The Blood Moon CLowder and the Ephemeral Fence Between Worlds: An Inscrutable Bond
Chapter 3 – Captive Cats and the Inscrutable Bond
Dracine circled high above the street, her wings smacking against the thick, hot air. An old van rattled down the dark alley, its headlights flickering briefly as it passed under the overhanging trees. The sticky heat of the New Orleans night clung to her fur as she flitted around in circles, her sharp eyes tracking the vehicle below. Inside the van, the steel traps shuddered with every bump on the road.
The van came to a halt behind Electra’s house. Dracine swooped lower, watching as the woman stepped out of the driver’s seat. Her thick, red hair was frizzy and Dracine could smell sweat. The woman moved confidently, having performed this task dozens of times before. She hoisted the laden cages containing captive cats, one by one, from the van. One by one, she placed them on the ground alongside the wall of her brick house. Her fingers were nimble as she released the two cage’s latches simultaneously and smoothly stepped away. The doors swung open with a metallic creak.
This black cat didn’t hesitate. He darted beneath the shubberies behind the house.
“Good luck, Catfish Nugget!” The woman always gave the captive cats a name before she released them.
The next cat hesitated, then furtively hustled out of the cage, muscles tight, eyes wide. The two fuscous felines bolted toward the shadows, disappearing into the dark corners behind the house, beneath the hedge, where the light couldn’t reach them.
“Good luck, Hush Puppy!” Desiree stretched her arms and muttered, “Don’t let me catch you around here again!”
Dracine swooped and swirled in the sky, her sharp gaze tracing the way the recently captive cats pressed themselves into the darkness. Once they entered the shadows she knew she wouldn’t see them again tonight.
Experience was a wise preceptor. In the Neighborhood, the black cats kept to the shadows. Their color melded into the blackness, giving them the perfect cover. They moved silently, their bodies low, their breaths shallow, knowing that any step into the light would make them vulnerable. If their presence was sensed they could freeze in place for hours on end, waiting for danger to fade. Shadows were their safety net, the best way to survive in a world that didn’t appreciate them.
Dracine swooped in again to get a closer look as the woman closed the van door with a quiet, metallic thud, her expression inscrutable. Dracine had seen this before—cats captured, then released, bearing the scars of their ordeal. She didn’t know what happened to the captive cats in the time they were gone, but the scars told their own stories. Slashes across bellies, or under their tails. The stiff stitches that held them together, ears clipped off—a warning to the rest of the Clowder that they had been taken. The clowder would be wary of the abducted cats for days after their return from their ordeals, uncertain what the briefly captive cats had done to deserve their fates.
Electra perched inside on the windowsill, watching. Her green eyes followed Desiree’s every movement. She stretched lazily, her thick white fur gleaming in the dim porch light behind the house. Desiree had brushed her earlier, her voice lifting in sweet motherly chirps, her hands gentle and comforting. Desiree, as she always did, rubbed her cheek against Desiree’s with as much pressure as she could, insisting that she loved her. Tonight she would curl up on Desiree’s pillow nestled into that curly copper mane, taking in her nighttime breath as it soured with sleep, basking in the familiar warmth of her human’s presence. Often she chose to ignore the inscrutability of the bond between them. She was, after all, herself a captive cat, and it did her no good to wallow in misery over an intractable condition.
Desiree’s actions perplexed Electra. Desiree was so kind to her. So very kind. She had lived with the woman since she was a kitten, a fluffy ball of fur too young to know what was happening when the trap snapped shut around her. The snap had terrified her so deeply that she urinated on her moonlight-colored fur. She remembered the smell of the bait, something she now ate often, the temptation that had lured her into the cage, to her fate. For a time she was afraid to eat it, but she learned that it would not ensnare her any more.
Her mother had warned her and her brothers not to approach the cage, but she had been too naïve to believe in the danger until it was too late. As far as she was concerned, she had been one of the lucky ones. She had returned. But she was a captive cat ever after, an inscrutable bond enforced between the human captor and the feline captive.
The only time her life was a concern nowadays was during the Blood Moon. When the red orb dominated the black sky she felt an indomitable urge to slip out the door between Desiree’s feet into the darkness, leading a brief chase before she disappeared against the marble stone of the City of the Dead. When she was swift enough to reach the City and the white tombs ahead of Desiree, her white fur was perfect camouflage. Like the others in her clowder, she felt safe enough there.
She made this escape because under the blood moon she felt an uncontrollable urge to see her family, Greg, Snowball, and their mother, Muffin. Electra was the Liaison between the white cats’ clowder and the humans, straddling the ephemeral fence between the two worlds. She cared for her cat clowder, despite rarely having the opportunity of interacting with them fur-against-fur. There was an inscrutable bond with them, just as there was with the human. Sometimes she just missed them. She was normally separated from them by a sheet of cool glass.
But she also cared for Desiree. How could she not? Desiree was her closest and only consistent companion. Her protector. Her guardian. Her caregiver. Inscrutable bond, indeed. The Clowder didn’t trust Desiree—they couldn’t risk it. But Electra knew the gentle hand, the warm bed, the endless supply of food, always delivered late , but always delivered. That inscrutable bond. Electra shoved away her enigmatic thoughts and hopped down from the window to see what was in her bowl.
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Dracine hoped to sleep tonight although she shouldn’t risk wasting time before the moon turned blood red. She would need to be awake in the morning’s light to follow Desiree. She was aware of the inscrutable bond between that cat and that human, and it was essential that she paid attention to them lest it endanger her, or her mission to find the missing cats. The dastardly agreement with the Chief filled her with apprehension. She was angry at herself for agreeing. But arguing with a cat was risky. She grasped the overhanging eave above the cat’s window and wrapped herself in her leathery wings.
Electra meowed and rolled on the floor in misery when she saw her bowl was empty. She pressed her belly into the cold tile to sooth it’s angry growling, wondering if she would ever be fed again. The human had never forgotten to feed her, but sometimes she would arrive home late and Electra would be near death and in abject misery by the time food was delivered. Routines were essential to the workings of an interspecies relationship, and Desiree’s most unbearable fault was the failure to feed Electra as soon as she felt hungry.
As Electra writhed in misery, Desiree came inside.
“Hey, you goofy old cat! How ya’ doin’?”
She washed her hands , then picked the cat up and threw her body over her shoulder. Electra gained her balance on the thin support, then kneaded the kimono draped over Desiree’s shoulder with her neatly trimmed claws. The human took her own sweet time filling her bowl with a mix of crunchy cat croutons and and tuna pate from a can. Electra struggled away from the human’s grasp, and ate the offering like a starving wildcat. Desiree knew not to disturb her during the feeding.
When Electra finished eating she commenced her habitual long, personal grooming session. When she was perfectly coifed, she went to find the human. Desiree was under the covers in bed already. No time spared for the action box in the living room tonight, Electra mused. After staring for a long time at the small light box she carried everywhere, Desiree closed her eyes. Her breathing grew slow and steady. Electra jumped onto the bed, curling into the familiar warmth of the human’s body, and wrapping herself in the nest of the curly red mane.
Sometimes the inscrutable bond didn’t matter. Comfort rules the day.
Patch blinked in the dim light, her vision swimming as she adjusted to the cold, metallic cage imprisoning her. She couldn’t see Blanca, but occasionally she heard her voice moaning, thin and terrified in the darkness.
Now both were captive cats. A low, meow of her own escaped in reply to her sister, and the echo from the darkness told her Blanca was close, just not close enough to comfort her. Patch’s throat was sore and her voice was weak.
They had tried to escape before darkness came, but the prison was unyielding. Patch shuddered, remembering the sharp sting from the human’s needle. Her body had become heavy, her mind slipping into darkness as the world around her faded away. What seemed like a mere moment later, she had awoken, her belly aching with pain. A jagged scar stretched across her tender skin, the memory of what had happened clouded and incomplete. She had licked the injury vigorously, desperate to soothe the pain, but all she managed to do was open the wound. The blood had trickled down her fur.
When the humans discovered her condition, they attacked her with another stab. Another plunge into sleep she couldn’t fight. When Patch awoke this time, her body was bound—wrapped in some strange material that clung to her from neck to tail. Her head was weighed down by something large and stiff, something that encircled her neck and stopped her from reaching her own fur. The cone, wide and unyielding like a predator’s jaws, blocked her from licking her belly—or even her paws. She couldn’t groom herself, couldn’t do anything but crouch helplessly. Would she survive in this bondage? How?
Huddling in the back of the steel cage in a room lined with other captive cats, Patch dared not let sleep claim her again. Each time she drifted off, something worse followed. All of the humans had left the cats at the same time, and all the lights went out. In the darkness of this sterile place all she could do was worry. Where was her family? Would she ever see them again? Would she live in eternal darkness in this sterile place?
The only thing keeping her tethered to this nightmare was the sound of Blanca’s voice trembling in the darkness, just close enough to remind Patch she wasn’t completely alone.
In the darkest hours, Electra woke to the sound of a sharp cry—the sound of a cat in distress pierced the night. Her heart leaped as she jolted awake, her eyes wide, staring first at the wall, then toward the window, looking for the source of the sound. A long moan followed, and Electra leaped from the bed to the windowsill, her gaze scanning the yard.
There, crouched beneath the hedge, was one of the black cats, the one her person called Catfish Nugget. His eyes glowed in the dim light.
Electra growled.
Desiree stirred in bed, “What’s happening, Lectie?” She peered out the window, following Electra’s gaze to the hedge.
“I wonder why he’s still around,” she muttered, looking at the black cat, as she slid out of bed. She hastily pulled on shorts and stepped into her gardening clogs. A flashlight’s ray before her, she headed into the night, the beam cutting through the fog like a sword.
Deep under the hedge’s thick branches, she found Hush Puppy lying on his side, his breathing labored. She lowered herself to the ground and crawled beneath the hedge to reach the sick cat. Carefully, she lifted Hush Puppy and cradled him in her arms, his body limp and unresisting. No feral cat would allow this kind of handling unless he was terribly ill.
With no time to lose, she hurried to the van, placing Hush Puppy inside the crate she had used to bring him home earlier.
Dracine had wakened from her all-too-brief nap hanging from the eaves when she heard the cat’s yowl. She followed closely as the van rattled away through the winding streets and narrow alleys. After many stops and turns, the vehicle stopped outside an old white brick building, a faint light glowing from within. Desiree stepped out and gathered the crate from the back of the van. As she did, the back door of the veterinary clinic opened and a human ushered her inside with Hush Puppy.
Captive inside the house, Electra watched Catfish Nugget disappear into the hedge, slipping away into the darkness. She growled softly, her frustration bubbling up as she realized what Desiree’s departure meant.
Breakfast would be late.
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Illustration for Chapter 3 – Captive Cats
