THE COMING OF POGSY [WWE, 3/13/13, Cats]

THE COMING OF POGSY

Pogsy was the offspring of ugliest two cats ever seen on a dark night, and the direct product of illicit feline randyness. Her parents had been the most wretched of Satan's creatures, both of them black as soot and both of them with that evil red eye beloved of the Necromancer in his favourites, and they met, not unsurprisingly, on All Hallow's Eve. The male cat, tail erect and eyes burning holes in the night, was prowling down Elmore Road and the female cat, all hot and bothered by its overflowing hormones, was yowling on the corner or Mellish Street. And the two met just there, and did their worst (or best, depending on your perspective), and the female wandered off after an hour of undiluted lust, dripping with sweat and other noxious fluids and suddenly perfectly contented.

So it was with a sense of impending hope that Pogsy's mother looked at her new kitten mere moments after it plopped out of her womb some weeks later and noted with a sense of pure horror that it was fluffy and white.

Fluffy and white were two notions that didn't enter the female's mind. So far as she was concerned all things should be black. In fact, all things, even soot, were far from black enough to her mind. No night ever slunk into shadows that were dark enough, no witch on her broomstick rose into a sufficiently Stygian sky, casting evil spells about her. That was this female cat's view of creation and it would suffer no man or creature who gainsaid it.

And here it was with Pogsy in her lair.

With a fluffy white kitten blessed with the most appealing face and sky-blue eyes.

With a daughter that would hopefully get lost in the first snows of the cold season.

The rest of the litter, though, were black, which was some kind of compensation. Four of them, sweet and black and lovely, with evil eyes and a tendency to claw at each other viciously even when they were mere minutes old.

And besides each other they clawed at Pogsy.

Which was a very silly thing for them to do because when the mother cat returned with a belly full of song-thrush that very first day of their lives the jet-black kittens, the apples of her feline eyes, were all lying dead in pools of their own young blood and a fluffy white kitten was preening herself, ever so innocent and with big blue eyes ready for love.

Pogsy had arrived!

The weeks passed, and Pogsy grew bushy and proud.

She was adopted by a family on Buchanan Road and became their pride and joy. The daughter of the house took her to school for a show-and-tell lesson, and explained how the fluffy white Pogsy had actually found them and settled down to live in their house. The son of the house took her to the cub-scouts with him, and used her to practice his bandaging on.

And the mother of the house gushed endlessly about feline perfection whilst the father went to work and toiled to earn their keep.

The next All Hallow's Eve came round, and Pogsy felt restless. It was an easy life, lounging about in the comfortable house where she'd adopted a whole human family, but she needed something more. And on that night she went out to find it.

There was mischief about, and witches, and broomsticks.

And Bessie the Bad Witch landed next to Pogsy.

“I'm looking for a cat,” she mused in Witch-tongue. “I'm looking for a black cat! And what do have here, my dearies, but a white cat! Yet I'm a witch, am I not? I have spells at my finger-tips, do I not? With a hocus and a pocus, white cat turn to black!”

“What do you think you're doing?” demanded Pogsy, turning black.

“You're my cat now,” croaked Bessie the Bad Witch, nasal fluids dripping all around her as she shook her head and cackled.

“You think so?” demanded Pogsy. “I've got something to say about that!”

And in a sudden fury Pogsy leapt upon the Bad Witch, claws every which-where that claws might go, and she tore at the old hag's flesh until there was blood everywhere. But not any old blood, no sir, no: it was witch blood.

And as children everywhere might tell you if they knew, witch blood burns holes in anything it touches.

Which was bad news for Pogsy as she lapped it up with a greedy feline tongue, and bit by bit and moment by moment she became, right there and then, nothing more substantial than a cat-sized hole in the world.

And Pogsy's still out there, still lounging in the home she adopted. But instead of being a fluffy white beauty she's nothing more lovely than an invisible hole in Creation.

© Peter Rogerson 13.03.13