Please, Do Not Get Rid of Cats

I will never be able to understand why some people don’t like cats. They’re adorable, quirky, and make the best lap warmers. Plus, they are one of the most low maintenance pets you can have—they are neat, quiet (well, generally), and they are so naturally clever that they don’t need to be trained.

And yet, some people always find an excuse to despise cats, from “allergies” to the smell of cat litter to the fact they were scratched by their great-aunt’s cat when they were two and have not recovered from the incident. While some of these reasons for hating cats are at least somewhat understandable, many are plainly irrational.

You might not be able to fully convert your cat-hating friends, but you can at least refute their comments with some logical arguments. But sadly, that's just how I lost my friend. She was one of those anti-cat people, and I accused her of being a total bitch about my cat, Francis, and she just walked out on me. Just like that.

I’m much better about cat-haters now. I’ve told them how a cat is gonna suck the breath out of them if they weren't careful, and I even had my dad put up fliers to save cats from homelessness and starvation.

I even went on to tell my class about Bastet; a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion, worshiped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BCE). Bastet was worshipped in Bubastis in Lower Egypt, originally as a lioness goddess, a role shared by other deities such as Sekhmet. Eventually Bastet and Sekhmet were characterized as two aspects of the same goddess, with Sekhmet representing the powerful warrior and protector aspect and Bastet, who increasingly was depicted as a cat, representing a gentler aspect.

I wish reality was that kind. The truth is far more terrifying.

I went for a hike in the park that sits on the edge of the city. It’s a large stretch of forest and fields with interlocking trails that wind along rivers and up and down the hills. It’s fairly populated during the spring and summer, so I was certainly not alone, not until I left the riverside trail behind. I met a handful of other people as I walked, determined hikers like me that just nodded and kept going, wanting to get their seven or ten mile loop done. I was alone on the stretch of trail when I found the cats.

They crossed the path in a line, walking one behind the other in single file, a vast array of sizes and shapes. I haven’t gone so far as to memorize what each kind is and I only recognized the felines due to their distinctive coloring, which has been burned into my memories after that time I put up the fliers with my father. I stood there and watched this unusual sight for a few minutes, bewildered by their behavior. I’m not an expert on cats by any means, but I think anyone would realize that seeing this wide a variety all walking in a row like this is bizarre. And so many! I realized that I’d seen at least twenty pass me by in the first half-minute and as I continued to watch, they continued to walk past in an unbroken line. Fifty, perhaps, then a hundred, and still they came. I looked to the right, tracing their line with my eyes, and saw the rippling row traversing the forest floor for as far as I could see. I looked to my left and it was the same, a line of cats all traveling to the same destination.

I decided to follow them, they led me downhill, to a shallow spot between the rolling hills. And I think at some point, as I wound through the sparse brush and over fallen logs, they led me someplace entirely else, for I felt like the quality of the air changed. Grew denser, like it was pressing on my chest. I began to grow nervous at that point, wondering if perhaps this behavior was due to some chemical in the air and here I was, breathing it in. I set that aside as a crazy, wild invention of a mind being allowed to run too loose with its imagination. Then the light changed, subtly, and I thought that perhaps I should turn back, that the dimming of the light between the tree leaves was from clouds gathering over the sun and that the weather was preparing to change abruptly. I kept going, however, rationalizing that I’ve come this far and it would be a shame to give up when surely, surely an answer to this mystery was just ahead.

I’ll be honest. I’ve done some dumb shit simply because I didn’t know when to turn back.

I continued to follow the cats. And then the earth dropped into a steep, sudden slope and I stopped short, loose dirt crumbling under my feet to roll down the incline to the pit that gaped before me.

I wasn’t in the park anymore. I was elsewhere, though I have no idea where that elsewhere was.

Before me was a massive, open space, a circular pit large enough to swallow a house. The trees all around it grew inwards, curving upwards towards a hidden sun and sending out their branches as if they could hide away what lay beneath them from the muted light. There was no wind, the air was stagnant and smelled of damp earth, a stale scent tainted with decay. It filled my nose and mouth and I breathed shallowly.

No wind, no sound, save for the rustle of miniscule legs from the millions and millions of cats that filled the pit. There were four lines making their way to the depression. The one I stood beside and then three more, aligned like a compass around the circle.

I stared at this for some time. Panic was lodged like a stone in the back of my throat, a remnant from when I was a little boy seeing the Boogeyman. I fought it, I shoved it down into my stomach, and I remained rooted to the spot, nauseous with lingering terror and revulsion at the unnatural sight before me.

Then I began to feel like something was watching me. Like a touch on the back of my neck, running along my spine, and I slapped at my skin in sudden panic, thinking perhaps a cat had brushed up on me, giving me a jump-scare. But no, there was nothing there; the cats remained in their line, oblivious to my presence and intent on joining their brethren in the pit. Still, the sensation remained, a crawling, aching sort of anxiety that clawed at my nerves and made me think that perhaps I should just turn around and go.

Suddenly, to my horror, little, misshapen, deformed creatures start lurking out of the shadows and looked up to see me and the swarm of cats!

I edged away from the pit! And then the cats surged, diving into the pit after the homunculi abominations, and I staggered backwards and screamed as my will broke!

The cats begin to scratch, bite, and pounce on the monsters as the creatures howled, snarled, and screeched! It beyond anything a normal human being could ever conceive, it was baffling!

I will never forget those sounds as long as I live... It sounded horrible, like the sounds of men screaming in G-Major or something.

I watched their struggle without moving a muscle, as if paralyzed with terror. I felt like I was fixed in place, pinned there by an inescapable will of which I wholly occupied its attention. My arms prickled with goosebumps and my throat was dry. The creatures continued to thrash and now the entire pit bucked and rippled with those things struggles. Cats poured into the pit, scratching their opponents, and keeping their captives from escaping the pit.

I realized that it was me that was doing this. Those things were reacting to my presence… and they were trying to climb out.

It was an effort to turn. Like I was moving through water. I began to run, even as my limbs tried to drag me down, and it was as if the air itself refused to enter my lungs. My chest burned, but I kept going, almost on my hands and knees, clawing my way forwards, back up the hill, and away from that horrific pit.

I saw more cats running past me and joining their brethren against whatever was in that hellish pit below!

The cats, I realized, pouring over it and sacrificing their bodies to block them once more with their fangs and claws, until the monsters were backing away into the shadows once more.

I ran until the air thinned and the sunlight returned. I ran until I reached the trail and then I ran until I came to a fork and there was a bench and there were people and only then could I stop and collapse and catch my breath. A young couple stopped and asked if I was okay. I said I was. Just that I was terribly afraid of spiders and I’d had one fall on me and, well, maybe it was undignified but I freaked out and ran. They laughed and said that was understandable. The man offered me some water, but I thought of those creatures, of the cats putting their bodies on the line to keep them from escaping, and I refused.

When I got home, I shivered, an involuntary shudder, but it was not at my parents worried that I got kidnapped or something. It was at what I saw, what I remembered, and the thought that someday these three furies would heed some silent call, depart my neighborhood, and journey out to that place to join the rest of their kind in the pit.

Please, I beg you - do not get rid of cats. I understand if you’re hatred towards them. But I felt the weight of those creatures' malevolent attentions and I feel like I’ve seen the doom of our world. And the cats are the ones holding them back.