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If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten

by Sonora Taylor

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For Brian Keene

Some men woke to the sound of roosters. Brent knew it was a new day when he heard a steady chorus of scratches outside his window. He rolled off of his lumpy mattress, the worn comforter askew over the stained and dirty fitted sheet. One sure sign that a woman didn’t live there was that his bedsheets hadn’t been changed in months.

Brent slipped into his moccasins and pulled a coat on over his pajamas. He stepped onto the porch and clenched his teeth at the sudden rush of cold that smacked his face. He rubbed his hands together.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one small orb stick up from a hole in the porch. Another, then another, until heads and arms slinked through various cracks in the worn wooden planks, each with the same morning call:

“Mew!”

Brent sighed. It was time to feed the kittens.

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Brent hadn’t wanted a pet. But living near the woods meant that sometimes, pets came to you. Brent had been outside drinking coffee when he heard the first mew. He’d looked and saw one single kitten, a calico with orange eyes. It looked at him expectantly, as if the kitten had been there all along and it was Brent who’d moved into its space.

“Hey little fella,” Brent said, deciding the kitten was a boy. “Where’d you come from?”

The kitten blinked over a wet, blank stare, as cats tend to do.

“Is your momma here?”

“Mew!”

Brent surveyed the porch, but saw no mother cat. He had no neighbors to speak of for miles, so he didn’t think the kitten or his lost parent had an owner. He walked into the yard and saw muddy paw prints walking from the woods. He stooped for a closer look, and saw that the paw prints weren’t brown, but a deep red.

Brent jumped back. If a predator had attacked the kitten, he didn’t want them coming near him to finish the job. He rushed back to the porch, where the calico sat expectantly. His fur was clean, no blood on its tuft or its maw. Brent figured the morning dew that covered his moccasins had washed any remnants of the attack away.

“Mew!”

Brent didn’t want a cat. And he knew the old adage: if you don’t want a cat, don’t get a kitten.

But the kitten sure was cute.

“Okay,” he said, as if he’d had any choice in the matter the minute he saw those wide orange eyes. “But you have to stay outside.”

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The kitten did stay outside. As did the next two that showed up the following morning—and the next four after that, and the next one after that. Brent would’ve been relieved at the dwindling numbers, but they still added up when a new kitten or two seemed to arrive every week. They were all breeds, calico and marmalade and tuxedo mixing with tabby, gray, black, and white in an amazing Technicolor furball beneath his porch.

Brent kept the kittens fed with cheap kibble he drove into town for. The kittens were sending him to town more than he liked, but he was also growing so used to them that he was willing to provide food, water, and the shelter of his front porch.

Two things, though, perplexed him about the kittens. One was that, while more than one set of dark and bloody paw prints snaked their way from the woods, there weren’t any predators creeping towards his house. He heard no coyotes howl nor saw any hawks swooping towards the little arms and heads that stuck themselves out every morning. Brent began to wonder if the little ones themselves were the predators, but he never saw dead mice or birds in his yard. The kittens never fussed at Brent, even when he shooed them away from his front door. He figured they weren’t dangerous, at least to him. And besides, they were kittens—how bad could their bites or scratches be?

The fact that they were kittens was the second thing that perplexed him—namely, that after all this time, they were still kittens. A new set of kittens arrived almost weekly, but none of the ones that came before seemed to be getting any bigger. They seemed to be forever small, fuzzy, and adorable. Brent couldn’t complain, but he also couldn’t help but wonder.

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Brent settled into a new routine that included his ever-growing family of furballs. He’d wake up, feed them breakfast, work, go for a hike, feed them dinner, then close the door to their crescendoing chorus of mews. They’d gotten the message that they weren’t allowed inside, though sometimes the newer kittens gently scratched the door after he closed it. Brent sometimes stayed outside with them. They enjoyed rubbing themselves against his ankles, and a couple of the older ones, especially the calico, were comfortable enough to jump into his lap. The calico kitten especially enjoyed nuzzling Brent’s belly and chest. Some of the other kittens found their way into the pockets of his coat, or playfully batted his hand when he reached down to pet them.

The one thing the kittens didn’t do, apart from grow, was follow Brent into the woods for his daily hikes. He figured with a seemingly endless stream of kittens leaving the forest en masse for the shelter of his porch, they had no desire to go back. Brent sometimes wondered if he’d stumble on a kitten or two on their way to his house, but he never saw them until they approached his steps. The only trace of them he ever saw in the forest was their paw prints, both bloodied ones and, thankfully, dry ones left in the mud if there’d been rain the night before.

As much as Brent enjoyed the kittens’ company, he embraced this time alone. It reminded him of when his only responsibility was to himself. He lived alone on purpose, had no desire to share himself with a wife or devote himself to children. The kittens swarming him obviously had other plans, but his ability to walk alone in the woods meant he still had a slice of his life to himself, for him and him alone.

“Mew!”

Brent closed his eyes. It seemed the kittens were no longer content to leave him alone in the woods.

“MROWL!”

Brent’s eyes popped open. That wasn’t like any sound his kittens made. He looked towards the sound and saw an orange cat step gingerly onto the path in front of him. His fur was matted with flecks of mud, and a tattered collar hung from around his neck. This cat was indeed a full-fledged cat—full grown, with a guttural call to match. “Mrowl,” he repeated, his green eyes burning into Brent with equal parts distrust and a desire for compassion. Brent recognized that look—it was an emotion he’d felt often around others before he moved somewhere without neighbors.

“Hey big guy,” Brent said, stooping as low to the ground as he could. The cat hunched back, and Brent held out his hand. The cat walked over slowly, then sniffed Brent’s knuckles. He rubbed his face along Brent’s palm. Okay, the motion said, I guess I trust you.

“Looks like you’re lost, buddy.” Brent reached for the cat’s collar. Any tags that had been there were gone. Brent figured a call to the animal shelter was in order. He wondered what they’d think of all the kittens teeming under his porch.

“Come on,” Brent said as he stood up. He patted the back of his thigh. “I’ve got a bunch of friends for you waiting back home.”

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Brent had already named the cat Ginger by the time they reached his yard. He hadn’t thought to name any of the army of kittens inhabiting his front porch—even if he did, his personal store of names would never keep up with the number of furballs arriving each week—but something about this cat begged for a name and a hint of domesticity. Maybe Ginger would be a good father figure for the kittens in a way that Brent couldn’t be, not as a clumsy human who was only good for kibble and ear-scritches. He couldn’t teach them to hunt or to explore the woods. Maybe the kittens would actually want to leave his porch once in a while. Brent’s heart ached a little at the thought. Whether he liked it or not, he was becoming a cat person.

As Brent and Ginger crossed the yard, a small wave of kittens began to crest over the porch. Usually they greeted Brent with mews and dewy stares begging for attention when he returned from his walks. Before they could begin their routine, though, Ginger skidded to a halt and let out a loud hiss.

“Hey buddy, what’s up?” Brent said as he stooped to Ginger’s level. Ginger moved towards Brent and accepted a pat on his head. “They’re just kittens,” Brent continued. “Most harm they’ll do is dig their claws in when they want some food, and that’s a me problem.”

“Mew!” The calico kitten that started it all trotted to the front of the group to investigate. The fur on Ginger’s back stood up straight. Ginger hissed again and stood in front of Brent’s legs, as if he were protecting him. Brent stifled a laugh at the thought of any of those little furballs being a threat.

The kittens, though, stood still as Ginger hissed at them. They all stared at this new member of the family with unblinking curiosity. It was almost unnerving how still they were as Ginger hissed and growled in their direction.

“Maybe you just need to get to know them,” Brent said as he stood upright. “Come on.”

Brent walked towards the porch and Ginger followed, barely straying half an inch from Brent’s legs. Ginger let out a loud hiss as he hopped on the porch, and the kittens moved back like the waves of the Red Sea with an angry four-legged Moses forcing their hands (well, their paws, Brent supposed).

“Huh. Maybe you won’t be their father figure,” Brent said with a twinge of disappointment. “We should probably try and find your owner anyway.”

Ginger responded with a long continuous hiss, trailing Brent’s ankle as the kittens continued to watch in baffled stillness. Their heads followed Brent and Ginger almost as one. Brent would’ve been creeped out if those same kittens weren’t regularly playing around his feet and kneading biscuits on his stomach when he let them on his lap.

Brent opened his door. “Now Ginger, can you behave while—”

He never got the chance to tell him to stay out. Ginger darted inside. “Come on,” Brent huffed. “No cats inside.”

Ginger let out a combined hiss and “MROWL,” stepping forward. Brent worried for a moment he’d be trapped outside of his own house, until he saw the calico kitten dart back out of the corner of his eyes. The other kittens stayed back, no pushback from Brent required as he crossed the threshold. Ginger gave Brent no trouble, apart from the fact that he would not move from his spot inside the door.

“Okay, fine,” Brent sighed as he shut the door. “You probably shouldn’t stay out there with them anyway—you’d kill ‘em.”

Ginger grumbled in a way that didn’t say yes or no. Still, he stayed curled up by the door, watching it intently as if he could see the kittens through the wood—and wanted to make sure they stayed far the fuck away from Brent and himself.

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Brent spent the remaining daylight hours trying to figure out what to do with Ginger. He called the nearest shelter, who said they’d be happy to take the cat and see if he was microchipped; but that they were closed for the day and wouldn’t be open until the next morning. Brent decided to help them along and see if there were any posts about missing orange cats in his area. It could go either way with how little the population was—either there’d be far too many calls for lost cats in the town nearby, or there’d be one specific one from someone who lived close.

Brent got a little bit of both. There on Facebook, in a public post from several weeks ago, was a photo of a fresh-faced young man holding Ginger. Ginger glared at the camera, maybe due to the neon green halter stretched across his belly. The man wore hiking clothes and stood in front of a nearby waterfall, one Brent recognized from a state park several miles down the road.

“MISSING CAT,” the post declared. “Please help me find Cornelius. Orange cat, friendly, will approach when beckoned.”

Brent scrunched his nose. Cornelius? Maybe it wasn’t the harness that had Ginger pissed, but that terrible name.

Still, whether Ginger or Cornelius (never Cornelius under Brent’s roof), he had an owner. Brent sent a private message to the man saying he had the cat and would take him to the local shelter tomorrow. He then messaged the shelter to let them know the cat had an owner, and that he hoped there’d be a rendezvous there between the volunteers and Ginger’s owner. Brent wanted as little to do with everyone as possible—he just wanted to get Ginger home.

A sudden warmth descended on Brent’s foot. He jumped a little, then looked down and saw Ginger curled up next to him. Brent smiled a little as he scratched Ginger’s ears. He would miss the little guy, even though he’d only known him a short while. Maybe he’d consider bringing the kittens inside to give him a little company.

A single scratch against the door broke their silence. It started small, then grew louder as multiple claws began to scrape the wood. Must be jealous, Brent thought.

Ginger sat up and bolted to the door. He hissed at the kittens through the wood, and the kittens kept scratching, albeit with less force than before. Brent sighed as he turned off his computer. Whether or not he brought the kittens in, it wouldn’t be while Ginger was in the house.

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Ginger stayed by the door the rest of the evening, even as the scratches dwindled into nothing. Brent read and had his nightly cup of tea before going to bed. “Your watch ends tomorrow,” he said to Ginger as he walked towards his room. He changed into his pajamas and crawled into bed, closing his eyes.

A small thump on the mattress made him open his eyes. Ginger moved in two circles before settling at Brent’s feet. Brent shrugged—he figured Ginger was used to creature comforts that the kittens weren’t. One night wouldn’t harm either of them. He fell into a deep sleep.

Brent was gently roused from sleep by a low growl. He opened his eyes and saw Ginger still curled at his feet, but with ears pricked and eyes alert. Brent sighed with no small dose of annoyance. “Come on, Ginger,” he said as he sat up to pet him. “The kittens are all outside, they’re not coming in …”

Brent stopped speaking as he took in his surroundings. The kittens were outside, but they were all looking in through the windows. Each pane of glass had several furry faces looking inside, eyes burning into Brent and Ginger from their spot. They stayed frozen even as Brent woke. They watched with an intensity that Brent could only describe as waiting. But for what? A growing chill in Brent’s stomach told him it wasn’t anything good.

Ginger hissed. The kittens didn’t move. They stayed at the windows. Watching. Waiting.

Brent didn’t like it—and even if he did, there was no way he was going back to sleep. He got out of bed. Ginger stood up but stayed put, hissing at the windows. The kittens all followed Brent as he moved through his room, their heads and eyes all moving as one. The intensity was even greater than when they begged for food or scritches. They were hungry for something else—and Brent was going to find out what it was.

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Brent put on his coat and moccasins. He grabbed his strongest flashlight and then, for good measure, pocketed his handgun. He had no idea what he’d find or if he’d even find anything, but if he did find something, he knew that nothing he’d find in the woods at 2:30 a.m. would be good.

Ginger trotted after him. “Stay back,” Brent said as he opened the door. A few kittens stood on the porch, but their numbers began to grow as the kittens from the windows joined them. All of them stared at Brent as he moved. Ginger hissed at the kittens, keeping them at bay. Brent took the opportunity to hurry off of the porch. He hoped and prayed that Ginger could take care of himself against the kittens, who didn’t seem much interested in Ginger and, if anything, were afraid of him.

Brent slowed his pace as he got deeper into the woods. He stayed on the path and bobbed his flashlight to and fro, looking for any sign of new kittens. There’d been no new furry friends over the past few days, but if anything, that meant they were likely to appear again sooner rather than later. He kept moving along the path, deeper than he’d gone in days, every now and then checking behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed by the kittens.

After a seemingly endless bout of nothing, Brent’s flashlight shone on a tattered shoelace. It was mottled with dark brown spots, whether mud or blood, he wasn’t sure. Brent stooped to examine it, then shined his flashlight in a circle around the area to see if he could locate the shoe.

He found much more than a shoe. In a bit of distance from the path, the beam from Brent’s flashlight fell on a body. The body was still, and Brent didn’t need to approach it to know it was a corpse. “Fuck me,” he muttered as he walked towards it. In addition to calling the animal shelter, he’d have to call the cops tomorrow too. Something else he had to worry about along with what the fuck was up with his kittens.

As he approached the body, he heard a wet squirming noise. Brent stopped. The squirming was mushy, loud, and active. Something was moving. He shined his flashlight all around him, but saw nothing except the body. He took one step forward, then another. The squirming increased in volume with each step closer he got to the corpse. He was soon right next to the corpse, the squirming noise at a fever pitch. Brent swallowed, took a deep breath to calm his heart, then shined his flashlight on the body.

The first thing he saw was a familiar face gaping up at the trees in the awe that only comes from death. Despite the effects of the elements on the body, though, he recognized the person as the same one he saw smiling on Facebook holding a very pissed-off Ginger. Brent figured he’d been out here looking for his cat.

He barely had time to register that thought as his flashlight moved down the rest of the body. The man’s arms and legs were spread akimbo, the skin beginning to decay. The body’s torso, though, was wide and gaping—and crawling with movement. A thin membrane ran from one end of the torso to the next, undulating with audible squirming and squishing. Lumps poked their way up and down against the membrane.

Brent covered his mouth, then held in a scream as whatever was pushing against the membrane burst through. A cluster of slimy clawed hands burst out, with glistening bald heads following. They crawled their way out of their makeshift uterus, tongues flicking out and licking the bloody afterbirth from their bodies. Brent scurried backwards a few steps, hoping they were too involved in their own birth to see him. He was about to run when he saw all of the creatures stand on all fours. They tucked in their heads and began to rock back and forth, a motion that reminded him of kittens doing a post-nap stretch over and over again.

As they rocked, the similarity to his kittens became horrifyingly real. Fur began to sprout on their bald, glistening bodies. Their ears grew into points and their hands shrank into paws. The hideous things became adorable kittens right before his eyes. They walked back to the body that birthed them and began to paw the stomach in rapid succession, a fast and deliberate version of the calico kitten kneading biscuits on Brent’s stomach. Brent swallowed back bile at the thought. The kittens stopped kneading as the membrane became even more porous, then began to hack in a hideous chorus. They spat up several lumpy eggs into the torso, the next batch of creatures to incubate. Brent clutched his stomach as he stumbled backwards.

“Mew.”

Brent turned with growing terror that washed over his body. He saw the calico kitten staring at him from a clearing, a small army of kittens behind him. All locked eyes on Brent, sitting primly as if they were waiting for their morning kibble.

“Mew,” the calico repeated.

Brent tried to plan the best way to run. Forwards or backwards wasn’t happening, and trees were to his right and left. Before he could move, though, the kittens on either side of the calico squeezed into the calico’s side. They then melted into his haunches, creating a hideous fusion.

“Mew!” all three said. The process continued with each additional kitten, all of them leaning and fusing into one beast and creating a growing chorus of mews. Brent stood frozen in horror as the mass of kittens grew larger and wider, multiple paws hanging from the sides and belly like a millipede. When no kittens were left, their fur, ears, and paws dissolved in reverse from the horrors Brent had seen in the corpse’s belly, revealing a slimy, dripping creature with glistening teeth and sharpened talons.

Also gone was its adorable mew, one that had deepened with each kitten added to its mass. It not only sounded like a throaty growl, but had changed its declaration: “You.”

Brent stumbled back as the creature lurched forward. “You!”

Brent tripped over the corpse and landed belly up. The creature smiled and bent towards its prey. Brent realized then that he was going to be the next mother, an ample belly where the corpse’s was spent.

“YOU!”

“MROWL!”

The creature suddenly jerked back with an unearthly scream. Brent sat up and saw Ginger hissing behind the giant. He swiped the monster’s Achilles tendon, and it howled again. The creature reared back and roared in Ginger’s face. Ginger hissed back, haunches raised and fur standing upright.

Brent knew Ginger could only fend off the creature for so long—and in that moment, remembered his own defenses. He scrambled to his feet, pulled out his gun, then shot the creature in its side.

The creature bellowed out and stumbled back. Brent shot its other side, and then its belly. The creature collapsed to its knees, giving Brent an easy shot to its head. Black ooze burst from the skull and the creature slumped forward, no longer moving.

Ginger trotted over to Brent and nuzzled his ankles. Brent bent down and scratched his ears. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Brent took one step forward, then stopped. “Hold on,” he said to Ginger. Brent walked back to the corpse, whose belly was still a gaping maw but which glistened with eggs. He shot the eggs and blew what remained of the torso into a nonviable home for anything but maggots.

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Brent’s mornings went back to the way they were, though now instead of an army of kittens scratching outside of his door, he woke up to Ginger meowing right in his face. Brent would rub the sleep out of his eyes, then give Ginger his morning kibble. He’d work with Ginger sleeping at his feet, eat meals with Ginger begging by his side, and take his forest hikes with Ginger trotting along.

Brent hadn’t wanted a cat, but there was no way he was going to take Ginger to the shelter after all he’d done for him. Brent could handle one cat, especially one that was an actual cat and not some ungodly creature determined to murder him (though the look Ginger gave him as Brent gave him a bath contained some hints of homicide).

They say if you don’t want a cat, don’t get a kitten. Brent hadn’t listened, and now he had a cat—but honestly, he liked the cat a whole lot more.

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod episode 953 for December 13, 2024. “If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten” by Sonora Taylor, narrated by David Powell, hosted by Laura Pearlman, with audio by Chelsea Davis.

 

Hello out there, I’m Laura Pearlman, visiting from CatsCast because I just can’t resist a cat story. This week we have “If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten” by Sonora Taylor. This story first appeared in Recreational Panic: Stories.

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Our author this week is Sonora Taylor. Sonora Taylor is the award-winning author of several books and short stories. Her books include Little Paranoias: Stories,

Seeing Things, and Without Condition. She also co-edited Diet Riot: A Fatterpunk Anthology with Nico Bell. Her short stories have been published by Rooster Republic Press, Cemetery Gates Media, Ghost Orchid Press, and others.

 

Her short stories and books frequently appear on “Best of the Year” lists. In 2020, she won two Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards: one for Best Novel (Without Condition) and one for Best Short Story Collection (Little Paranoias: Stories). In 2022, her short story, “Eat Your Colors,” was selected by Tenebrous Press to appear in Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror Vol. 1. In 2024, her nonfiction essay, “Anything But Cooking, Please,” was a Top 15 finalist in Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club essay contest.

 

Taylor is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and serves on the board of directors of Scares That Care.

 

Her latest short story collection, Recreational Panic, is now available from Cemetery Gates Media. Her latest novella, Errant Roots, was released on October 15, 2024 from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

 

She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and a rescue dog.

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Our narrator this week is David Powell.

David Powell’s day jobs have run the gamut from studio musician to farmhand to theatre director, but the fuel he runs on is always storytelling. He seeks out the little pockets where things whimsical, dreadful, or pitch-black hide. You can read his work in such places as Close 2 the Bone, Yellow Mama, Black Petals, Shotgun Honey, Calliope, and HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 6.

 

And now, we have a cat story for you. Over at CatsCast, we have requirements about how positively cats must be portrayed and how little harm may come to them. This is not a CatsCast story. But we promise you, it’s true.

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That was “If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten” by Sonora Taylor.

 

Sonora had this to say about her story: “In the print edition of Recreational Panic, I dedicated ‘If You Don’t Want a Cat, Don’t Get a Kitten’ to Brian Keene, my Scares That Care colleague and friend. His adventures with stray kittens are well-documented online, namely the humanitarian work he undertakes by trapping them, getting them spayed/neutered, and then socializing them before helping his local shelter find homes for them. We had a Twitter exchange that led to me jokingly writing the first part of this story and sending it to him–he got a kick out of it. I later expanded on that piece to create the story you’re hearing today. Many thanks to PseudoPod for choosing to record it!“

 

Thank you, Sonora, for letting us run it!

 

They say that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is – but it’s often so tempting to ignore those inconsistencies. That noise your car makes? Normal road sounds — you just never noticed it before because you listen to podcasts while you drive. That twinge in your side? Probably just pulled a muscle in your sleep or something. Kittens that stay young and cute forever? A little weird, but adorable. All you have to do is suppress that nagging feeling that something is wrong. It works! Until it doesn’t.

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Speaking of things that work – PseudoPod has been creating podcasts since 2006, and is part of Escape Artists, which is approaching its 20th anniversary. From now until the end of the year, some of EA’s most generous supporters have pledged to match donations dollar-for-dollar up to a maximum of $10,000. So if you’ve been thinking about donating, this would be a really good time to start! One-time gifts are great, but monthly donations ensure we can plan ahead with a reliable income, which means we can publish more original stories, devote more time to editorial excellence, plan for the future, and more. And if you’re an apple user and a first-time donor, please donate through the website and not the Patreon app – if you subscribe through the app, Apple tacks on extra fees that go to Apple, not us.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it.

Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

Thanks for listening! Next week we have “Be Not Afraid” by Michael Thomas Ford. Until then, we wish you all the purrs.