The Stray

The Stray
by Hristina Beeva
Daddy, she's lost again! The little girl sobbed, unable to summon her cat.
Don't worry, dear, she will come back, just like last time, said the father. The cat, a pampered former stray, a paunchy tabby, was Joanna's favorite, she would calm down her tantrums and she helped with night terrors, but now she was missing again, one of those week-long absences.

The father suspected some neighbor fed the cat, as she usually came back out of nowhere, purring, contented and, he imagined, a bit fatter. And onto her shiny coat clung strange smells, of water and sand and a perfume deep and intoxicating. Where have you been, he thought, and he brought her back to Joanna's bedroom, where there would be squeals of delight, and the fat tabby would fall into squeezing little hands. The father imagined the creature needed a break and was not quite happy, but Joanna was happy, and so their life together moved on, as normal as it could be, trying not to think too much of her mother, trying not to imagine what could have been if only she'd lingered behind a minute more, if she had not been in the path of that behemoth truck...

And the father would doze lightly on the sofa each night, as the cat paddled along quietly, as his daughter played upstairs. Then he startled, as he saw the cat move toward a shimmering in the air, something in the corner of the room, in the corner of his eye, and he watched as the cat walked into the shimmering and disappeared, muzzle first, slowly, moving outside of the room into some other world, all the way to the tip of its tabby tail.

Nothing but a vague ozone smell remained after the cat. She'll come back, he thought, as she has done before, and then perhaps she would carry some evidence of what world she visited. But he was too tired and shocked to think, and maybe he imagined it, so he lay his head down and slept, the cat be damned.

There were tears again, and waiting for the cat again, and searching the side streets and the neighbors' yards, but no tabby.
Instead, he comforted his daughter, and he read books, and he read out to her a book on how ancient Egyptians would worship and pamper cats, would have them sit in their baked brick palaces, spoiling them with food and jewelry and scents...and Joanna said, perhaps this is where kitty is going, because she would be a princess! But I want her bad, I want her to be my princess! and again she cried.

So the cat lived, and she was happy, and so she chased the mice in that baked brick palace, and played with tassels of spun gold, roamed the rooms and slept on piles of linen, and sniffed at the perfumed hair, and stroked against dark hands. Now and then, she saw the shimmering and the crack of electricity, electricity on a cat's coat with the scent of ozone, and she saw the tunnels and twists of times, understanding them with her cat's brain, seeing them like the twists and turns of the naughty mice. In those twists and branches of Time she looked, and saw the girl's room, as it would look down that branch, where a thin lady with brown hair and a sing-song voice would stand.

And with her cat's brain she understood the right move, pounced just where she needed, so she chased time into the right corner- with her cat's instincts she knew just when to break the earthen jug of milk, to scatter it into a thousand pieces on the floor, and then dash into the right sleeve of time, leaving her ancient hosts befuddled. She caught the yarn of time and played it into just the right tangle of feline fractality. Cats know those things. Time looped on itself and took a new twist.

The father went home tired, and he saw the fat tabby resting on his spot on the couch. She looked contented, she must have had a wonderful time- and then he realized where the cat was getting lost, and how it would mean a small change happened. Small enough, and yet he thought- just enough, as his wife came down the stairs and said, "Honey, close the door, we'll lose the cat!"