Silence of the Statuary Cats

Copyright 2006 Bart Stewart

“All right then, where are they? ... Did they just get up and walk away?”

In the depths of the storage facility for the Smithsonian Institution’s Antiquities Museum, a red-faced rage had come over Tuft, the new weekend manager. What was supposed to have been a tranquil job, gentle on his nerves, had proven to be one wrangle after another for him. Now, halfway into this Saturday, two artifacts were missing, probably due to theft.

He assembled the skeleton staff that had been working in the building that day, two maintenance men and the paunchy, elderly security guard. Figurines and trinkets from various bygone civilizations sat on metal shelving all around them, making the vacant spot seem all the more conspicuous. Tuft pointed a damning finger at the empty shelf section.

“Those cat sculptures were sitting right here this morning when I came in. Not four hours ago I saw them. Now, where are they?”

The faces of the maintenance workers were as bereft as the shelf. The security guard wore an expression that said he understood he only had to hear just so much of that tone of voice from this man on this job, and he that he had almost reached the cut off point. The weekend manager carried on,

“Okay! We were the only ones in the building today. That can be verified. So I want to know about this right now ... Where are they?!”

Nobody knew.

The security guard spoke up, pointing out that the two statues in question were each nearly three feet high and solid stone. They would be just heavy enough to make them difficult to carry out. Most likely they were still here in the facility somewhere. Maybe they had been moved for some reason other than theft. When Tuft challenged him to come up with a good explanation, he could not. But he had more to say,

“Why is there nothing else missing, aside from those carved cats? Isn’t this Mayan comb here made of solid gold? Why did nothing else get grabbed?”

(Forward a few pages)

The young man stood with a box of dog biscuits in his hand, looking first at his retreating shepherd, and then turning to view the creatures staring back at him across the lawn in the mist. Two pairs of eyes burned steadily at him, holding him as if frozen in an apprehensive trance. They broke away then, moving off simultaneously the way they had been going before. They passed under more bushes and emerged onto a city sidewalk. Soon a grimy, deserted commercial area was unfolding around the trotting cats.

They made their way with purpose down a street of closed businesses, hugging close to storefronts and security gratings as they passed. Pigeons and other small animals vanished. A white plastic bag rolling in the wind caught their attention for a moment, and then they continued on in the muted light of the overcast day.

Across the street on the next block, a bearded homeless man pushing a grocery cart stopped at the sight of them. His expression went from blank to aghast as he watched their approach. He paused, then stepped into the street and spontaneously launched into a frenzied, screaming tirade of religious denunciations.

“Hell spawn! The Lord God rebukes thee!” he shrieked, “Beasts of Satan! Thy wickedness shall be bound!”

The cats regarded him for an instant and kept moving.

“Demons! Thou shalt be cast into the pit! The outer darkness!”

He hauled a Bible out of his flannel shirt and held it up as he reached back into his cart for a glass bottle. The cats had reached a point directly across the street from him.

“Devils!” he cried, and hurled the bottle at them.

It smashed on the curb throwing fragments everywhere. The cats hesitated for the briefest tick of time, and curved their path out onto the street where they came to a stop facing the scruffy man at a distance.

Gasping sharply, he was confronted by a new reality. He found himself looking around, as if for another person or a car, or at least an open doorway. There were none of these. But there was a narrow alley, and now he bolted for it.

The faint pattering of small padded feet on asphalt was audible to him above the sound of his own running feet and wheezing breath. He did not dare to look back, but poured it on, running faster than he had since his teens. He knew they were behind him, perhaps by mere seconds.

Dashing up the broken pavement of the alley he caught sight of what might save him. A vacant lot was just ahead with a cyclone fence around it. Awash in adrenalin, he tore forward, leapt onto the fence, scrambled up and fell over to the other side.

He lay on the dirt and beheld stark images straight out of his most fevered hallucinations. They were inches from his face; only the metal strands of the fencing held them off. They were silent, but their dark mouths hung open and long, sharp black teeth were in plain view.

One of them jammed a paw under the fence at him, dragging its claws across his shoulder and tearing his shirt. He rolled away weeping.

The other monstrous cat threw open its mouth and flared its eyes as if screaming at him. But only silence followed.

The mated pair then turned as one and walked back down the alley. The homeless man lay on the ground holding his shoulder and watched them walk away.

At the street they made a left turn and sauntered past his grocery cart down the sidewalk. A car shot through the intersection ahead. Across the street a man in dark glasses moved slowly along sweeping a white cane back and forth before him. He paused for a moment, listening.

At a tree by a three-story brick building the cats climbed up, transferred onto the roof, and continued on their way along the ledge.

There was a series of buildings of this same height, so they were able to traverse all the way to the corner, where they stopped and sat together, looking out onto the world.

They took interest in the activity going on in the park which spread out from the opposite corner. Even at this distance, birds, squirrels, and tiny chipmunks were easily discernable in their flawless vision. The quick, small movements they made held the cats transfixed. Other creatures passed in and out of view through the cover of leafy trees. Dogs on leashes trotted around chaotically. Mature humans and children accompanied the dogs, and wandered about on their own. All of these life forms were good, suitable food for the cats, and as they sat observing their motions from high above, a sense of superiority and ownership came upon the two predators.

(Moving forward)

Frankie said, “Bring back a few pounds of that fine Caribbean smoke, folks. I’ll need it for boot camp.”

His parents let the wisecrack drop, and after parting hugs and kisses, they settled into the limo. Frankie waved as they pulled out of the driveway. He turned and jauntily jogged back to the house.

“Come out, come out!” he called. A curvaceous young woman dutifully emerged from the nearby guest bathroom, and he took her in his arms.

“’Only got ten days,” he said, between kisses, “So we need to make it count.”

He put his hands on her round hips, and gently swiveled her body to and fro. Then he was fumbling with the buttons of her blouse. But she wanted music, and dancing. She pulled away from him and started looking through the selections on the sound system. Its cage door was unlocked and standing open.

Frankie quickly agreed to whatever pop ditties she wanted to hear and got her back in his arms again. The dancing that followed lasted only a few minutes.

With her blouse and his tee shirt together on the glass coffee table, the two lay on their sides, entwined together on the sofa. They stayed like that only briefly, as the side by side position did not accommodate Frankie’s aggressiveness. He forcefully pulled her underneath him and sprawled on top of her, his head floating through a flood of his favorite fantasies.

She moved to the music, making arousing sounds for him, and thinking ahead about where they might end up going for lunch today. She had some concern about the prospects of making love on this old sofa, which was apparently going to be happening sooner rather than later. Overall she was just pleased to be with this handsome, popular, powerful personality. Although she found herself imagining what it would be like if instead he was another young man she knew, who was not as good looking and charismatic, but was still a very sweet guy.

She played her fingers through his dark hair, and let her gaze wander around the ceiling and the framed art on the walls. He was wrestling with her jeans now, and it struck her that he might break the zipper. She whispered at him to be careful, and he reared up and kissed her passionately on the mouth. When her eyes opened again, her head was tilted in the direction of the bookcase, which stood behind the sofa. She dreamily passed her eyes along its shelves.

He felt her body stiffen suddenly, in a way he was not expecting. She gasped, in a harsh, horrified manner, “Let me up.” she said urgently, “Frankie ... Let me up!”

She began punching her small fists against his shoulder blades, and squirming toward the edge of the couch. He turned to his side and released her, and she was out from under him in an instant. Looking past him to the bookcase, she snatched up her blouse from the coffee table and began steadily backing away. He lay there for a few seconds, slightly stunned by this turn of events. To his amazement, she was trembling violently.

“Sweetheart, what in hell is going on? You’re covered in goose-bumps!” he said.

She made a superficial attempt at laughter, and said, “Let’s go upstairs to your room. Yeah, let’s go. Right now.”

He walked with her to the stair case at the side of the room, but then stopped and held her close for a moment, calming her. He asked her again what was wrong.

She nodded in the direction of the bookcase, and said softly,

“I saw that cat statue ... looking down at us.”

Frankie’s instincts were good enough to prevent him from laughing, or saying anything she might take as demeaning. So he said, “The cats’ eyes do seem to follow you around the room. It’s an optical illusion.”

“That’s not how it looked.” she said, hollowly, “It was looking down at us.”

They both gazed across the room at the antique bookcase, where the black stone cat sculptures sat on opposite ends of a shelf. They were sitting in the same place they had been for years, staring straight forward, heads held high.

Frankie just said, “Okay.”

He put his arm around her and the two of them walked up the stairs in silence. He thought to himself what a strange kid this one had turned out to be. Various psychological and hormonal conditions came into his mind as explanations. He had no intention of talking with her about it any further. Indeed, the incident would never be mentioned again. As they entered his room and closed the door, his only concern was for how he would ever get her back in the mood.

(Read the full story in Tales of Real and Dream Worlds)

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