The Cat Who Ate the Quiche by Laura Craner

Excerpt from The Cat Who Ate the Quiche

The cat had never been spry. Not in all the years she had lived with the family had she been spry. The kids had long since learned to leave the cat alone. They didn’t even try to pet her anymore—especially near her hindquarters—because, even though she had no front claws, the cat was a biter and a scratcher. Every now and again one of the kids would wake up to find the cat snuggled up and snoring next to them in bed. They’d have to climb gingerly around her to get out or else the cat would turn into a snarling flurry of pure fur fury.

The cat had shown up one snowy November evening. The family was eating mushroom-broccoli quiche for dinner. Or, more correctly, the family was not eating mushroom-broccoli quiche for dinner. Well, the father was eating it. He always ate it, whatever it was. The mother would have been eating it had she not been telling the children (she always called them children because, after all, they were not a herd of goats) to eat it regardless of what they thought of the smell. And the kids, they were, well, they were prodding it.

Just as the mother warmed herself up for a round of “you-don’t-always-get-what-you-want-and-sometimes-you-have-to- try-new-things-because-I-am-your-mother-and-I-said-so-and-what-about-the-starving-children-in-Africa?” they all heard the sound. The kids stopped their prodding. The mother closed her mouth. The father swallowed.

It definitely wasn’t a meowing sound. If it had been, the family would have recognized it and opened the door immediately. It wasn’t a purring either. The wind was too loud to hear purring. In later years, after the cat died, the family decided the noise could only be described as a demand—if a demand could be wordless and completely other-worldly and animalistic.

At the sound, the family rushed to the back door and jostled it open. (It was a sticky and temperamental door, especially in wet weather.) As soon as the knob turned and the latch freed itself from the frame, the wind pushed the door open and the family discovered they had opened the wrong door.

The family rushed to the front door and also jostled it open. (It refused to be bested by the back door. Especially in wet weather.) Again, they found nothing. But the noise—the demand—was louder. So the boy, the quintessential middle child who was always running ahead, walked out into the snow and peered into the juniper bushes that lined the front of the house. He was still holding his fork and began to prod the bushes—apparently prodding the quiche had not been enough for him.

That was how he found the cat.

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