Go to Next Chapter -- Return to Contents/Index
Chapter Seven
As Sam led his troupe into his apartment, the
camaraderie in each of their heads was tempered by the realization that they
were running out of time.
“Let’s
eat!” the others cried.
“The
first thing I’m going to do,” Sam
vowed mentally, as he waited for Wanda and Neva to enter the hole in the
screen, “is e-mail Alice. I sure
can’t use the phone!”
“I’m
going to get something to eat,” Drew replied with a meow, leaping up onto the
ledge ahead of Sam.
When
they had all passed through the screen and congregated in the living room, Sam
said a prayer of thanksgiving, while the other cats bowed their heads. Wanda, Neva and Drew had accepted Sam
as their leader now. Wanda, in
fact, had grown fond of the once self-righteous apartment manager. She continued to rub up against him
every chance she had, bringing forth the response “Please Wanda, I’m engaged to
Alice. Let’s just be friends!”
Drew
had no such inhibitions when the beautiful black fluffy Neva rubbed up against
him. Her purring and bubbling form
continued to tease and tempt the tan cat, until, finally, as they all
congregated for their meal, Sam took time to warn his newfound friends. After pulling a portion of last
night’s roast from the refrigerator, he dangled it thoughtfully in his muzzle,
then dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor in front of the group.
“All
right, let’s not stand on formality,“ he transmitted as they devoured their
meal.
“I
love roast,” exclaimed Neva. “All we need is the right wine!”
“I
could use a beer,” Drew replied, giving her a bump.
Sam
poked his head into the circle to get his share. Wanda, inspired by her friend’s spirit,, nudged Sam playfully with her nose. When this failed to elicit a response,
she followed Drew’s example and bumped Sam several times with her rear.
“Listen Drew,” Sam backed away from the group, “you
cats be careful. Neva might
not be human, but she’s a still female.”
“Well,
duh,” Drew chortled, giving Neva a wink.
“I’m
a feeee-male, but I used to be a woman,” she purred brazenly.
“Sammy,
you’re such a prude,” Wanda pretended to pout.
“Hold
on, let me finish!” Sam barked into their heads. “As a female--this goes for
you, too, Wanda--she can get pregnant, just like humans. I’ve seen cats mate when the female’s
in heat!”
“I
wish you wouldn’t talk about me in the third person,” Neva complained, licking
gravy off her paw.
“And
I’m not a prude,” he directed his thought to Wanda this time. “I’m just trying
to use my God-given brain!”
“Oh
God, doesn’t care about us anymore,” said Neva carelessly, swishing her fluffy
tail.
Sam
could not believe his feline ears.
He was even more distressed than when Drew commented, as he had last
night, “We’re just animals now. We
don’t have souls!”
He
then watched Neva and Wanda preen themselves as would two ordinary cats and
detected telepathically Drew’s urge to curl up and take a nap. It was clear to him that they were
sinking into felinity fast.
“First
of all, “ he frowned at Drew, “all animals and plants are part of God’s
creation, not merely humans. No,
don’t wiggle your whiskers at me, Neva.
I’ve given this a lot of thought. . . This is not our faults. Buck, Tom, and the rest of us didn’t
deserve India’s wrath. The Lord
must still consider our souls in spite of her evil act. Perhaps, even so, all living things
have souls. When I was a child I
wanted all my pets up there with me.
Now, I’m almost certain they will!”
“But
it’s not in the Bible,” Drew teased. “What would your Bible-thumping Alice
think?”
If
Sam had not detected humor in Drew’s voice, he would have taken issue with his
new friend, but he half believed what Drew said, himself. Rising up and stretching, he trotted
into his study without a word.
“Where’s
he going?” Wanda paused in her preening to ask.
“Let’s
go see,” Neva, yawned expansively.
“Hey
Sam, I was just kidding,” Drew scampered ahead of the others now. “It all just
seems like such a joke!”
******
The
cats were all sleepy now. Sam, who
sat in front of his computer, looked down at them from his desk, the screen’s
eerie light making him that much more attractive to Wanda below.
“What’re
you doing, Sammy?” She asked pertly, a portrait of feline beauty registering in
Sam’s mind.
Sam
feared for his humanity more than ever this hour. He was beginning to feel attracted to the beautiful white
Persian cat now that he was a cat himself. He almost felt disloyal to Alice for the thoughts racing in
his head.
“I’m
trying to use the keyboard,” he answered simply, making another feeble attempt.
The
stubby appendages of his paw made it difficult to use the computer. He had barely been able to bring up the
American Online screen and punch the sign-on box. When the main menu appeared, he managed, after a few
tries, to hit the write menu.
Because he had only a 56k modem, however, the hour-glass hung suspended
over this menu for several moments, taunting him with the reminder that “time
was running out.”
Seeing
a crafty look on Wanda’s face, he cautioned her again “Please behave yourself!”
as she hopped onto the desk. But Wanda
had no intentions of not seducing him and feigned interest in the screen.
“What’s
that?” She pointed her little white paw.
“It’s
an e-mail screen,” he thought warily, as she edged closer. “Surely you’ve seen that before!”
Embarrassed at
his ineffectiveness, he offered no more explanation. Soon Drew and Neva were also crowded around his computer
with expectant looks on their faces.
Wanda now rubbed her rump against Sam’s leg. Neva did the same to Drew. Sam was now certain that, responding to feral urges, the
girls were in heat. Drew and
himself, for that matter, were reacting as would two normal male unneutered
cats.
“Stop it Wanda, I’m trying to think!” He growled,
humping up his back.
“Yeah,
stop it again and move away closer!” drawled Drew, nestling beside Neva and
licking her ear.
“As
I was going to explain to Wanda,” Sam told the group wearily, “it’s hard to use
the computer with these stubby paws.” “Here goes,” he attempted to hit a
key.
Sa;lioxcweasfgnmaslk.,cviomn! appeared on the
screen.
“Oh,
dear me,” mewed Wanda.
“Looks
like gibberish,” observed Neva.
“I’m
lucking I could punch up AOL,” Sam confessed, trying one more time.
A
similar mish-mash of letters was now displayed in the e-mail address box of the
write menu.
“Try
using just one,” Drew held up a nail.
“I
already tried it,” whined Sam. “You’ve got skinny claws, Drew. Mine are stubby, fat little
appendages. How do you expect me
to type with these?”
“Oh,
I used to play the piano,” Drew explained, typing a message in the
hunt-peck-style in the message portion of the screen.
The
message read playfully SAM HAS FAT PAWS!
HA! HA! HA!
“I
like his fat little paws,” Wanda purred loudly now.
“All
right, Drew,” Sam announced solemnly, “you’re going to be our inputter.
“That
sounds sexy,” cooed Neva.
“Now
listen to what I tell you to type,” Sam nudged her aside.
“Roger,”
Drew’s paw was poised over the keyboard.
“I
believe, in modern lingo,” Sam quipped dryly, “it’s ten-four!”
Suddenly,
as it happened so many times before, Drew was bumped off the internet with a
curt “Good bye!” The girls laughed
at the talking computer, but Sam found nothing amusing about the sluggish
internet now.
“All
right Drew, you’ll have to bring up AOL again on the screen,” he directed
patiently with a yawn. “. . . That’s it, hit the Sign In box below the menu. . . I hope it won’t take long. I was lucky the first time. I wish I had cable or DSL. . . . Girls
you might as well take a nap; this might take awhile!”
With
the greatest forbearance, Sam waited as AOL dialed a number on his modem,
dialed another, and yet one more.
Meanwhile, to his annoyance and dismay, Wanda, Neva and Drew began
acting very much like distracted felines as he stewed. Drew began to groom Neva, who was idly
playing with Wanda’s tail. Wanda
peered at him constantly with a cat’s unwavering stare, a portrait of feline
loveliness, purring so loudly he could barely think. When they heard the proverbial “Hello!” from AOL, the girls
meowed with delight. Drew returned
to his post, and Sam heaved a pent up sigh as the hour glass again hovered
momentarily then disappeared.
“The
Lord is with us,” Wanda said obligingly to him.
“Now,
go up to the box on the AOL screen with Write
on it AOL,” he continued immediately. “That’s it, Drew! Quick, before the son-of-a-bitch bumps
us off again, let’s send my Alice an e-mail!”
Drew
made a thoughtful feline face. “What do you want to say?”
“Put
in her e-mail address in the top left area there,” Sam pointed,
“AliceWag10@AOL.Com. . . Good, now go to the other side there and type
SamBurns112@AOL.Com. . . Drop down to Re
and type “Emergency: come immediately to my house!”
“There’s
one hundred and eleven other Sam Burns out there?” Wanda muttered in amazement
to Neva. “I wonder how many Neva Bravnic’s there are.”
Sam
was worried about the cat’s attention spans now. They could not seem to focus at all. Was this, too, a sign they were
becoming more feral? How much time
did they all have left before they were one hundred percent cats?
“In that large area below,” he now motioned, “type:
Please drop everything and get here as fast as you can. Don’t worry about India. She’s been shot and is in the hospital,
but don’t call the police; they won’t believe what has happened. We’ll just wind up in the city animal
shelter
. .
. . Signed Sam, Wanda, Neva, and Drew.”
“I
think you better remove the last three names,” Drew suggested wryly, drawing
back his paw. “She won’t understand us being here, Sam. She’ll think we corrupted you last
night.”
“You’re
right,” Sam sighed, discouraged by the way the girls were acting now. “She
doesn’t like Wanda and Neva very much, and she probably doesn’t like you. Leave off your’s and the girl’s names,
but add I Love You before my name and
a dozen exclamation points behind.”
“Now hit Send right there,” he
concluded after inspecting the e-mail, “and wait for the message Mail Sent and then a voice.”
“You
got mail!” a man’s voice chimed on AOL.
“Wow,
that was fast!” cried Wanda.
“No,
Wanda, it always does that when you’re mail is successfully sent,” Sam
explained, staring at her in disbelief.
As
the females continued purring and occasionally emitting a yawn, a thought came
into Sam’s overwrought mind.
“Drew,”
he commanded gently, “type in the Search
menu up there on the AOL screen Witchcraft.”
“Good
idea Sammy,” Wanda came close, her feline breath blowing warmly into Sam’s
ears. “Can I help?”
“Yeah,
me too,” Drew also yawned, “I’ll continue punching keys.”
“I’m
looking for information that might explain this spell,” he informed the group.
“Good Lord, there must be a thousand entries for this. Let’s see if we can find one for--what
should we call it--oh yes, shape-changing spells.”
For
several moments the four cats hovered around the screen, as Drew began
scrolling with the mouse. As their
eyes went down the list searching for something that might help, each one
called out mentally when they saw something significant, but in the end, after
a dozen failed attempts, and after a long night and morning with little rest,
they had simply worn themselves out.
“I’m
going to take a nap,” Neva thought, hopping down onto the floor.
“I’m
going to help her take a nap,” Drew
responded in quick pursuit.
“Remember
this one word:” Sam called after them now “litter!
If Neva gets pregnant, she
won’t just be carrying a baby, she’ll have a litter, not roadside but as in
kittens--several, capiche?”
Neva
flashed Drew a terrified look.
With these thoughts in mind, the couple found a corner, curled up
together and were soon fast asleep.
Sam and Wanda, who were also ready for catnaps, leaped off the desk and
found themselves a nest too, but the apartment manager lie there with an ear
cocked for the sound of Alice’s key rattling in the door.
As
Sam slept, he dreamed that he was on the broom of the Witch India Crowley and
they were flying over the rooftops of Shadow Brook Arms. Below him he could see lighted windows
with empty rooms. The implications
seemed plain to him, for Alice walked through the complex with a lantern, as
Diogenes carrying his lamp, searching for the lost cats. At that point in his dream, he realized
that he was India’s pet. He
recalled a portion of the poem he had written in college:
Castaway and vagabond,
true
child of the night.
In his secret twilight kingdom
he
shuns dawn's lonely light.
******
Alice
Wagnall felt both physically and mentally exhausted after a sleepless night and
hectic day at the office. Sunday
had proved to be an ordeal for her.
It had been almost impossible to focus on her work and keep pace with
the busy real estate firm. Her
boss expected her to work extra hours on weekends when needed, even on Sunday,
which was the Christian Sabbath, but she had honestly not been up to it this
time. She and Sam’s confrontation
with India Crowley last night had left an impact on her mind. After a brief nightmare in which she
found herself running from India Crowley’s wrath, she lie awake most of the
night worrying about what India might do.
The curse India leveled against everyone at Shadow Brook Arms had seemed
so ridiculous at the time, but then, as Alice thought about it more and more,
the argument that Sam tried to use on her about India finally losing her sanity
did not ring true.
“India’s
not merely crazy, Sam,” she had argued last night, “she’s evil. I saw the devil in her eyes!”
Now,
after several excruciating hours at the office, Alice felt weak and emotionally
drained. All day long she had
worried that, when she contacted Sam again, something dreadful would have
happened to him and the others at Shadow Brook Arms. He had tried to allay her fears Halloween night and, when
they parted, promised to call her the next day. But he hadn’t called her or e-mailed her today and she could
not reach him on the phone. She
had checked her answering machine, in fact, several times and found only
telemarketing and bill collector messages. What did his silence mean? Was Sam merely being inconsiderate again, or had something
happened to him last night?
After
frantically unlocking her apartment door, stumbling through the living room and
rushing toward her desk phone, she felt her breath leave her lungs when she
discovered the light blinking on the machine. Was it Sam? . . . Perhaps, it was the police department or
hospital calling. Her imagination
now ran wild. When she pressed the
Messages Received button, however, she heard the same telemarketing and
bill collecting messages she had heard before.
“Dear
Jesus, give me strength,” she cried turning to her computer. Snapping on the power strip beneath it,
she prayed: “Please let there be an e-mail for me Lord. Watch
over my man!”
When
she clicked onto her AOL icon, she uttered a another, more feverish,
prayer. As the AOL menu appeared
and, after she clicked onto the Sign On box, she remained frozen at her
computer. For those moments it was
her entire world. Her fingers
remained poised over the keyboard.
Because she had only a 56k Modem, as had Sam, it would take awhile,
especially at this prime hour. She
wished she had listened to her friends and had DSL installed; she would have
already been at her mailbox by now.
More than anything, however, she wished she and Sam had not confronted
India last night
Finally,
after she had chewed off a perfectly good nail and grown hysterical during the
wait, AOL’s main menu came up, along with the proverbial “You’ve got Mail!”
Her
next waiting period came after she clicked onto the Read box and the little
hour-glass appeared. The hour
glass seemed to hover there on the screen for endless moments, until, finally,
a climactic message appeared in the subject box: EMERGENCY: COME IMMEDIATELY TO
MY HOUSE! The message below it
read:
Alice,
Please drop everything and get here as fast as you
can. Don’t worry about India. She’s been shot and is in the hospital,
but don’t call the police; they won’t believe what has happened. We’ll just wind up in the city animal shelter.
I
love you !!!!!!!!!!!! --Sam
“The city’s animal shelter?” Alice mumbled numbly to
herself. “Now why would he say
something silly like that?” And
then India’s curse thundered into her head. Suddenly Alice’s nearly photographic memory captured almost
the entire imprecation: “. . . You,” India had cried out to the Buck, Tom, Jim,
Ed, and Drew, “shall regret your beastly behavior, because you're going to
become exactly how you've behaved!” “And you two, my pets,” she had promised Sam and herself. “I
have the same end planned for you!”
“Beasts? . . . Turned into beasts?” She backed away,
as if stricken by the screen. “No, no, I don’t believe this! I’ve got to get over there! Oh sweet Jesus, is this what Sam
meant?”
Without even turning off her computer or locking the
front door after herself, Alice dashed back to her car, her mind racing with
terrible imagery, her throat constricted with fear as she attempted to pray.
This time it was more difficult to talk to God.
As she considered the implications of the e-mail Sam
had sent and remembered India’s bizarre behavior last night, she tried to tell
herself that this was all just too ridiculous to be true.
“India is a make-believe witch,” she told herself,
racing across town, “she can’t harm us!
This is just a cruel joke!
Oh, Sam you’ve got a lot of
explaining to do!”
When
Alice reached Shadow Brook Arms, she shuddered as she passed through the
entrance to the complex. Her first
impression as she turned left from the breezeway and stopped in front of
apartment number 1A was that the complex was unusually quiet. Only last night this apartment complex
was alive with merriment. She
might not have approved of the drinking behavior and attitude of some of its
young residents, but they had not deserved the malediction thrown at them by
India last night. What a
dreadful thing to say to them! She thought giddily, as she pulled her key
out to unlock Sam’s door.
Somewhere, she could imagine, India standing over a
cauldron and stirring its contents with a big spoon. Now, as she entered the dimly lit apartment, she noticed two
cats hopping off the couch as if in greeting. Almost immediately afterwards, two more cats joined the
first pair, purring and meowing loudly as if they were glad to see her
too. The first questions to come
into her head then were Why would Sam have all these cats in his house? Is he cat-sitting for someone. He knows I hate cats! Then, staggered by the implications
growing in her mind, she found herself collapsing into a nearby chair.
At that point, a sable brown cat jumped up into her
lap, purring so loudly she could not help but to feel moved in spite of her
state of mind.
“Nice kitty,” she replied, her heart pounding loudly
in her chest. “. . . You seem to be a nice cat!”
“It’s me, honey,” Sam looked squarely into her face.
“You gotta get over your dislike of cats!”
Hopping off her lap, he motioned to her with his
snout, meowing vigorously, then led her trembling frame from the living room to
his study. All the while the other
cats also meowed excitedly, purring loudly now that their rescuer had arrived.
******
“Now
what is this nonsense about an animal shelter,” she muttered, positioning
herself expertly in front of the computer. “. . . Oh, someone’s been reading
about witchcraft. . . My-my, how interesting. . .how very quaint! The stereotype card-carrying witch!”
“She’s in denial,” Sam observed, looking back at the
others on the floor.
“I think she’s in shock,” said Drew, appearing
suddenly on the desk.
“I can’t believe it,” transmitted Wanda, “she doesn’t like cats!”
“Yes, Wanda” Sam said, rubbing Alice’s cheek with
his snout, “she doesn’t like cats, but we’re very special cats. She’ll like us!”
Alice cringed at the sensation, her natural aversion
to felines warring with the realization growing in her mind. Wanda took an immediate dislike to her,
but Drew, Neva, and Sam looked desperately to Alice for help.
“She’s looking at the witch on the screen hovering
over a cauldron,” Sam acted as narrator. “. . . .There’s a black cat nearby in
the picture sitting by a broom. . . Come on Alice, wake up and smell the
coffee!”
After coaxing her in the background as would fans at
a sports event, the four cats came right up to her face and studied her
slack-jawed expression. Again she
cringed, but this time she fought so hard against her dislike of cats a
hysterical smile broke her face.
All of the cats purred loudly, occasionally meowing with encouragement
for Alice’s help. Surely there was
something this human woman could do. . . And then it happened: Alice Wagnall
collapsed onto the keyboard, her blond hair covering it like a mantle, her
hands dangling over the floor.
“What’s wrong with her now?” asked Wanda, nudging her with her nose.
“It’s obvious,” cried Sam, hovering frantically
around her head, “Alice has fainted.
We gotta bring her around.”
Barking orders to his group, Sam’s first concern was
Alice’s pulse, which he could not take.
While Wanda and Neva went to fetch a wet rag, Drew tried his paw at
checking her pulse, while Sam stuck his snout under her hair to make sure she
was breathing. Suddenly, as he
began licking her furiously with his tongue, she awakened from her faint,
protesting groggily as the rough little muscle worked on her check.
Rising up with blurry eyes and a light-head, Alice
stared vacantly at the tell-tale screen and rotated her head slowly his way.
“Sam?” She murmured breathlessly. “. . . Is that
really you?”
“It’s true,” nodded Sam, wishing she could read his mind, “India has turned us all into cats!”
Go to Next Chapter -- Return
to Contents/Index