Graceful Abaddon

Kitty Flew Away

"Wait till you hear this.

"Zoe 'cross the road there, she had this feral cat once. Her husband found it stuffed inside a sack one council clean-up. Several years back, it was - 'bout oh-nine. Mr. Rudd, the specky little twerp, was still in parliament apologizing. Anyway, this Zoe's husband - bloke named Rod – he turns up one day after work with this scared, abandoned little kitten. Oh, the poor sweetheart. You shoulda seen it. Timid as a mouse, it was. Wouldn't let no one get near it. But then, hardly more than a year later, it's gone and got itself up the duff! Knocked up by this big tom down the road named Herod. 'Bout five-six kittens it had. Adorable little things.

"And Zoe, well she's like half-feline herself. Bloody adores them. She'd've kept the fur-balls there in bed with her. But Rod – fella who did our back porch, I might have told you – he wouldn't be putting up with that. He put the mother and her litter down in the laundry, laid 'em out a towel beneath the sink. You'd be having a Saturday cuppa with Zoe and the other girls from the sports club, and there in the laundry just off the kitchen, those kittens'd be suckling away. They broke your heart to look at 'em, I'll tell you. Several families on the block had already called shotgun on them when they were old enough to be weened off their mother.

"And Rod, he shuts that laundry door each night. Isn't nothin' getting out, or in –'cept the mother cat through the window. But that was up above the washing machine. And now, picture this, dear, cause it just so happens Zoe and Rod went and got themselves caught up in a real life case of the bizarre, a proper episode of the X-Files – you know that American show used to be on Channel Ten after the kiddies were in bed? All them weird tales and stuff. Might have been before your time, I don't know.

What you need to understand though, is that apart from this window up above the washing machine, there was no other way something could get in or out of that laundry. And all they got in that room otherwise was a big clothes dryer by the right-side wall; up along the left side was a pair of shutter doors that opened into a broom closet. Near the kitchen door was a tall wicker basket for dirty clothes. Then at the far end, near the washing machine and the window, there was this big old sink, all industrial like. They never use that though - they just keep a few old buckets and stuff in there. Rod told me he once seen a big snarly rat poking its nose out the sink hole once. The mama cat woulda seen to it those nasty little buggers didn't get at the babies.

"Finally, next to the sink, there was the door outside. It had the slimmest crack of space between the bottom and the floor. Not wide enough for anything but a cockroach to get under without scraping its carapace off.

"So you get my point? Wasn't nowhere but the open window where anything could get out of that room. So imagine Zoe's shock when she went in one morning and saw one of the kittens wasn't there! Just straight up disappeared. Not a single trace left!

"'Course they searched all over. Turned the room just about inside out. Washing machine, dryer, clothes basket, closet. Not a spot of that room wasn't checked. I heard all about it cause Zoe came round, all up in arms and crying. Poor girl. She was certain the kitten was stuck somewhere, got lost in the underlining of a couch or shut in a wardrobe or something. Thought it must be suffocating somewhere that no one could find it. Chances were it was already dead.

"You ever had kittens? I'm sure I don't need to tell you, they get into all sorts of places. Like toddlers, only worse because they're not a tenth of the size. I tried my best to reassure Zoe. Personally I hoped the cat was dozing behind some curtains or something. It'll turn up somewhere, I told her. Just wait and it'll turn up. Soon as it wants its biscuits, you know.

"And Rod being all extra cautious now, he made sure he shut the door that following night. Though Zoe had seen it closed herself that morning she noticed the missing kitten, she'd got to thinking Rod can't have shut it. When something's amiss, dear, don't hesitate to blame the man. If it isn't him - though it usually is - he's surely done something else wrong anyway. But, poor Rod, he made like a good husband. He shut that door like he was told. Made sense enough. Wherever the missing cat had gone, it certainly wasn't through the door. But the window, as I said before, was open that first night.