eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: CAT (Reply)

The dog who always wore two coats was resplendent in spring colours of bright yellow and green. He marched down Front Street, occasionally breaking into a trot to keep pace with his companion. The black-furred poodle with the dainty feet and the bark that could crumble stone had long legs that ate up their patrol route.

The newly re-opened headquarters of the Canine Arrest Team squatted on the corner of Front and Lewton-Tourneur like a squat grey toad. A half-dozen well-fed house cats lounged on the south-facing windowsills, tails transcribing lazy arcs through the warm air, eyes heavy lidded with insolent indolence.

The dog who always wore two coats felt his hackles rise at the sight. The Revolution had held this territory for months after the well-deserved demise of the monster Dithers and the regrettable but necessary silencing of the metal-mouthed pup with the fondness for stale sandwiches. Surveillance continued on the newspaper boy’s house, but for a little while it had seemed that the uprising had been a success.

Then the warm weather came, and with it the fat, sauntering felines that routinely laid claim to the best sunbathing spots in town. The Revolution had chased them off, baying and snapping at their cowardly fleeing heels, and considered it a job well done.

Three nights later, a huge one-eyed tom the colour of fog in the moonlight had been spotted slipping through an open window on the third floor of the Mayor’s palatial home. None of the sentries posted in the surrounding streets had seen him pass, and nobody could remember having seen him around town before.

The next morning, men in thickly padded protective gear and metal face masks stormed the dog pound, snatching up almost a third of their comrades in their first sweep. Fluffy was captured and subsequently returned to his human oppressor, who kept him in a fenced-in yard when he wasn’t being paraded about the town as a spoil of war. Fifi was missing, and the rumours surrounding her disappearance ranged from a glorious death in battle, to a secret prison deep beneath town hall, to a splinter cell in Indianapolis that would one day return to Eerie to free her brothers and sisters.

What became of that strange moonlit cat, what lies and poisons he poured into the Mayor’s ear to sway him to his cause, the dogs had been unable to discover. The rats in the alleys, inveterate gossips all, had never heard of him, and the chittering sparrows in the hedgerow regarded one cat as very much like another and never stopped to look when one came among them. The ravens glanced at each other and puffed up the great ruff of feathers around their shoulders, but kept their council.

The poodle with the dainty feet let loose a booming bark as they approached the dozing mass of cats. Two dozen ears flicked and two dozen pairs of pale green eyes opened, pupils narrowing to slits in the bright afternoon sun. The dog who always wore two coats bared his teeth in a snarl. One of the cats began washing its paws, pink tongue rasping over the ginger fur in slow, unconcerned strokes.

“Fawning sycophants!” bellowed the poodle with the dainty feet. A trickle of brick dust fell from the lintel of the heavy iron door. “Hated collaborators!”

As one, the cat swivelled their sleek heads towards the door. The dog who always wore two coats followed their gaze as the door swung open. A dog catcher, anonymous behind a wire mesh face guard, stood with a catcher’s loop in one heavily gloved hand. In his other was a bowl of freshly diced chicken breast.

The furry, purring mass on the windowsills turned back to face the dogs. A couple of them yawned.

“Run!” said the dog who always wore two coats.

As they fled, their ears were full of the sound of the cats descending on the food.