~~~~
17 cats were living in Shauna’s
basement. Typically, one would assume she’s an old lady living on her own.
While she did, in fact, live alone and was getting up in the years, she was no
crazy old cat lady. Shauna was a wizard, that’s the title she preferred, she
hated being called a witch. If one were to carelessly refer to her as such,
she’d turn them into a newt, or worse. Such reactions didn’t exactly help her
case, but few wanted to argue with her.
A person of the magical arts like
herself is expected to have a few familiars, and cats were a popular choice.
However, the cats were not her familiars, nor were they really cats. They all
had their own little story, not one of the felines came to her the exact same
way.
As Shauna wandered down into her
basement and observed the horde of meowing creatures, memories bubbled to the
surface. The wizard stared at one cat who laid on the windowsill, always
looking out the window. Vincent was his name, he was a curious case, just like
all the others. At one point, he was a nasty little boy from the village down
the hill. He was quite rude to Shauna and even threw rocks at her door, so she
turned him into a cat as punishment. That was over eighty years ago, but
Vincent never forgave her.
When Shauna made it to the bottom of
the stairs, another feline awaited her, the smallest cat, Puff. He wasn’t
really a cat either, no he was actually a fairy, or at least he was. Back when
Puff was a fairy, he frequented the same bar in the village at the bottom of
the hill that she did. One day she found him in the bar, sober for a change.
The poor guy had been kicked out of
his clan for assorted failures. Since he was thrown out of the clan, Puff was almost
out of magic. So the first thing he did when he saw Shauna was to turn himself
into a cat and tell her, “I’m your problem now.” The wizard obliged out of
curiosity, although she wished he did more than sleep all day.
Finally, Shauna made her way into
the basement proper, towards the biggest cat in the room, Samuel. The literal
fat cat had his own little kingdom carved out of the corner of the room, and
none of the others dared to approach. As the wizard looked at this one, she
felt a pinch of shame. That beast was no cat, it was a monster, a demon, and
Shauna owed him money.
Alas, a wizard cannot always pay the
bills, so she borrowed quite the chunk of change from Samuel a long while back.
However, she could not pay him back in any reasonable amount of time. The demon
wished to do many things to the poor wizard until he noticed her growing
collection of cats, then an idea struck. Shauna had to care for the demon as a
cat, one year for every coin she borrowed, and she borrowed quite many a coin.
As Shauna approached the portly
feline, Samuel flashed a wicked smile.
“I’m quite itchy on my underbelly,
would you mind?” The fat cat rolled on his back.
“Sure, why not,” Shauna rolled her
eyes and scratched his belly. The other cats circled around the sight, at a
distance, but still longing for their turn. “This all comes to end tomorrow,
you know.”
“I know, I’m lapping it up while I
still can,” Samuel purred.
‘How predictable,’ Shauna rolled her eyes
as she glanced out the window, and watched the sun begin to set. ‘Not that much
longer now, and this will all be over.’ She observed her many cats again and
hoped that come tomorrow, everything would work out.
~~~~
I got nothing clever to say today, I made this story using an old writer's toolkit I bought for a college class like 4 years ago. I will admit outright I'm not happy with it, I had an idea but it never materialized properly. But, there's no reason not to post it, so here it is.Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy
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