Fear of Cats

Every time I have to walk past the French lattice house I cross to the sidewalk in front of it. It's scary: it's full of cats. Seriously, I counted twenty-two, but there must be more. It's an old building. Theoretically it's not abandoned, but no one is ever seen there and no one takes care of the garden. The cats must have found their way into the rooms or basements, and they have made their den in that house and are always watching it. But what scares me is not that, but that they talk to me. Yes, yes, that's what I said: those cats talk.

The first time it happened, I was distracted, reading without paying attention to the plaque according to which a famous poet of the 19th century lived in that building. And lo and behold, someone said to me:

          “Morning, sir.”

         I was neither startled nor surprised. It was a common voice of a mature, educated man, and I thought it came from inside: the owner, who wanted to make friends or needed help. I peeked out as far as the entrance gate would allow. I was still trying to peer through the shadows that seemed to move behind the latticework when I heard him again:

          “Good morning, sir.”

         The voice was not coming from anywhere inside. It came from... a huge, gray cat lying on the steps of the front door and squinting at me.

          “I said good morning to you, sir.”

         That was so strange to me that I didn't believe myself. I turned my back on the cat and the house and resumed my walk without answering. I walked away as fast as I could. Several times during the course of the day, I thought about the event again. The feeling that you are going crazy is horrible. Because of that same fear I went back: I wanted to see if it was true; that is, if it happened again. Because if it happened again, then I would have to take the matter seriously and come to some conclusion. I was nervous when I got to the house, so I couldn't help looking at the cats as if they had been scorpions.

         I kept looking at the one who was closest to the fence. I leaned towards it with the face of a confessor or a psychoanalyst who is ready to listen. The ungrateful animal answered me with a look of contempt, turned around and farted at me before leaving. I tried another, with similar results: saddened? angry? Quite the opposite: I was happy (I'm not crazy! Ah, I'm not crazy! Hallelujah!) I was already leaving whistling a happy song when I heard a female voice say to me:

“Goodbye, cutie.”

I felt ice being poured on my back and slowly, very slowly, I turned around.

“Weren't you leaving?” The same voice reproached me. It came from a white female cat (I guess it was a female). From no one else but her. I had clearly seen her cat-stinky snout twitching as she uttered the words.

“You-you-you spoke to me?” I stammered.

The cat narrowed her eyes.

“Let's see”, I begged. “Say it again.”

At that moment I was startled by a presence I hadn't felt coming.

“Do you also like to talk to the kittens?” A little old lady asked me, with a smile on her face. I was horrified by the question.

“Don't be embarrassed," she said, with the same sweet voice, "I do it every time I come to leave them their cookies.”

“And... and... do they answer?”

“Of course! They are very smart little animals.”

“But... can they... talk?”

“Talk!” Laughed the old lady. “Of course not. Even if you and I like to think of them as babies, they are cats.”

“Yes, yes, but... you said you talked to them.”

“I was just saying, sir,” laughed the good lady again. “You didn't think I was crazy, did you?”

“I'm the crazy one,” I felt like saying, but I kept quiet.

She continued:

“What happens is that I talk to them and, well, they answer with meows, sometimes just with their eyes. They are very expressive kittens, aren't they? And very intelligent. You see, since they know I'm bringing them food, they're all here already.”

Sure enough, while I was distracted in conversation, a bunch of flea-infested cats of all colors had gathered behind the fence and on the sidewalk around us. Two of them were carving at the little old lady’s calves. I would have run if I hadn’t been paralyzed by terror. However, I managed to hide it.

“Well,” I stammered, “I have to go. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Nice to meet you, sir.”

I walked away slowly, turning every few steps to see if everything was normal. And yes, we could tell. The little old lady stood there feeding those sinister animals and talking to them as if they were children. They just meowed. Meowed.

That same Friday, at the weekly coffee meeting, I asked the old boys:

“Have you ever heard a talking cat?”

“Sure,” one of them answered. “There you have Top Cat, Choo-Choo, Benny, Fancy-Fancy…”

“Sylvester,” said another.

“Sylvester doesn't speak, you idiot,” said another.

Nobody took my concern seriously.

“They are cats, not parakeets,” my old mother told me the day I went to visit her and asked her.

My sister scolded me:

“Don’t read so much anymore, you're going crazy.”

Anyway, I better stopped commenting to people. But I know that the cats in that house talk; I have listened to them on other occasions and I don’t even have the satisfaction of saying that they have revealed to me something of how much they must know. They tell me only what is necessary to distress me: a greeting, a single phrase. That is why now I try not to pass that way. I can't avoid the street because I’d have to make a long detour, but I try to walk along the sidewalk in front of it. Even so, my hair stands on end when I hear a feline voice say to me:

“Morning, sir”.