Originally published in the short-lived Crossed Out, way back in 2013(!), this “catastrophe” of a story has always been a favorite of mine. The title credit goes to Katherine Dunn, who gave pretty much the best title advice in the world.
Paulette was down on her knee, her little heart-shaped face hopeful, dark hair slicked down for the occasion. She held out the red velvet box, the diamond like a madly twinkling eye.
I said Yes, but get up and stop perpetuating patriarchal tradition. Let’s go down to the Courthouse and not make a big deal about it.
The ring was too small. The gold bit into my finger. Paulette said, Let’s have dinner at Chez Noir—they’ve got duck tonight.
The next day, three black kittens turned up behind the garage where Paulette worked. Three weeks old, the color of ravens, they fit in the palm of one hand. When Paulette told me, I insisted we take them home. We named them after fallen angels: Lucifer, Zegaa and Astaroth. Paulette’s pointy pink tongue stuck out of her mouth when we bottle-fed them.
They shat under the furniture, fit through cracks in the walls, all night they wrestled and suckled one another’s bellies in their box beneath our bed. Where is their mother? everyone asked. What could we do but shrug, say, They’re gas-station babies. Abandoned. They had needy blue-milk eyes and tin-can cries. They grew quickly.
Then I found a family of five, a mother and kittens. Inky slinksters, living behind a dumpster. The mom and first three were easy to carry home. Paulette balked, but relented. A clowder, she said, proud to use the word. I stroked her pointy ears in thanks.
The fourth kitten eluded us. Snatched mackerel from our fingers and fled. We watched him for weeks. Woke at dawn to meet him for breakfast. Observed him one afternoon tucked behind a fence, carefully cleaning his balls. We wanted him. He refused us. We used the butt-end of brooms to flush him, sat long hours in wait.
At home, the cats infiltrated our recycling bucket and strewed sardine cans around the kitchen. Paulette said, This is madness.
A few days later, Paulette said, Enough is enough. No more cats. She pointed to the shredded curtains. I threw the diamond at her. I said, I’d rather have the kitten than your gaudy ring. She refused to speak to me for days.
I went to sleep behind the dumpster in my brother’s old army-issue sleeping bag. Eventually I tricked the elusive kitten into a pillowcase. Ran all the way home with him squirming in my arms. A perfect addition to our coterie, we named him Diablo. That night he chewed a hole in the yellow brocade chair; Paulette’s favorite.
The next black cat came solitary, under cover of night. My mother, visiting, noticed him. She called it Malpas, and pinky-swore me to continue his feeding. That covert soldier thanks us with beheaded chipmunks.
Soon after, there was a basket bundle on my sister’s doorstep. Not a baby but two—fluffy-ruffed changelings, green-eyed dark-furred shape-shifters. My sister called us, said, I don’t want any of this majick of yours. The Divine Feline got the wrong address.
We brought my sister a litter box, a case of wet food, and found her at her typewriter, plinking the metal keys, the kittens bedded in the unruly nest of her hair. One climbed down and perched on her shoulder, set up a cry like a stone bell. Paulette and I left the supplies and walked home holding hands.
For a while, Paulette was as happy with the dark collection of felines as I was. We added: There were the half-dozen found on the racetrack. The starving apparition with one white whisker. The thumbed twins with their oversized paws. The four half-Persian bastards our neighbor couldn’t sell.
Paulette got promoted to top mechanic, which helped with the food bills. But I wanted a bigger house. Ours felt stuffy; friends were declining our invitations to dinner.
Once we passed ten cats, it got hard to keep track. Paulette called them all Darkness. Darkness shattered the Ming vase. Darkness is in the refrigerator. I learned their faces—aquiline, boxy, wolfish, chiseled. I learned their habits: Ipos snoozed among Paulette’s leather-bound classics, occasionally nibbling the corners; Furfur the tiny yarn ball napped in the bathroom sink and clogged the drain.
Their purring was like a hive of bees. The neighbors called in complaints of sorcery whenever we let the herd into the yard. Every mouse within the square mile packed its bags. No one complained about that.
Birds fled too, except the crows, who filled the neighborhood with an unearthly racket each dawn. One morning I looked out and noticed the cats and the crows mingling. Azael stared at me from the circle, her green eyes aflash.
Paulette grew skittish—she began babbling about familiars. I didn’t mention the secrets the cats purred to me each night. It would only make her more nervous.
When the one-eyed tom showed up, Paulette said, No way. He’s weird looking—where’s his tail? But I immediately loved his battle scars, his weary face.He joined us, uneasily at first, until the afternoon I caught him curled up with Diablo on the mangled ottoman. I named him Beelzebub. Paulette said, This is getting to be too much. She said, Darkness is hanging from the ceiling fan. I told her to let poor Baraqijal alone.
The night I brought home Behemoth, I said, Let’s go to the Courthouse tomorrow and make this official. You’ve given me the diamond; time to make an honest woman of me. Behemoth knocked a lamp off a side table, splinters of bulb flew. Paulette screamed.
After I swept the shards and she took a sedative, Paulette said, I need more time—my hair needs to be dyed and I could stand to lose ten pounds. She wanted to look good in the photos she told me and I agreed. She patted Behemoth’s head, looked askance at his notched ear.
Then my long-lost aunt died and left me a million. The money came with a stipulation: her two cats, Snowy and Peaches, so named for their immaculate pelts. Paulette considered the trade-off and mewled, Might as well. What’s another two in this fray?
Snowy and Peaches stuck out like orange and white thumbs. They refused to mix with the clan. They established a little hut under my desk and hissed whenever the black cats came near. There’s a militia guarding the study, Paulette told me. One of the Darknesses bit my ankle when I tried to go in. Snowy and Peaches set hairball ambushes. At night there was yowling, attack growls, and one morning, old Beelzebub came to breakfast with a slice down the center of his nose. The cut oozed a hot pink.
Paulette said, This was a mistake. She buttered her toast. Eligor jumped on the counter and licked the knife while it slid over the bread.
Paulette said, We’re in over our heads. At night she surveyed the bed and complained, Where will I sleep?
Beelzebub stopped eating. We brought him to the vet, who palpated his wobbly belly and said, Something’s in there.
I paid for the surgery, despite Paulette’s wishes. I didn’t tell her that the engagement ring had gone missing. I didn’t I tell her how bemused the vet looked when she handed over the jewel in a tiny manila envelope. The diamond was unclouded, but the band had rusted along the bottom edge.
Beelzebub spent three weeks healing in the upstairs bathroom, lapping shredded chicken prepared specially for him while the cadre, minus Peaches and Snowy, cried lustily to join him. When his stitches were removed, he again took up his post by the study door.
One night Paulette said to me, You’ve got to cut your nails. They’re like claws. She was right, I saw, looking down at my hands where the diamond glittered obscenely.
I wasn’t surprised when I woke to find Paulette and the diamond gone. Not a bit surprised to find Chat Noir—we’d run out of fallen angel names, and he had a taste for baguette—chewing the note on the kitchen table: Had I known you were the Princess of Darkness, I never would have asked for your hand. Or should I say paw? Snowy and Peaches were no longer in the study; the joint checking account was drained.
The feline collective doesn’t seem to mind. They line up in the kitchen for breakfast; I toss them scraps of sirloin and serve their dry food in a custom-made silver trough.
The purring mass of black fur keeps me warm at night. They’re easy to share a bed with—they don’t snore, and they never complain if I do. I no longer need blankets or kisses or pillows, no longer worry about my breath in the morning or shaving my legs.