Cats a short story (fantasy and it has cats)

 This is a short story that I wrote to enter a themed short story contest where the theme was "cats." I finished with honors in fifth place. I tried to explain why cats knock things off of ledges.

Cats

Beth Tubador swears she spends half her day picking up things that her cats knock off tables or shelves. Why do the cursed things have to be such a pain, she thinks to herself before apologizing to the ones lazing around her sitting room. Such is the misery of being the cat lady.

 

The tabby— Bluebell to the old lady, Grryowwhissk to other cats— pretending to sleep on Beth’s easy chair, snickers to itself as the old lady places a figurine back on the mantal across the room. The tabby mentally adds one more life to the three she has saved up already. Tonight, she hopes to sneak out to report to the hobo that sleeps in an alley behind the bowling alley. The stinky fellow is not really a hobo but the personification of Chaos. If these tiny-brained humans saw Chaos in his true form, or even knew that cats were his minions, they would crack.

The tabby pauses to clean itself before proceeding into the alley, one must look good to one’s master. The hobo sits, as if on a throne, on his cardboard bed. He looks up at the Tabby with eyes like nebulas.

 

“What do you have to report?”

The tabby lowers itself to bow before Chaos. “I knocked an ugly figurine of a boy wearing blue onto the floor.”

The hobo shakes his head in disgust. “Why are cats so lazy? A snake that makes its way into a farmhouse, now there is a good show of causing chaos.”

“But she had to pick it up delaying her dinner.” The tabby sounds as if it is whining.

“And?”

“And? She is an old lady. Do you know how much trouble it is for her to bend over?”

Chaos thinks to himself for a bit. He did recruit cats to do his bidding, and he did promise the gifts he endows them for their service. And it is he, himself, that did not set a basic standard for what is considered chaos. Arguing with a creature who thinks itself a princess would be a waste of time.

“Okay, little one, do you want a life or another month of landing on your feet?”

“I would take the life, Lord Chaos.”

“Then go,” he tells the tabby while adding to himself, I hope you lose it in traffic on the way home. Aloud he tells the tabby as she slinks from the back ally, “But you do need to come up with better things to cause chaos.”

“Maybe I could yammer all night; it is fun to pretend I am in heat.”

As the tabby slinks off Chaos wonders how such things could really be so lazy.