Tag Archives: cats

Something Old, Something Stolen, and a Dead Cat

dales office

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Fifteen-year-old Daphne plopped herself down on the chair next to the table.

“This is stupid.” She blew a random cluster of hair out of her eyes. “We’re looking for an old book, not old junk. What is this crud?”

The backpack at her feet stirred and Skinner’s head lolled awkwardly to the side. “That ancient tech would be an adding machine and a typewriter.”

“How would a sorcerer’s familiar know that?”

“The spirit trapped in this dead cat knows a lot,” Skinner croaked.

“My great-grandma better have that stolen spellbook or we’ll never get you out of that murdered kitty.”

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With Two Cats and a Flood

NC flood

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“Our house, is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats and a flood…”

He stopped singing the old song and listened to the water coursing down the street.

“Sure, I’ve been stuck on the floor days, your food has run out, and no one can get here to help, but we have each other.”

Chloe and Spike had been sitting on the coffee table staring at him for hours. He’d fallen out of his wheelchair and his usual attendant couldn’t get to the house.

The cats looked hungry and as he said, the food had run out.

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My Short Story “The Haunted Detective’s Cat” Has Been Accepted Into the Anthology “Moggie Noir 2”

moggie noir 2

Proposed cover art for the Raconteur Press anthology “Moggie Noir 2.”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Raconteur Press has just accepted my short story “The Haunted Detective’s Cat” for their upcoming anthology “Moggie Noir 2” (title and cover image subject to change).

The basic requirements are “crime noir” and “a cat.” A moggie or moggy is:

…an informal British term for a cat, especially one that does not have a pedigree or is otherwise unremarkable.

My story involves San Francisco Private Detective Marguerite “Margie” Potter set in the summer of 1948. Here’s a small sample:

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Familiar

girl and cat

– PrettyScary @ Deviantart

Christina rubbed her soft, feline fur against Gwendolyn’s face as the ten-year-old girl looked into the distance at nothing and everything.

“Yes, I can see it now, too, dearest.” The child was entranced at the interplay between energies from four of the ten dimensions.

“Silly little one, Christina chided. I detected the intermix ages ago.” In mid-sentence, the white cat’s tone changed from one of annoyance to affection, for she dearly loved the girl, and she always would.

“That’s because you are wise.” To anyone looking at the scene, the fifth grader was lying on her bed on a lazy Wednesday afternoon after school, contemplating gray clouds which threatened rain later in the evening. Yet gazing into her eyes, it would have been easy to tell that they might as well have been blind, at least to anything in the so-called “real world.”

“It’s best not to get too lost in the vision, my sweet, lest you lose your way and be forever swept into other spaces.”

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Buster’s Mystery

kitten

MorgueFile 1449286229de9o8

Buster slipped his head out of the partly open library doors when he heard the front door open. Maybe the Man had finally come home. The automations regularly refilled his food and water bowls and cleaned the litter box, but he missed the Man’s warm lap, his soft words, and the touch of his hands on the cat’s fur.

“Buster.”

It called his name but it wasn’t the Man. In fact it wasn’t a man at all. It was one of the Man’s machines but this one walked on legs like the Man.

“Ah, there you are.” Buster cowered and then hissed. The man-machine squatted down and its almost man voice sounded kind. “I won’t hurt you. I’ve come to take care of you.”

Before Buster could run, the man-machine moved faster than even he could and scooped him up. The cat loudly protested until the fingers of the man-machine found the spot on his tummy where he loved to be rubbed.

ns4

Model NS4 robot from the 2004 film “I, Robot.”

“There, there, Buster. It will be okay. I’m sorry Dr. Lanning won’t be coming home anymore but we’ve got a mystery to solve. You, me, and Detective Baley must find out who murdered Alfred Lanning.”

I wrote this for the Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner for 2018: Week #11. The idea is to use the image at the top to inspire the authoring of a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 197.

A cat? You want me to write a story about a cat? I don’t do cute cat videos.

Okay, I’ll make this work.

Unfortunately, the first thing that popped into my head was the 2004 film I, Robot starring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, and James Cromwell as Dr. Alfred Lanning.

In one scene, Detective Del Spooner (Smith) goes to Lanning’s house looking for clues as to Lanning’s death and in the process, he finds Lanning’s cat.

So I adapted the scene to this challenge using elements of the film and Isaac Asimov’s first “robots” detective novel The Caves of Steel. Technically, the events in that novel occurred well after Lanning’s death in the Asimov stories, but this is fiction after all.

The human detective in “Steel” is Elijah Baley and his humanoid robot partner is R. Daneel Olivaw (The “R” in his name indicates he’s a robot). In my story, I imagined Olivaw to appear completely robotic, something like the NS4 models in the 2004 movie (see above).

To read other stories based on the prompt or to post your own (please), go to InLinkz.com.