they carried the woman down on a gurney, as Alan followed and spoke with the police as well. When all was said and done, Maeve and Alan stood on the sidewalk outside Dottie's feline-filled house.

"She told you three days?"

"Said she'd just been sick, mostly, stayed in bed, then tried to get up and fell," Alan explained, his breath condensing around the both of them. "Took all her strength to throw that book out the window so we'd see it. Lucky we did, too."