Cat Lady
Jenny died on her birthday. It was May sixth 2016. Her boss let her leave work early. She went straight to the animal shelter. Jenny was to young to be a cat lady, but that’s what she was none the less. She just turned forty. Instead of celebrating with friends she got herself a seventh cat. She named it Congress. Congress was an orange tabby. All of her cat’s were rescued except her first one, Magi, who was a gift from an ex boyfriend when she was twenty eight.
The other cats were acquired over her thirties. Cleo, Joan, Albus, Leo, and Snow greeted her at the door when she came home with Congress. She put Congress on the floor. As soon as the other cats realised that Jenny wasn’t giving them food, they dispersed to various hiding places in the apartment.
“Go make friends, Congress.” Jenny said to the animal she just brought into her home. She checked her phone for messages. Five happy birthday messages. Two from her parents. The rest were from co-workers. She noticed the charge on her phone was low so she plugged it in.
She fed the cats. Congress didn’t have his own bowl yet so she pulled one of her own out of the cabinet and put it on the floor. The cats attacked their food with their typical enthusiasm. Now time to feed herself.
Jenny went online and placed an order for a delivery. She bought a calzone and a slice of cheese pizza. Jenny was lactose intolerant so she never got to eat pizza anymore, but it was her birthday. Fuck it.
The pizza arrived promptly and was devoured even more promptly. A half hour later and Jenny was predictably in the bathroom. She was in there for a while. A long while.
She was on the toilet for so long that both her legs, due to the pinched circulation in that position, fell asleep. After she finished, she stood up. Her legs were in a worse state than she knew. The number limbs failed to balance properly. She stumbled a step forward. Panicked, Jenny spun around to lean against the back of her toilet. Her foot came down at a bad angle. All she felt was the numb pins and needles that ran all the way up to her thigh but she heard an alarmingly loud crunch
She attempted to put all her wait on the uninjured foot but her wobbly leg couldn’t take it and down she went. Before she hit the ground she cracked her head on the edge of her bathtub. Everything went dark.
When she came to, she was lying in a puddle of blood. She was dizzy. The bathroom was filled with the smell of the shit she never got a chance to flush. And her new cat was staring at her. She moved her right arm. Something wasn’t right. She was having trouble making it do what she wanted. Her motor control was notably impaired. Jenny’s heart began to race.
Eventually she managed to get her hand inside her pocket. She just needed to dial 911. Then someone would come. Her clumsy fingers only found a quarter and the receipt for her pizza. Her phone was still charging. She passed out again.
She woke up again. She could see the sky through her bathroom window. It was getting late. She scanned the rest of the bathroom. The tiles around her were stained brown with blood. A single fly hovered over her toilet. And all seven of her cat’s were staring at her.
“She’s awake.” Congress announced in an authoritative voice.
“She’s stubborn.” Old Magi said, “you’re stubborn!”
“What?” Jenny mumbled. She was getting very light headed. “You can talk?”
“Obviously” Joan offered.
“Will you help me?”
“No.” Congress answered bluntly. “We are waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Jenny asked incredulously.
“For you to die.” Snow responded.
Jenny couldn’t process what she was hearing. She looked at all the cats that she had spent more than a decade of her life with. They stared back at her with eyes that for the first time were scaring her.
Her arms felt heavy. It was getting hard to breathe. She tried to call out for help but only a feeble whisper left her lips.
“Help.” She cried quietly.
“There is no help.” Congress said. “Only us.”
Jenny felt a sharp pain at the tip of her ring finger. Leo was chewing on it. Jenny tried but her arms lacked the strength to pull away. She heard something next to her head. From what she could tell in her peripheral vision, Albus and Magi were lapping up the blood on the floor that was pouring from her open skull.
It can’t end like this, she thought to herself despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. Congress caught the fly hovering over the toilet and ate it. Jenny had never noticed how brutal the sight of a cat killing and insect was. Congress masticated the poor bug quickly and turned it’s green eyes back towards Jenny. Not like this.
“Like this.” Leo said Leo in-between chomps on her finger. He had managed to draw blood already.
“Like this” repeated Magi between licks of floor blood.
“Like this” the all to close voice of Albus said into her ear right before sinking his teeth into her earlobe.
“Like this” Congress said in his imperial tone of voice. He climbed up on her crotch and looked down. Jenny’s mid drift was showing. Congress started pawing and pulling on her belly button ring.
The pain in her finger was unbearable now. Here eyes moved back to Leo chewing aggressively. She was beginning to see bone.
When would someone find her, she wondered desperately. She thought about her closest friends. She had lost touch with her college friends years ago. She thought of the girls she befriended at the bar down the street. Unfortunately she had never interacted with them outside of the bar. She thought of her co-workers but immediately knew that was stretching the definition of friend. She thought all the birthdays over the years she pretended she was to busy to go to. She thought about how people had stopped inviting her all together. She thought of all the acquaintances that may have been friends. She thought of the family she never called. She thought of the sting she just felt in her cheek.
Joan had scratched her face. The white cat waited to see if there would be any reaction. Jenny once again feebly tried to move. Confident in it’s safety, Joan climbed up on Jenny’s face. It looked her in the eyes.
Jenny started to tear up. She began blinking away the moisture. This really got Joan’s attention. She began swiping at the moving eyelashes. Jenny felt a claw sink into her retina. Then she felt more claws dig in. Moments later, her right eye was watching Joan and Cleo playing with her left eye.
Hours went by. The cats became more and more ravenous as they ate pieces of her. She felt every agonizing moment. She was bleeding from dozens of places. The cats had begun to tear through her clothes.
Jenny found herself hoping the head wound she sustained earlier would kill her sooner than later. At one point she heard the voices of her neighbor from upstairs. She couldn’t scream out so she just listened whilst Cleo pulled a long thin strip of skin off the back of her hand.
She recognised the voice of Raquel. Raquel lived above her. Raquel was a social butterfly. Always trying to organise building parties and activities. Raquel was talking to Cassidy who lived across the hall. They were going out for drinks. Jenny felt a year well up in her remaining eye. She already knew they wouldn’t bother trying to get her to come with them. Why would they bother?
Jenny looked at her cats. Her constant companions. They were unrecognisable now. Perhaps because the fur on their faces was slick with her blood. Fuck these cats, she thought to herself. She dug deep. She found a reservoir of strength she never new she had. She rolled onto her stomach. This sudden motion sent the cats scattering. Jenny pushed herself up to her hands and knees and slowly crawled out of the bathroom.
For some reason she reaches up and flushed the toilet as she passed it. She crawled out into the hallway that led to her den. Congress was sitting on top of her TV, watching her. Jenny stood up.
She began walking to her phone charging on the table. She was going to call help. She was going to survive. She took one graceless step after another. Every motion required herculean effort. Her arm was reaching out a head of her. She must have looked like a zombie. Jenny looked Congress in the eyes allowed a smile to appear on her face. That’s when Cleo tripped her. Her head hit the table on the way down.
Unfortunately this didn’t knock her in, it just created a fresh wound on her forehead that was belching forth blood. The cats leapt on her. They had fully transformed into feral animals. Their purrs sounded like growls. They used their fangs to rip flesh much faster than before. Jenny was being eaten alive.
She turned her head and saw the outlet her phone was plugged into. She clumsily reached for the cord and yanked it. The phone fell from the table. She managed to get her fingers around it. She held it in front of her face. It hadn’t charged. She must not have plugged it in all the way.
“Like this” Congress said as he sank his teeth into her neck.
Jenny died, three hours later. Her body wasn’t discovered for another week. By then there was not much left her or the pizza she'd ordered. There was no sign of the cats that had feasted on her corpse. They had all slipped out the kitchen window and made their way back to the shelter. All of them were adopted into new homes.
