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| A Cyprian cat? Photo by AlienCat via Adobe Stock. |
What the story is, is a sort of mystery/horror tale that is
not terribly mysterious but is terribly horrific, especially for cats. It is
narrated by a frighteningly violent man who has shot a cat. “It’s funny that one
should be hanged for shooting at a cat,” he says.
No, narrator, that is not so-called “funny” at all. That is
perfectly reasonable.
This narrator has such an aversion to cats that he cannot
stand being in the same space with one. He becomes nauseated and his flesh
crawls whenever a cat is close to him. (He is a psychiatric case, if you ask
me.) So you can imagine how out of sorts he becomes when he checks into an inn
in this fascinating village that has some mysterious connection to cats:
“It’s a tiny hamlet quite at the other end of nowhere; lights out at ten, little thatched houses with pinched-up attic windows like furry ears—the place purred in its sleep.”
When a by all accounts beautiful tabby cat with lovely green
eyes appears one night at his window, he calls her a monster and soon buys a
revolver “to take a pot-shot or two at the cats.” Well, eventually he does take
a shot at the beautiful, completely innocent cat, and moments later he finds he
has shot not a cat but his friend’s wife. (By the way, the reason it is wrong
to shoot at cats is not that they might be shape-shifters that are also people;
it is wrong because cats, like all creatures, deserve to be treated with
kindness and respect.)
I think someone should write a story like this from the cat’s
point of view. That would be so interesting. I would ask She of Little Talent
to write it, but she would make lots of mistakes and would probably write about
an octopus instead of a cat. You see how I must suffer.
[“The Cyprian Cat” can be found in the collection In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy
L. Sayers.]
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