Title: Familiar
Author: missyjack
Characters: Dean, a cat
Rating: PG
Warnings: character death
Word Count: 734
Disclaimer: The Winchesters belong to Kripke, the Cat (aka Meggie) to ellipsisblack
Summary: There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.Albert Schweitzer
Notes: This is set in the universe of
ellipsisblack’s incredible
The Company of Cats. She generously let me play here, for which I am very grateful. embroiderama wrote the moving story
Stray also set in this 'verse. The wonderful work of these two writers inspired my muse which has been rather sulky of late.
The Cat was born on Wednesday’s paper behind a trash can out the back of the motel. Three of her siblings died soon after. One sister was taken home by a small quiet boy who seemed unaware that he was going to die in three months time. The other walked away one day and never came back. Her two brothers left with a woman whose wild hair smelt of herbs and healing.
Her mother taught her about the things cats could sense and see, that people and lesser animals, like dogs, couldn’t. She explained about the creatures and spirits that made the Cat’s whiskers vibrate. Some were good; some were evil. Some were lost and some came to watch over those they loved. The Cat learnt to interpret the swirls of energy around humans, which changed with their feelings and intentions and their connection to the other world that was a shadow to this one.
Cats, her mother said as she groomed that hard to reach spot near her shoulder blade, had a destiny; she needed to be alert for when the universe revealed it to her. The Cat seemed dubious about this, especially after her mother gave her ninth life to the rear wheel of a pick up truck.
Many people came and went from the small rooms that smelt of lemons and mould. Some of them shoo-ed her away or threw things at her, but the Cat could pick the ones that would give her scraps of food and pat her awhile.
The Cat was drawn to the people that were broken or in pain. She discovered how to help untangle the knots and smooth out the spikes in their auras, and doing it made her feel good.
If this was life, it was okay thought the Cat.
One day a man arrived in a large black car. After dark, as the night sweated into the hot air, she crept into his room and sat at the end of his bed. Her whiskers quivered and the tip of her tail flicked back and forth as she sensed that he had been close to the veil and what lay beyond it.
The energy around this man was jagged like shards of glass, as if something in him had shattered. The Cat crept carefully along the bed and started kneading him with her paws, trying to smooth out some of those sharp edges.
Suddenly the man woke and she found herself faced with a knife, as if she was not a small underfed cat but one of her much larger, more impressively clawed, cousins. She blinked impassively at him and, when he quickly realised she posed no threat, the man gently picked her up and put her outside.
The Cat was not so easily disposed of and, through the rest of that night and the next, she tried to insinuate herself into his space. She flowed around his ankles as he walked to his car. From deep within her soul, she purred ripples of peacefulness towards him. Mustering all her kittenish charm, she played endearingly with his shoelace. Curled around his hand, the Cat licked her sandpaper rough tongue across his finger ridges. He tasted saltier than most people.
The man resisted her advances silently but firmly.
The Cat would have let him be, but one day when he was out and she was curled up on a pile of clothes in his room, she started to tingle all over. Unconsciously she started pawing at the material beneath her, trying to quiet herself. She couldn’t settle and sat erect, ears pricked and alert. Every hair on her body stood on end as she sensed a presence, someone from beyond. The Cat felt waves of great sadness that somehow had a flavour similar to the man’s own.
The presence remained in the room, strong and watchful. Satisfied that it meant no harm, the Cat settled back to sleep. She awoke with a start when the man returned and pushed her roughly from where she lay. Darting to the corner of the room, she watched as he picked up the grey hooded jacket she had been sleeping on, sank onto the edge of the bed and clutched it close to his chest.
It was then the Cat started to understand what her purpose was.
When the man left the next day in his black car, she was on the seat next to him curled into a comma, a feline punctuation mark at the beginning of the next phrase in his story.