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My laughter made it crouch lower, and its ears flattened. It edged away, and I saw how skinny it was, and weak. For a second I remembered crawling in the forest newly made, starving, and too stunned to know that blood was now my food. Just then, one of the occasional rats chose to make an ill-advised dash across the floor. I don’t know why I did it, curiosity perhaps, but I snatched the squealing rat up. I tore the creature open with my teeth and tossed it near the cat. The cat flinched but didn’t run.
“Well, there you are, puss,” I said. “Food with your lodging. What are you waiting for?”
Slowly it crept from the shadows and finally sniffed the corpse. I could see then it was female. It didn’t take her long to recognize a meal, and she wolfed the rat meat down so fast, I feared she would vomit.
“Steady on,” I warned. “I don’t care to share my den with cat puke.”
When she’d finished I flung the remnants under the door and stuffed the crack with an old coat. Ignoring the cat, I sank to my bed and took my crimson sleep.
The cat shot out the door the next evening as soon as it was opened, not surprising, as she had managed to spend the entire night without soiling the floor. I didn’t expect to see her again.
I was wrong. She was there in the jingle-jangle morning I’d heard the band sing of the night before. She sat by my front door with an expectant look on her little tabby face. What could I do? I found her another rat.
The routine became a habit. Dawn. Cat. Rat. Then she slept in a corner of my den. “But don’t get used to it,” I told her. “I’ll be moving on soon.”
Perhaps because I spent all my time avoiding conversation with humans, I soon found myself confiding in the cat. I only shared a few words at first. “Good morning,” I’d say. “Found a plump brunette at the Quicksilver concert. How was your night?” Soon I surrendered more details. “Last night’s girlfriend was an Airplane fan,” I might begin. “I thought she’d give in easily, but she’d traded her brains for LSD, and my charms didn’t work on her. She screamed when I bit her and I’m afraid I overreacted. I was really sorry afterward, cat. Honestly. I had to drop her in the bay so no one would find her.”
It was such a relief to confess.
The cat was wary at first. She wanted the meat, but she kept her distance, eyeing me suspiciously as if trying to place what kind of creature I was. Perhaps I smelled of death; perhaps I smelled of nothing known to her. Her aloofness saddened me. Was my only intimacy with those who lived to be when draining the very source of that life? A foolish question, for I knew that to be true. Nevertheless, I made a game of befriending her.
My words brought her near, yet she was shy of my touch. She ducked from my first advances, and danced on the shadow tip of my embrace, but I didn’t give up. I wooed her like a lover. Each day she lingered longer within reach, and I held myself in check. Each day her little ribs became less obvious, and she trembled less. I remember the electric crackle of joy the first time she let me stroke her head.
Soon, like a fool, I named the beast. Grimalkin, I called her—a witch’s cat’s name, but I’m close enough to a witch in most minds, I suppose. Stroking her became my delight—and hers. I had forgotten how a purr could buzz in one’s fingers like summer. She slept at the foot of my bed.
One morning I came home to find a mouse upon my pillow. “And now you are the provider?” I asked her as she wound between my legs. The bursting fullness in my chest was fleeting, but frightened me. I readied for sleep briskly, paying her no more heed. When I woke in the evening, I found her curled against my stomach. “Why?” I asked. “You will find no warmth there.” But the fullness was back and wouldn’t be ignored. It was I who took warmth from her.
The summer danced on, the music played, and the generous girls came and went. I tried to be careful, I truly did, but excess was all around, and I became prey to it, too. I had spent almost three hundred years in trying to control the lust, I had even tried to exist on the blood of beasts alone, and now one hedonistic summer had undone me. I found it harder and harder to stop in time. If I took too much, at least they died gently, I consoled myself, at least they felt no pain. I refused to feed on their terror like others of my kind, but feed I must, so under an August moon I romanced a girl, all fringes and swirling skirts, that I’d lured out from the bands and the smoky air of the dance hall called the Fillmore.
“What’s your favorite band?” she asked.
“The Grateful Dead,” I answered. Christ, I was almost getting a sense of humor.
“I’m not a runaway,” she told me when I asked. “I live in Mountain View with my mom, and sister, and three old cats.”
“I have a cat, too,” I said, surprising myself.
I soon was sorry. My admission provoked an avalanche of anecdotes. “Enough!” I said, finally losing patience, and drew her to me, my gaze on her neck, my gums itching.
“Ooh! You remind me of that Doors singer, Jim Morrison,” she said. “Beautiful and scary at the same time.”
I decided she was more intelligent than most. “You are beautiful, too,” I whispered, trailing my fingers down her cheek, capturing her eyes with mine.
She relaxed into my arms, surrendering to the spell I wove, and I took her throat. “The stars are swirling,” she said vaguely as I sipped gently on her blood. “Did you give me some drugs or something?” She giggled weakly. “But I’d remember, wouldn’t …” Her voice trailed off into a sigh. I allowed myself to tumble into the lake of dreams with her, drowning, drowning in the sweet froth of her life, and I would have finished her in that glorious haze, drained her of the nectar that sustained me, except I remembered the three old cats, and all of a sudden I couldn’t go on. Ashamed, I left her there in Golden Gate Park to wake with the dawn and wonder if someone had slipped some acid in her drink.
Grimalkin wasn’t waiting at the garage door. After half a summer of the same routine, she wasn’t there. I tried to shrug off the disappointment. It had to happen sooner or later—either she would leave or I would. Maybe she was delayed by a mouse, I told myself, but not believing it. I hesitated over whether to block the crack under the door, but common sense won out and I grabbed for the dusty old coat. A day out won’t harm her, I thought, but a touch of sunlight would certainly harm me.
She was alrea
dy curled on my bed.
“Grimalkin! Trickster!” I exclaimed. The joy of seeing her surprised me into laughter. Who would have thought? I made ready for bed hastily with a smile on my face.
When I woke in the evening, she was still in the same spot. “Wake up, lazybones,” I said over my shoulder, but her only response was a slight opening of her eyelids.
“What ails you, puss?” I asked, rolling over to stroke her. She trembled. “Ah, yes, I’m very cold,” I said, making it a joke. Then I noticed the slime around her mouth and found it was possible to be colder still.
I smelled a rankness in the air I hadn’t noticed in the morning. Before I identified the source, Grimalkin showed me. She wobbled to her feet, staggered a few steps, and vomited on my blanket. She collapsed again and lay there panting.
