A Writing Excercise — Song Fiction based on Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure

“Have you seen my cat? He’s got a red collar and a silver bell and he has a name, he’s called Merlin. He’s got a white star on his black coat and his name is Merlin.”

I asked the question over and over. People shook their heads and hurried away. Sometimes, when there were no people to ask, I raised my head and called for Merlin, my dear old cat, Merlin who wandered off the day before yesterday and who hadn’t come back.

I looked at the photo I held in my hands. It showed him hissing in my mother’s arms at another cat because he never had learned how to get along with anybody else. His jaws were huge and pink and his fangs were lion’s teeth, only smaller.

His eyes were slits of green.

He’d always liked going outside, and he’d always come back before — but not this time. I couldn’t find him and I wanted to — I wanted to hug him, crush him in my arms, hear his little bell tinkle as he struggled to get away.

It began to snow, but I continued on. My coat kept my fingers warm and kept the photo from getting wet. There weren’t many people now. They didn’t like the snow.

Merlin didn’t like the snow either. But when I returned to the house, thinking that he may have been driven home by the snow, he wasn’t there. There weren’t even little kitty prints in the snow that covered the driveway.

I thought I heard the tinkle of a bell, but it was just the wind chimes.

“Merlin!” I called. The word echoed from house to house but only the snow heard it.

The snow stopped the next day. I went out to look again, but nobody had seen a cat with a white star on his black coat, and no cat answered to my call.

School started a few days later. I didn’t have time to look for him, but I never forgot how he’d sometimes climb onto my lap, nuzzle his nose against my palm, knead his paws against my skin.

One day, I found a little red collar with a silver bell attached to it in the mud. It was threadbare, and the silver didn’t reflect my face anymore. I called and called for him, but I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him purr.

I brought a small bowl of cat food to the spot, and waited for him to come to me. But no cat did and then it was night and I had to go.

The next morning, the plate was empty, but there wasn’t a cat in sight, not a cat with a white star.

I refilled the bowl, and watched from a distance.

Tabbies with pieces of ear missing came and stole a bite or two, before a bigger cat came along. Those took bigger bites until the food was almost gone.

No cats came for a long time, but then a small black shadow snuck towards it, touched its pale pink tongue to the bowl, and began to lick the crumbs from the bottom.

There was a white star on its dirty black chest.

“Merlin?” I asked.

He froze and looked at me, dark pupils swallowing the green of his eyes.

I stepped slowly towards him, hand outstretched. “Merlin?”

He crouched — I recognized the posture, the posture he used to jump away when he was afraid, when he saw a particularly large dog or a person he didn’t care to sniff.

I stopped. “Merlin?”

He bounded away on skinny legs and became part of the shadows.

“Merlin!” I shouted.

But he didn’t come back. I clenched the collar with the silver bell in my hand.

I took the bowl away after that, and refilled it. I made sure there’s food in it every day. Sometimes I saw my old cat Merlin, and sometimes I didn’t.

I haven’t seen him for an awful long time now.

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