It was a normal thing to ask of your cat.
Catch the rat and get your reward.
I moved recently, and somehow, a rat got into my stuff. The apartment I had moved from was kind of a dump, but I'd never had problems with rats. So, when I opened the box and out came the big, black wharf rat, I nearly had a heart attack. It came barreling up out of the box and ran behind the stove, all three of my cats watching it curiously from the top of the couch where they were all perched. I remember glowering at them, the little cowards, but being madder at Calvin more than the others. The other two were little more than kittens, half-grown and barely out of eating dry food soaked in gravy. Calvin, however, was a full-grown cat.
I hadn't set out to have three cats in a one-bedroom apartment.
It had kind of happened by mistake.
Calvin had been a birthday present from my mother. He had been a scrawny little orange kitten, and she had meant for him to keep me company in my new studio apartment. She had pulled him out of her coat pocket with a flourish, and I had sighed and tried to refuse him. He was very cute, his inquisitive amber eyes looking around with curiosity, but I really didn't want something to take care of right now.
"Keep him for the weekend. If you still don't want him, I'll come and get him."
By Monday, she couldn't have taken him from me by any means less than high explosives.
He was such a playful little thing, always zooming around and getting into trouble, and I spent many nights with him curled up in my lap or sitting on my feet as I went to sleep.
After a few months, though, he became kind of sluggish and mopey. I talked to a friend of mine, and she said he was probably lonely. She told me that cats are social creatures and that it might perk him up if I got another cat. I talked to mom, and she told me that the lady she had gotten Calvin from had just had another litter of kittens. Calvin's "brother cousin" would probably be ready to leave his mother soon, and I could have a little friend for Calvin to play with. That's how Hobbs came to be my new addition.
Before he could arrive, though, I found Grayson.
I was walking through the Dollar General parking lot, just wanting to get a few things for dinner, when the pathetic little mew from under a gigantic truck caught my attention. He was a half-starved little gray kitten, scared and lost and looking for help. He was too small to even fight me when I picked him up and put him in my shirt pocket. I picked up a few things while I was inside, a water bowl and some wet food, and Grayson joined my growing little brood of cats. Calvin hated him at first, hissing and spitting at this interloper. After a few weeks, though, I saw them playing and running together like old friends. Grayson idolized Calvin, and when I brought Hobbs home, the two of them hissed and spit at him until they finally accepted him as part of their world. The Littles, as I started calling them, followed Calvin around ceaselessly, and he was a good big brother and showed them how to be a productively mischievous house cat.
Then I got a raise at work, finally making the sort of money that could change my life a little, and I moved out of my dingy studio apartment and into a nice two-bed in a better part of town.
And now, I had a rat.
I spent the first two weeks in my new apartment ignoring him. I could hear him scuttling around, but I hoped he would leave on his own. I had three cats, after all, and rats are supposed to leave if they smell a cat, right? This fellow didn't care about the existence of my timid little felines, though. He ate my snack cakes from the cupboard, tore into my breakfast cereal, and chewed holes in my bread and dry goods. After the third morning of grabbing a cereal box and seeing the contents spill out onto the linoleum, I got angry.
That's when I really started trying to get rid of the damn rat. I put out traps, I put down glue boards, I bought poison and put it out in places that would be hard for the cats to get to, and filled any holes I found with steel wool, spray foam, and hot pepper granules. When that failed to get results, I hired an exterminator to come and had a look. To my surprise, he put down traps and bait and said he'd see me in a week. I rolled my eyes after he left, thinking about how I had done that. When that failed to get any results, too, I started getting desperate. I bought those little noise generator things that are supposed to drive rats crazy. I bought candles that are supposed to make them go nuts. I used essential oils and left out different, smelly foods that are supposed to drive them off. Nothing made any progress, though.
That's when I really started getting angry at my cats.
I shouldn't have taken out my frustration on them, but I was becoming ridiculous.
"There are three of you. How is it that you can't catch one freaking rat? He's been eating your cat food too, you know, chewing holes straight into the bag. Are you really going to let him get away with that?"
The three of them just stared at me blankly, not understanding a damn thing I said.
"Okay, how about this, the first one of you who gets that rat gets a can of wet food. The good stuff too, the three dollars a can stuff."
That seemed to perk them up. Once the cats were out of kittenhood, I had weened all of them off wet food. I hadn't given them wet food in nearly six months, and they had spent the last three months meowing and looks at me expectantly anytime I opened a can of soup or ravioli. Cats aren't stupid, I had always suspected as much, and the way the two smaller ones looked at each other left me little doubt that they were plotting something. Grayson and Hobbs were younger than Calvin, and they often worked together to manage mischief pretty often.
Calvin, on the other hand, looked thoughtful and stared off at the kitchen.
Later that night, as I curled up in bed, I noticed that Calvin was missing from my usual cuddle pile. Grayson was sprawled across my chest, Hobbs laying on my pillow as his fluffy body lay across the top of my head, but Calvin's comfortable weight was absent from my legs. Calvin had slept across my legs every night since he'd come to stay with me, and it was strange now to be thinking about sleep without him there. I called him, patting the bed and pss pss pssing at him, but he refused to come to bed. Finally, I just rolled over and went to sleep.
He'd turn up.
When he finally turned up, it was to show me the dead wharf rat dangling from his teeth. I woke up slowly as the big orange cat put his paws in my chest. I opened my eyes to see the dead rat hanging inches from my face. I struggled awake, startled back to consciousness, as the cat proudly held the rat by the tail and dangled it in front of me. The other two came sniffing around, looking reverently at Calvin and his prize, but he hissed and spit as he scared them back.
This was his prize and his alone.
He followed me into the kitchen, the rat still swinging, as I looked through the cabinets for any wet food that we might have leftover. I found a can of Fancy Feast, something I had packed up for a special occasion, and when I let it plop wetly into his bowl, he dropped the rat and began to eat. As he dipped his head to eat, I got my first look at the rat. It was unbloodied, its fur unruffled from a fight, and the way its body was curled made me think that Calvin had jumped on him and broken his back. I swept him into a dustpan and dumped him out onto the fire escape, leaving him out there for the scavengers to pick apart. I heard Calvin hiss as the littles came close, scattering them before he went back to eating.
I reflected that it might have been a mistake to reintroduce Calvin to wet food.
Calvin had, after all, been the hardest to break.
He had never had it before the kittens came into the house, to my knowledge. He had been big enough for dry food when mom had brought him to me. Until Grayson had come, he had never had a taste. Grayson had been small, much smaller than Calvin, and I had quickly learned that they could not eat anywhere near each other. Calvin would take Grayson's food without hesitation, snarfing up all the wet food as quickly as possible. It didn't matter if it made him sick or not. He would fill his belly with as much wet food as he could get and then flop over in a contented ball. It got to the point where I had to feed Grayson in my bedroom, the poor little kitten wasting away as his food was stolen again and again.
I did the same with Hobbs, but Calvin still seemed to find a way to take their food sometimes.
Calvin was sneaky, and when his amber eyes found something they wanted, he tended to get it.
I should have known when he flopped over, his belly full, that it wouldn't be the last.
The next night, as I was getting ready for bed, I walked to my room and yelped in horror as I nearly tripped over a second dead rat. This one was a little smaller, a little more normal rat-sized than the wharf rat he'd brought me the night before. As I inspected it, he crept silently up and butted my leg. He looked pleased with himself, looking up at me expectantly as he waited for his prize.
I tried to be supportive of his latest kill, admonishing him as I put out what little wet food I still had.
I made a mental note to get more tomorrow.
He watched me smuggle as I came home with two more cans, hoping I wouldn't need them.
He took that night off, but the next night, two small mice were in front of the bedroom door.
This was ridiculous. How was my apartment this infested? I hadn't seen so much as a roach or a mouse turd anywhere other than the big rat. Not in the cabinets, not behind the fridge, not anywhere. Suddenly, Calvin was turning up with four times the number of rodents I had thought I had, and that was a problem. I made a note to call an exterminator the next day and disposed of the carcasses.
I gave him the wet food and went to bed, figuring I would have a long day tomorrow.
I called the exterminator on my lunch break, and he agreed to come out that afternoon. He met me at the door to my apartment, wearing an orange jumpsuit, carrying a heavy can of poison, and introducing himself as Mark. He asked me what I had going on, and I told him my cat had been catching a lot of vermin since I moved in. He said that was pretty common, especially this close to the canal, and said he'd have a look. The Littles immediately came over to rub against him, but I noticed that Calvin was keeping his distance. He looked at the exterminator distrustfully, keeping his perch atop the bookcase as his tail flicked unhappily.
Mark set to work immediately, checking under counters and shining his UV light around as he tried to find rat sign. He went through the kitchen, the bathroom, my bedroom and finally checked the living room before finding me in my office. He said he hadn't found any sign of rats, other than a small amount of scat under the sink. He said it looked like a single rat might have been briefly hiding under there, but that would explain the stowaway I had found in my belongings.
"But what about the other three?" I asked.
Mark shrugged, "No clue. I'll come back in a week to check the glue traps, but I don't think I'll find anything.
I told him I'd call him if anything changed, and he left after a few more pets for the little and a few more glowers from Calvin.
That night, Calvin came up with another rat.
I praised him again, but I was really beginning to wonder where he was getting all these rats.
By the end of the week, it was really getting out of hand.
Calvin had brought me a total of ten rats throughout the week, as well as two roached and a grasshopper. He had eaten wet food every night that week and the Littles were clearly starting to feel some sort of way about it. They wolfed down their dry food, but I could see a lot of hooded glanced pointed at Calvin as he dined on canned food. I was tempted to give them all wet food, but that would only make it harder to break the cycle once the rats stopped appearing. No, eventually, Calvin would stop finding rats to bring me, and this whole thing would just go away.
Then, Hobbs decided to change the game.
After feeding everyone and making sure their water bowls were full, I was heading to bed when I stopped in front of my door and looked for Calvin's latest offering. Calvin had been leaving his offering there since the first night he'd brought that giant rat, and tonight was the first night in a while that I hadn't almost stepped on a dead rat on the way to bed. I looked around, thinking he had left it near the door, but there was nothing. Calvin came up then, looking proud of himself, but seemed confused when he couldn't find anything there.
That when Hobbs strolled up, a dead mouse swinging from his teeth.
Hobbs laid the mouse at my feet, and I bent to congratulate him on his kill. He accepted my pets, his eyes straying to Calvin, and I could swear that Calvin stared hatefully at him. It's hard to tell with cats sometimes; their faces can be a little inexpressive if you're not used to them. Still, I saw Calvin crinkle his eyes and glower at Hobbs the same way he had glowered at the exterminator. He sat on his bookcase and stared dagger at Hobbs as he ate his wet food. I looked at the two of them, wondering if I should leave them alone out there. I shrugged it off, though. They had never tried to hurt each other before, aside from some playful wrestling, and when Grayson followed me to bed, I tipped the door a little so they could come to bed when they finished.
The next morning, there was no sign of Hobbs.
There was no sign of a struggle either. Everything was as I had left it the night before. The door was locked, and the floors were clean. Nothing was amiss at all. It was as if Hobs had simply vanished.
I asked around the apartment complex, hoping maybe he had just gotten out, but no one had seen hide nor hair of the little guy. I came home feeling very upset, and Grayson and Calvin tried their best to comfort me. I went to bed with Grayson curled up beside my head, missing the fluffy weight of Hobbs at my head. Calvin, however, stayed out in the living room.
He seemed forever on the hunt.
A week went by, and I still found myself filling Hobbs' bowl and calling for him at bedtime. Grayson had become standoffish towards Calvin. I usually came home to find them far apart, staring at each other apprehensively. Calvin, on the other hand, pranced around like he was lord of the house. There was at least one mouse or rat by the door of my room every night at bedtime, and Calvin was becoming larger than I thought a cat his size should be. He had been the size of a normal housecat a month ago, but now he was approaching the size of a small wildcat. I had chalked it up to all the wet food, but then the other rodents started showing up.
On Monday, Calvin brought me a white rat.
Calvin had started bringing them to me himself, lest we have another Hobbs incident where someone took credit for his handy work. When he sat it down, I remembered thinking that it seemed oddly filled out for a wild rat. This rat had been taken care of and looked as though it was fed regularly. I gave Calvin a hard look, but he only looked at me mildly with those amber eyes as if to say, "It's a rat, wet food now."
I sighed and opened him a can, Grayson following close on my heels as I went to bed.
On Tuesday, Calvin brought me a squirrel.
It was clearly a squirrel, though the tail had been chewed off. It wasn't a baby squirrel either or some half-starved yearling. This was a full-grown squirrel that my cat was trying to pass off as a rat. I gave him the food, but I told him not to lure squirrels into the house anymore. He pretended to listen, relishing his food as he ate.
On Wednesday, Calvin brought me a hamster.
There was no disguising this one. He was red and white, his little cheeks stuffed with seed, and by this point, I was making excuses. Maybe it had crawled in from the vents. Maybe someone's pet had gotten loose and wandered into the apartment. There was no way for Calvin to get out of the apartment, right?
On Thursday, Calvin brought me a guinea pig.
He didn't even try to hide his smugness this time. Calvin flopped the fat little sausage of a rodent down, looking up expectantly. Had his eyes always been that color? I remembered them being more of an amber than a crimson. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Perhaps I was seeing things. My hand shook as I opened the can, and I closed the door this time when I went to bed. Calvin had grown another three inches seemingly overnight. I was having a harder and harder time discrediting my growing apprehension.
Then, Friday afternoon, as I came home from work, my landlord stopped me in the hall.
"Just thought I'd ask if maybe you'd seen a chinchilla?"
I told him I didn't know what a chinchilla looked like, to be honest, and he sighed.
"My daughter's chinchilla is missing. I paid over a grand for that little monster, and now he's just suddenly disappeared. If you see him, please let me know."
I was waiting for Calvin that night when he came trotting up, the chinchilla held snugly in his teeth.
That's when I lost my temper with him. I told him this was unacceptable. He couldn't just go around and kill people's pets. He had probably been catching other pets and killing them as well, and I was tired of this. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, Calvin yowling miserably as I dragged him to the pet carrier. I put him in and locked the door, the spring locks keeping it shut. He could spend the night in his carrier and thinking about what he'd done. He yowled and murowled as Grayson and I went to the bedroom, and I heard him kicking around in there as I tried to go to sleep.
After a little while, though, he quieted, and I finally went to sleep.
I woke up, though, to an empty bed.
I looked around for Grayson, expecting to have him curled up next to me and finding nothing. Again, there was no sign of a struggle, no blood or evidence of foul play, just a lack of cat and sense of absence. I left the room, my eyes inevitably straying to the cat carrier in the corner as I searched the house for Grayson. Calvin and Hobbs had been like children to me, but Grayson had been special even amongst my cats. I felt like I had saved him, like I had kept him from dying, and now he was just gone.
I had to halt my search to stop myself from sobbing more than once.
After I had checked every room in the house, every hiding place, and every nook and cranny, I turned my attention back to the cat carrier. It had been silent this whole time, unmoving and seemingly empty, and I moved in slowly, not sure what to expect. Was Calvin dead too? He had spent a lot of last night yowling, and now he was silent as the grave.
I bent low, putting my face near the mesh, looking in and seeing nothing.
The carrier was empty.
I jumped when someone knocked on my door, their thumping sounding frantic.
It was the landlord again, and he looked pale.
"Excuse me, I... I'm going door to door. Have you seen….I mean…." he lost what little composure he had, and I felt his face press against my shoulder, his tears moistening my shirt, "My son is missing. Have you seen anyone who might have taken him? I….I put him to bed in his crib last night, and when I woke up this morning, he was gone. His mother is nearly catatonic, and the police can't find any evidence of a break-in. I don't know what to do. Seeing if anyone saw anything is all I know to do."
I commiserate with him, telling him that I would let him know if I saw anything, but my guts were already aroil with fear.
Surely he hadn't.
There was no way.
He was there on the coffee table when I closed the door, tail flicking agitatedly. There was something in his mouth, something thick and pink, and as he rose up and sauntered over to me, I backed away, not wanting to see what it was. He was leaving little red splotches on the floor in his wake as he carried the strange offering to me, and I was even more certain that I didn't want it anywhere near me. However, when my bottom came up hard against the door, I was out of room to retreat.
He lay the offering at my feet, looking up coldly with none of his usual smugness, and stayed put to watch as I pushed it over with the toe of my shoe.
Even without the toes, I could tell it was a small, delicate foot that someone had unceremoniously detached from its owner.
The foot of an infant, if I had to guess.
He's out there now, eating his wet food as I lay in bed with my door locked.
I flushed the remains of the small foot down the toilet. It flushed surprisingly easily, but I saw Calvin watching me the whole time from the door. All he does now is watch me, and I'm frankly afraid to touch him. He's different, not really like a cat anymore, and when he tried to jump in my lap earlier, I pushed him away.
I just can't stand to touch him.
However, I'll be giving him his wet food from now on; rat or no rat.
I'm afraid of what might happen if I let him get too hungry.
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