Suspicious

By: Maria Persaud

My cat has lazy green eyes that look like marbles—or like river rocks covered in

moss and then polished by the flow of the creek. She’ll perch on the shelf above my

desk while I do homework through the late hours of the night and early morning, keeping a vigilant watch over the scattered shadows in the room, moving only when they move as I adjust my lamp. Occasionally, I’ll reach up to scratch her chin, but only for a second, because any longer and my hand will fall victim to her teeth. She’ll look down at me, apathetic and condescending, her eyes blinking slowly and the shadows outline her grey features, finishing the look of the chaotic-neutral feline villain.

It was probably two—no, maybe three—in the morning when she stood up

sharply, ears jumping to attention and pupils widening. My skittish,

coffee-fueled self jumped as well, almost out of my chair, and I followed her gaze to the

door, which I had left open by about an inch. She perked up some more, then crouched

down. After a moment or two, she sprang off of the shelf and trotted out through the

doorway, wriggling her body through the narrow gap between the door and its frame,

throwing it wide open. I dragged my feet over to the door to close it, until I saw her

frozen silhouette in the darkness of the hallway turned back to face me, her eyes shining

like LED Christmas lights. She stares at me for a second more before breaking into a

sprint, her tail and back arched as she bolted down the stairs, her ears flat against her

head.

My eyelids seemed to carry the weight of my dropping grades as they willed me

to forget my homework, forget my cat’s shenanigans, and go to sleep. But then I heard

her yowl through the night like a dramatic two year old who was sent into time out, and

it grew into a caterwaul of fear, possibly, or maybe pain? I crept downstairs, my fuzzy

socks silent on the wooden floors until the last step, when a deafening creak shook the

house as violently as my hands shake when I’m this caffeinated. Her crying stopped,

and I slowly pulled the offending foot off of the step, and crept towards the kitchen,

where I could hear her collar jingling. I rounded the corner, guided solely by the light of

the moon through the window because I don’t wear my glasses at night, and I can see just about nothing without them, even in the daytime. My fingers traced the doorframe,

then the wall, and then the cold granite of the kitchen counter until my focus was no

longer on my fingers, but on the ebbing pain in my knee that I had just slammed into the pillar supporting the ceiling. Whatever was in the darkness probably knew I was here

now.

Every shadow made me at least try to look twice, every stray sound turned my

head. There was ​something​ in the kitchen, ​something ​had scared my cat, and I kept looking and looking and looking until-

There I saw my cat’s eyes, silver and mirror-like, and I made out the movement of her tail flicking back and forth as she sat on the floor, staring me down. She meowed

again. I looked next to her and saw another shiny thing: her food bowl.

I sighed, and my shoulders released tension I didn’t know they were holding. She

meowed again in a childish, incessant way, and then batted the edge of her food bowl

with her paw.

“No,” I whispered, and went back upstairs, deciding on the way that sleep

deprivation had made me far too suspicious of my own home, and that nighttime was

made for sleeping. She ran behind me and bit my ankles in protest, but I shook her off

and kept going until I reached my soft, wonderful bed. I drowned myself under three

blankets when her crying continued for a few more minutes, but then I felt her jump on

the bed with me, and curl up next to my hip. She purred softly, and my eyelids closed.

But then I heard the yowling coming from downstairs again.

My eyes shot open, and the air in my lungs grew cold. The purring beside me

continued, but so did the meowing in the kitchen. Three questions remained: where was

my cat, where wasn’t she, and what else was?

I ​almost​ got out of bed, I ​almost ​turned on the light to find out. But you know

what? It was three in the morning, and not a single part of me cared more about the

possibly supernatural intruder in my house more than I cared about getting at least a

few hours of sleep. So I slept.