Tyson Abaroa

DynamicsThe Old Lady's Cats

by Tyson Abaroa

Mrs. Morrison had tears rolling down her wrinkled cheeks. Her cats were busy pawing at her door screeching their hateful meows. One white paw was pushing between the gap in the door and the carpet. As it pushed through, the tiny razor like claws protruded as they were trying to dig through the fuzzy pink carpet.

“How could all of this have happened, and why on bridge night?” she mumbled out loud as she sat with her thin bleeding arms hugging her scratched knees in the middle of her bed. Her gray hair was now frazzled. There were small strands of orange, white, and gray cat hair mixed in. Beads of sweat rolled from her neck absorbing into the collar of her pink wool sweater.

She was supposed to be getting ready for bridge night. Then she had to bake four-dozen cookies in the morning for the Daughters of the Tulsa Pioneers bake sale. Not to mention she had the red hat club brunch that was in the morning. With the cats now attacking her out of nowhere, there was no way she was going to make it.

Desperate to call for help Mrs. Morrison turned to the old tan phone and saw that, like her phone in the kitchen, they had chewed through the telephone cord. There was now no way to reach the outside world. All she could think of now was the complex cellular phone she refused to take from her son for her birthday.

Perhaps she could use the window? It was on the second story but it was directly over the roof of the garage. She could climb out and try to climb down. Even if she broke her hip, she’d rather be crawling across the lawn to her neighbor than stuck inside with her feline demons.

Mrs. Morrison crawled across her bed leaving streaks of blood as she dragged her knees across the white and black duvet. Blood was slowly soaking through her shredded khaki capris. A wincing gasp of pain escaped her lips as she got down off the bed. Slowly Mrs. Morrison pulled aside the red drapes of her windows.

She screamed.

Four sets of yellow eyes, with the light of her lamp reflecting on them, stared back at her. Her black cats sat on their haunches watching her. Behind them, three more cats paced back and forth along the red tiled roof of the garage. One of the orange tabbies stopped pacing and bared its teeth in a hiss that Mrs. Morrison could hear from behind the window. The hiss must have been a signal because two more cats jumped down from the main roof. The new cats began pawing at the window.

Whipping the drapes closed she ran back to her bed. She curled into the fetal position still crying, trying to figure out why her cats wanted to kill her.

So many people had told her she had too many cats. Her son and daughter begged her to get rid of the cats. Mrs. Morrison never thought there were too many. Why should she have gotten rid of them? She needed the companionship, and the cats needed her. Even if there was the occasional accident she had to clean up, it wasn't something a good baking soda wash and an open window could fix.

All the recent events ran through her mind. Only minutes before, she was just sitting on her plastic covered couch, watching Wheel Of Fortune like she always did. Sergeant Buttons, her Russian Blue, was sitting peacefully in her lap letting her wrinkled cancer spotted hands stroke him right above his ears. His purring vibrated against her thigh. Sergeant Buttons turned to her. He looked right in her eyes. His mouth opened letting out a long loud, meow.

Without warning, teeth dug into the loose skin around her ankle. She yelped, throwing Sergeant Buttons down from her lap. Then another set of teeth dug in to her calf. Mrs. Morrison looked down and found dozens of cats gathered around her feet. Terrified, she shouted again after yet another set of teeth dug into her toe. Two cats clung to her legs. They used their claws to climb painfully up to her knees.

She jumped to her feet swatting the cats off her legs. A groan escaped her as she scrambled up onto the couch. Five cats jumped up following after her biting at her feet. With all the energy she could muster she stepped over them. She let herself down the side of the couch. The clowder followed her. The cats began swatting their sharp claws at her dry bare feet. She ran as fast as she could to her to the kitchen phone and pulled it off the hook. There was no dial tone. She saw the chew marks that recently had cut the line. She had to kick two of the cats out of the way, but she ran to her room where the door was slightly open. The door thudded when she slammed the door on the cats that were hunting her down.

What was she to do? Hopefully the girls from bridge night would worry about her and rescue her. Except for that Lola Philips. She was always the meanest gossiper. Mrs. Morrison figured she would probably make things up like she normally did and everyone would laugh and not think to check in on her.

The meowing from the hall grew louder. Her heart was pounding as the paws rubbed up and down along the wooden door between her and the cats. Mrs. Morrison began to moan in anguish as she tried to figure out what to do. What if they got through? What would she do, and where would she go? Is this how her sixty-seven years would end?

Thinking that maybe there could be some sort of weapon in the closet, she crawled back off her bed to look through her past husband’s belongings (that she just couldn’t bare to get rid yet), she must have had something that could help protect her. Desperately, Mrs. Morrison grabbed at the partially open closet door and pulled it open.

Meow.

Sergeant Buttons stared up at her with his sparkling green eyes.

Mrs. Morrison screamed, and the meowing outside the door got even louder. Somehow more paws pushed under the door clawing at the fraying and disintegrating carpet. Sergeant Buttons didn’t move. She ran to the bed pulling the bloody duvet over her head, hoping to put some sort of barrier of protection around herself.

She heard the padding of paws on the carpet nearby. Her hands separated the duvet so she could poke her eyes through the blanket. Sergeant Buttons jumped up the door and clawed at the brass door handle. To her disbelief she watched him hop twice, eventually pulling the handle down far enough that the all the remaining cats outside pushed through.

Now unmuted, the loud meowing made her heart pound. She was sobbing out loud with desperation as tears streamed down her face. Mrs. Morrison heard the cats surround her bed, when suddenly the room became silent. She felt a thump of a cat's weight on her bed. Wincing, she peeked through her blanket to see Sergeant Buttons.

He watched her while sitting on his haunches, methodically licking one paw. His long pink tongue stuck out rubbing against his fur without taking his eyes off of her.

Mrs. Morrison began wheezing as her lungs heaved in and out. She jumped with anticipation when Sergeant Buttons tilted his head examining her. The black slits in his eyes narrowed and he let out a low moan.

In an abrupt rush, the remaining cats that had surrounded the bed leapt up and began impatiently tearing at her black and white sheets.

The cats on the roof cried, covering up the screams from the bedroom.

Tyson Abaroa lives in Gilbert Arizona with his wife and daughters. He is a contributor for USA BMX’s PULL! Magazine. He finally put together all the pieces to discover that his excursions to La-La Land are ADHD induced. So he recently began taking creative writing classes to fully embrace the times he drifts away from reality. While anxiously waiting for his beta readers to finally provide feedback he finds himself imagining odd worlds and strange situations to write about.