Cat

Cat strolled with the confidence of a king down the quiet, dark street that ran through the centre of the village. He had reason to feel that way. He was king, king amongst his peers anyway. No one challenged his authority these days. Mind you, that didn’t mean he could relax; far from it. Cat had to make his presence felt, to remind everyone that he was still around and that no one was to mess with him. So he patrolled his domain with a sense of wariness as well as confidence. He scanned as he sauntered; a sniff here and, occasionally, a spray there, looking for movement that might indicate danger, food or maybe even just a little fun.

He had spent the day snoozing in a garden shed that he had found, the door open wide enough for him to enter and shelter from the rain that had fallen intermittently throughout the day. It had been quiet, with only the odd noise from birds and dogs near enough to cause any distraction. He had waited until nightfall and the darkness that would hide his approach to any prey he might happen upon and hide him from any danger too.

The rain had stopped some time ago, the ground was dry and the grass soft under his paws, perfect for patrolling and hunting. And yes, it was hunger and the smell that drove him now.

The darkness was not the norm. Not a light shone from anywhere, neither the street lamps, nor even any windows revealing a disturbed night within. It was silent too; more silent than he had ever known. Not that Cat thought about that. He didn't really register the change. No questions entered his mind.

Half way down the street he did hear some noise, unfamiliar noise. It was coming from the village supermarket, a small one that was usually busy during daylight hours but silent at night. Now there was the bustle of activity from within. Rats. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them were feasting on what rats liked but Cat didn't. He ate rats though and could see some of them through a window. But, he hadn't found a way in to where they were, so pretending to ignore them he strolled past, sniffing for any stronger smell of rat that might indicate an opening. There wasn't.

He approached a lamppost and sniffed it. His last message was still there with no other smell superimposed over it. He was as relaxed as he could be but still freshened his own marker with another spray whilst surveying his surroundings. And there was that other odour in the air. This was of interest to him but he had not been able to get to a source. Mostly it was locked away inside the buildings and the doors closed.

Cat didn’t register that this was unusual or think about it. He had no opinion, did not pause for any thought or reflect on anything. He just acted or reacted as he had when following a scent to what seemed to be a stronger source of the smell or as he did when his ears pricked up at a noise he could hear in the distance. The noise was stationary so he padded cautiously towards it, his senses tensing at the realisation of its source.

Barking, and more than one was doing the barking. That spelt danger. He stiffened and gauged where, exactly, it was coming from, all the while scanning for escape routes should the source of that barking move towards him and threaten to get too close. Carefully, he walked up to the corner of the road from where the noise seemed to be coming from and peeped around the corner of a building. He saw them. A pack of six dogs were scrapping over a heap on the pavement. He counted them and took note of their size and vigour. They were about fifty yards away and totally absorbed in the competition for whatever it was they were squabbling over. They seemed to be eating it between the argumentative growls. So concentrated were they on their prey that Cat knew he had time to weigh up just how close he could get. It was safe enough to sit so he did so with a measured lowering of his hindquarters, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on those dogs and measuring out his options. He could smell something edible. He watched and became as engrossed as he could ever be in anything.

The dogs were fighting over a corpse. It had been dead for a few days so was beginning to smell. That was what had attracted them. They hadn’t eaten for some time so the pack companionship had given way to survival with only the natural pecking order preventing them from turning on each other more seriously. The corpse was human. A tramp. The dirty ragged clothing made even more dirty and ragged by the dogs and the time the man, it was a man, had been dead. They’d dragged him from some cardboard that had been piled in a shop doorway. They were so hungry that their reluctance to think of a human as food had melted away. They were so hungry that they were oblivious to anything else; and so, very nearly, was Cat.

Cat hadn’t heard it until almost too late. There was a sound behind him. The noise of four feet running, quickly. It was near, too near. He noted all of this and where it was coming from and sprung for a fence ten yards from where he was sitting without a glance back. A stinging in his ear told him of his error as he leapt to safety. The large dog couldn’t follow. He knew that and looked down with as much disdain as he could muster although the hairs on his back and the blood on his ear told a different story. That had been too close. The dog, a black Labrador, stood growling impotently and then turned to what had attracted it in the first place, the other dogs and their booty. He was bigger than any of them and trotted purposefully straight up to them, trailing strings of slaver on the way. Cat didn’t linger to see what happened. He knew that others might arrive. Safety told him to move on, although to make a point, he did mark the fence before he left.

He took a route away from the dogs so that he would meet any danger head on and see it, hopefully, before it saw him. The barking receded and his fur relaxed and sank back in repose. His movement became less earnest and soon he resumed his stately saunter. He even stopped to clean himself, as much for safety as pride. He didn't want the smell of his blood to waft towards unwelcome nostrils; not that he actually thought about that. Instinct was his saviour.

His path took him to the river. He didn’t plan it. He just went there because he always did. It was the edge of his territory. Where the road met the river there was a little hump-backed bridge. It was very old and made of stone. He never went over it as it made him feel vulnerable. It was too open and had too few avenues of escape and the noise of the water running underneath could hide the approach of danger. However he was curious, as there was something of interest on it; and it got more interesting every time he approached. There was an odour emanating from it and the smell was getting stronger with the passage of time. It came from a crashed car and was frustratingly locked inside the car with no means of him getting at it. That car was like a huge leaky tin of food that enticed him cruelly. He had already been there and hadn’t found a way in to the corpse inside. A problem for him was that others knew about it too. He could sense the crows and magpies drowsily eyeing him from their perches. He didn’t hear any dogs although he could smell that they had been here. Their droppings indicating that they had been there for some time. Cat inspected the dogs' messy trail and his sensitive nose told him that their boisterous visit had been some time ago. The tautness of his muscles gave way to frustration; he wandered off with a defiant flick of his tail. He sprayed the corner of the bridge. He always did.

Long gardens backed onto the river, which was quite small; more like a wide stream really. It was shrouded in trees and rushed along at some pace, freshly filled by the recent rain. The smell that pervaded the village was less evident here although in places a sensitive nose like Cat’s could detect strong pockets of it. Reminders of his hunger. The water was moving too fast and noisily for him to risk getting too close for a drink. He made do with some sips from a clean puddle a safe distance from what seemed, to him, an unseemly torrent. His thirst quenched, Cat moved away from the river and back up to the houses that sat at the top of the riverside gardens. The noise of the river made him feel wary; he preferred the silence that allowed him to listen. There had been a lot of that lately. He prowled the perimeters sniffing here, pausing to listen there, always on the lookout for opportunity.

He gave it no thought but he hadn’t been inside a home for some days now. Up until then he had had a regular source of food from a family that provided him with warmth and shelter too. He found the place. It was part of his domain. The bond between it and him, though, was loosening. It smelt different. Sitting down at a corner of the silent building he let out an involuntary meow, from habit really. He did this two or three times out of the habit of a lifetime and stopped at a time when he would normally have seen a light shine from the opening of a door to let him in. Nothing happened this time. The silence remained, as did the darkness.

No light shone where once, not so long ago, it chased darkness away to pave the way for the sounds that always ran in partnership with it; human sounds. There were none now, just the silence that gave Cat comfort. Somewhere though, there was something missing that Cat could not give expression to and did not understand. He sat in that silence for some time, his instinct switched off, or at least dimmed, for once.

A slight breeze brought that aroma that seemed to pervade everywhere. Cat automatically padded towards it. It was stronger than it had been previously and as he approached the source his heart quickened as he became more acutely aware of his hunger. The padding became a stride. There was a window with a break in the corner. Something had fallen against it and broken it, leaving a cat-sized jagged gap. Yes, it was big enough.

Cat sat measuring the gap for a moment. He didn't need long and jumped up, and carefully crept through the opening. His senses were on high alert. Inside it was dark and lifeless. The smell was stronger. He jumped down onto a worktop and then silently down to the floor to move through the kitchen, the room with the broken window. He could smell rats and picked his way carefully past the mess they had left of cereal packets and other detritus. He paused to listen. No sound. The place did not trigger any memories, not that he gave that any thought. Hunger overrode everything now. Nowhere in his mind was there any realisation that he had not purred for days now. He moved out to the hallway where the smell was stronger and up the stairs to follow what was turning into a stench. He drooled and moved with determined speed.

The odour took him to a room that had a door open and on the bed lay two people who had been dead for a few days. If it had been light they would have been a grey-green colour and their eyes an opaque grey. Cat would not have given a thought to this. He also gave no thought to the fact that they had been his protectors and providers of food just a few days previously. He did, however, sense that they could still provide him with sustenance. They were now the food as he settled down and licked an eyeball. For the first time in three days he purred.