The dead cat in a hat

The sun did not shine,
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house,
All that cold, wet day.

I sat there with Sally,
We sat there in dread.
There was something that stank,
It was under the bed.

We were too scared to look,
But we both had a clue.
What was under the bed?
I think we both knew.

Daddy could be scary
After we went to bed.
I had the worst feeling,
That the thing there was dead.

We sat by the bed,
We sat very still.
I thought of my friend
That I met by the sill.

She's so cute and so small,
Like a kitten should be.
A sweet little thing
When she looked up at me.

One night I fed her,
The smallest of treats.
Little did I know,
That I woke up the beast.

The next time she came back
She gave out a squeak.
The smallest of sounds,
It was barely a peep.

That was enough
for Daddy to wake.
When Daddy wakes up
He makes the earth quake.

He got out his belt,
He stomped down the stairs.
I could feel every step,
From my toes to my hair.

I lay in my bed,
Sweating and shaking.
Then I heard a snap,
Like something was breaking.

Sally and I sat
At the foot of the bed.
There was a cat in a hat,
And I knew it was dead.

The cat had been slain with a knife and carefully arranged in a man's hat before being presented upon the garden path of its owner's house. The children found it the next day, a Sunday, when they were going out to buy ice cream. The ice-cream man, parked down the street, heard the screams and smiled for a moment thinking that good custom was coming his way.

But then he heard the proverbial wailing and gnashing of teeth and thought for one horrible, surreal, eternal moment that somehow he'd brought his van to rest on a child's body. The reality - after he'd exited his vehicle, frantically checked it for blood and gore, and then ran over to the garden to see the source of the commotion - was a little better, but not by much.

What he found was a little girl on her knees, rocking back and forth, cradling the body of a mottled-brown female cat, moaning 'Bellsie... Bellsie...' (the cat's name, as it happened, was Bells). Blood leaked onto her simple gingham dress. The scene looked to Simon, the ice-cream man, who was only 22 and from a good Catholic home, like a blasphemous mockery of the pietà. He blinked the association from his mind and focused on the hat, before registering a little boy's voice coming from the house, screaming 'MUM DAD! MUM DAD!' over and over again. Almost in syncopation with his sister. Grotesque choral music.

Someone had called the police and now the garden was filling up. Simon backed away, placing his smartphone back in his pocket since someone else had beaten him to the call. As he wandered dazedly back to the van and got his keys out to start the engine, having now dispensed with any ideas of profit, he reflected on the voice of the little boy. Climbing into the cab, he rested his forehead against the steering wheel. 'MUM DAD! MUM DAD!' The recording played over and over again as if he was still hearing it from outside his own head. For some reason, it was more insistent than the plaintive 'Bellsie... Bellsie..' The voice of the girl was pathetic, the voice of the boy was... something else.

'Excited' Simon murmured. He sat up and took a deep breath, surprised a little by the word. When he was a boy himself, his mother had taken him to a conference of local women and talked about his "special gift". Being only five at the time, he'd been excited to receive a new toy, his little ears perking up and his mind forming an image of a shiny new digger with Bob the Builder sitting in its cab. But then a middle-aged woman, with bone-white hair and the most enormous bosom he'd ever seen, started talking about proximity to the "true cross".

His mother then shared a story that he still found embarrassing, and he wriggled on her lap as she told it again. 'There was a boy at his school, quiet as anything, who never made trouble but didn't have any friends either. Well, my Simon just went up and hugged him one day, even when the other boys started teasing him. It turned out later that the boy's dad was a mean drunk. Social services got involved, but of course, I couldn't tell them about Simon.'

A very thin woman, whose skin reminded Simon of wastepaper, asked if she could place a hand on his forehead. To his disgust, his mother immediately agreed, and so he suffered the crinkled flesh. And it was worth it in the end because of what it clarified in his mind.

A banging on the side of the cab. Simon was startled away from his reverie to see a policeman, who was now gesturing for him to lower the window. 'Don't think you're gonna get much business from the kiddies, mate' he said. He was a large man with a moustache and looked a bit like the sort of Philistine police chief that's a staple of American cop films, incongruous on a British street, in official blue togs. Simon smiled. 'Don't suppose I will' he said, and then, bizarrely (and followed by immediate regret), 'do you want anything?'

'Only for you to move along, son' he said, although not unkindly.

'Of course' said Simon, and put the key in the engine lock. 'I'm sorry. I, erm, I saw what happened.'

The policeman narrowed his eyes for a moment. 'Did you now?' he said, placing a hand on the window and tightening his grip. 'And what exactly did you see?'

The boy, thought Simon. I saw the boy take his dad's hat from the master bedroom, and then a knife from the kitchen, and then he slit poor little Bells' throat. Why? Because the last time that an ice-cream man came to this street his sister got ice cream and he didn't, because he'd been naughty, and his sister tried not to gloat but she couldn't help it. And he watched her from the living room and got angrier and angrier and angrier...

'Son?' The policeman. 'Are you okay? Do you need a paramedic?'

'No' said Simon, 'I'm sorry, it's just...' He creased his brow and thought for a second about how he should phrase what he said next. 'I didn't see much today' he said. 'But yesterday when I was driving around I saw a little lad chasing a cat. Now that I think about it, he might have had a knife.'

Ashes, of what were his life
more than just a faithful true companion
I keep him in an urn of white
to my furry friend, I post this anthem

The greeting of his force 10 purr
at feeding time he would clean out the tin
for he was a cat-food raconteur
finish it off with a Cheshire catgrin

My whisky's spirit, it lingers still
his personal pride, would be my guide
to [u]clean up well[u]when lethargy was top of my bill
so sleek of coat and worn with pride

Out of the blue he adopted me
threw in his hat, and sensed my need
his eyes still haunting with quiet plea's
for friendships ties, I rejoice, and not grieve

Always with a cocky air, Trilby not quite square
now a sense of emptiness pervades
to smile when tears have dried, and seek repair
his hat proudly sit, on his urn to this day

He was Out on the townon a neighbours lawn
on Novembers dark, dank, Halloween
trick and treat, saw his last day dawn
a cruel demise that the fates had deemed

Malevolence, just fun as children thought
trapped my Whiskey inside an old oak vat
just faint meows, for days so distraught
I searched in vain, but no sign of my cat

Spotted his hat abandoned on the path
rescued him, so thin and so frail
he failed, but showed bravery to the last
his presence ever near, dust scattered by a ghostly tail

 
Last night, peering behind the mysterious veils of my subconscious, twists of dark magic bled a new instigation of abysmal dismay…
 
The abyss produces a dimly lit stage, where a black cat is conjured with a punctured festering wound. Bubbling with green-yellow pus, acerbic stenches ooze from the infected orifice. Brittle and rigid in skeletal display, as though rigor mortis grips its very will, the manged animal is submerged into a steaming pool of blood-red wine within the witch’s hat. A hideous gimp woman enters scene, approaches, and observes hauntingly to an out-drawn soul: “Oh child, look - it doesn’t hurt…” With an evil glisten in her vacant eyes, her lips moisten and a toothy grin grows, as she churns the cavity in her brewing familiar with swift pounds of her razor-knuckled fist. Crazed and demented, the dingy feline suddenly thrashes wildly, clawing out clumps of its own entrail-matted fur in frantic desperation. Though howls and hisses appear to escape from the feral beast, they remain silent to the audience, who are now suffocated hostages gripping at crucifixes in witness to such abhorrent mutilation. Ever deep, the trembling creature’s wound deepens endless; a sustained blood flow, sticky thick yet unclotting. Then a young timid girl appears from the shadows, crying in despair at the repulsive carnage. She implores the crone to cease the despicable torture, but the wicked hag fervently persists, relishing in the torment. When the initiation peels taut every last nerve, mourns of the child echo in the sacrifice’s pulsating death rattle. Licking at the afterbirth, the poisoned spirit of the demonic cat cradles her newly accursed pet girl in silhouetted disdain, but the wretched gore remains.
 
And I awake, to the smothering darkness, of a dreadfully hopeless soulless fate…

It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen
The dead cat in her hat
Lying next to the queen
A lantern was lit
That exposed where her brain had exploded
And left her twisted body quite eroded

It's so hard to be sure
What actually happened that night
To make the queen and her cat
Be brutally bludgeoned like that
For the kitty's eyes were missing
And it's tongue had turned black

Was it the queen or her cat
That first met their demise
No one could tell from the Queen's half opened eyes
Which one was the intended target that night
But whatever they saw brought each to death's door
Not a breath would be taken by either one anymore