Sam
John and Anita moved into the house behind mine seven years ago. Just another young couple starting out. She was always cheerful and worked as a vet tech while continuing her schooling. She kept up the hope that one day she would be an actual veterinarian. John had moved them here because he had gotten a job at the local factory. He seemed a good match for her, open and friendly. The pair were quickly considered a part of the community. Three years later he was a manager, and she found Sam.
He was found hiding behind a trash can, a matted ball of fur hardly bigger than a hand. She cleaned him up, got him healthy and loved him with no reserve.Sam was something special, and she took better care of him than some people took care of their kids. Sam was more a dog than a cat in ways. Aloof? Nope.. strangers were just future minions to him. He grew to fifteen pounds of solid black fluff that had a tiny kitten mew and tail enough for two cats. If Anita was home he was right beside her. He made her life complete it seemed. Even John seemed to adore that furry comedian.
Sam was the highlight of my day sometimes. If the day was nice when she came home she would have dinner on the patio and Sam would chase imaginary mice about the back yard we shared. He would come racing up to me chirping with little kitten mews. Leaping up into the chair with me flopping upside down, back legs against the chair back and head on my knee. He would grab my arm so I would pet his throat and purr like a Harley engine.
Then there were the stories about life with Sam, such as the day he mistook bubbles for a solid surface. Bath time went from relaxing to life threatening to hear the story from John as Anita blushed. Then got revenge telling the tale of him leaping into the shower, and John fleeing the bathroom wrapped in the torn down shower curtain. I got to witness the poodle encounter, a tiny black as he fluff ball. Sam ran up to it thinking "Hey a cat friend like me!" Then it barked. Sam managed to triple in size, forget how to walk and sound like a kitten being murdered all at the same time. The poodle just sat with head tilted and one ear lifted. I suppose it was trying to figure out what was happening.
Then Anita tried gardening. He helped.. honest. Caught bugs, got stung by a bee, managed to roll the sprouts flat repeatedly. But a few things survived him and grew. That was when he started bringing me gifts. Having a cat pawing at your patio door while holding a green bean, or a cherry tomato is a sure way to lighten your mood. Watching him drag a whole carrot, top and everything across the yard had John and I both laughing. Anita not so much. Seemed the only thing in her garden he left alone was catnip plants. At one point he even brought me a cucumber, you know that thing that cats are suppose to be terrified of?
Life was good, till a year ago. John lost his job when the factory closed down. So did a a few hundred people, hit the area hard. First few months were still good, he had hope, but it faded. Then he found a friend in liquor. First time I saw Anita sitting out on her deck at two am holding Sam close and crying I knew that something was really wrong. Over the next months her nocturnal sessions increased. The yelling seemed nightly. And I almost went insane the first time I saw Anita with a black eye. She said to hold off, John wasn't like this. Once he was working again, life would be normal.
Only he wasn't even looking anymore. Anita quit school. She worked two jobs to keep the house going. John took up residence in a local bar. She kept trying to make the marriage work out. Even attending the new church he had found on Sundays. Some sort of bible beating ultra religious thing that believe men could do no wrong. On those days I had Sam so that he wasn't trapped alone all day. Truth is she had started trying to keep Sam out of John's sight. Even after church he would come home and rant nonsense from the bible.
Her caution was needed as it turned out. Somehow John had it in his head that he had been cursed. That something evil was in the house, some token of bad luck. He was set on purging anything from the house that might be considered unholy. One night he decided Sam was the cause. An evil black cat had to be what was cursing him. He had managed to kick Sam before Anita could stop him. Bruised but not badly injured by some stroke of luck. Anita had to finally admit there was a real problem.
Anita brought him to me crying her eyes out the next day. She didn't dare leave Sam alone with John anymore. She couldn't let him be hurt. Sam liked me and I loved him almost as much as she did. It took two stumbling trips to bring everything to me. At least this way she knew he was safe, loved, could see him. I watched her heart breaking as she walked out. Mine did as he ran to the patio door and pawed at, the tiny distressed mews turned into actual yowls. She was Sam's world. Every evening while John was at the bar she came sneaking in, apologizing for disturbing me all the time. I told her if she didn't come Sam would make it impossible to sleep.
She lost weight, gained more bruises, sometimes she would just slide down to the floor and hold Sam like an infant. Both of them needed that comfort. John came home earlier than usual one night, pounding on my back door screaming about killing Sam. That the cat was evil. All black cats were bad luck, witches. Kill Sam and he would be able to get a job again. If it hadn't been for the cat that Anita would have given him a son like a proper wife.
I called the police while Anita cringed holding Sam in the bathroom. They took him away for the night and filed a restraining order for all the good that did.
I came home a week later to my back patio door busted in and Sam dead on my kitchen table. That sick bastard had beaten the cat against every surface of my kitchen. Blood and black fur everywhere, then pinned the remains to my table with a butcher knife. I sent the police to Anita's work. I tried to clean it up, keep her from seeing it. But the moment the police came she ran to my house. I had seen her heart break, now I was watching her soul shatter. She cradled the mangled body against her and just rocked back and forth. I swore I heard her humming.
The police followed, even they looked sickened by the sight. They called an ambulance when it became clear Anita was in severe shock. It was in a way a miracle. Had they not been standing there with us. Had they not seen that Anita was in an almost catatonic state.. then we might have been murder suspects.
But they were there when we heard the shouting, the glass breaking. One lifted Anita up and ran to the front yard, his partner calling desperately for additional back up. Gun drawn and covering our retreat from my house. He sat her down in the back seat of his patrol car, pushing at her to lie down. I got in on the other side, I pressed her down, covering her head with my body, trying not to retch at the scent of blood and death from the thing in her arms that had been Sam.
Chaos.. more sirens, lights, screaming and shouting, gunfire. I lost all track of time as I tried to protect, comfort Anita in that too hard back seat of the squad car. She never stopped the odd humming, never reacted to the sounds and lights. Even when it was finally quiet we were locked in the car. Eventually a pale deputy arrived, shaking as she opened the car. Paramedics pulled Anita out, she was limp and they were able to remove the feline body from her grasp. I wrapped him up in a towel one of the officers had fetched from my bathroom.
I finally learned a bit of what had happened. John was in their house, tearing it apart screaming he was going to kill that damn cat again till it stayed dead. And Anita as well, something about a bible verse. He had been shooting at shadows in the house, I asked if they had fired back and the officer shook his head. "Looked like he started slashing his face to ribbons with something. Right before we kicked the door down, he slashed his throat with it. They are looking for it now. Almost would say a cat's claws, if the paw was the size of a human hand. We will find it I'm sure."
Anita was sedated and taken to the hospital. I with the help of one of the officers took Sam's body to one of his favorite hiding places in my back yard and buried him under the lilac bush. No one wanted to treat him as evidence, and no one wanted Anita to have to see that wreck of a body again. Next day a group of my co workers and Anita's came over. They scrubbed my kitchen, repainted, threw away the table, replaced the patio door. Did everything we could to erase the night before. As long as you didn't look across the yard and see the bloody hand prints on the windows of that house, and the fluttering yellow tape. I walked over and looked through one of the windows. Something was written in blood on one wall, Exodus 22:18.
Anita was released from the hospital, with no home to return to. So I took her in, at first I wondered if she really could handle being in the house Sam was murdered in, looking at the home that her dead husband had destroyed. She was still very groggy, the doctor gave me instructions for the sedatives to keep her on till she had a chance to start coping on her own. She went straight to the kitchen, smelling of fresh paint and Lysol. She opened the patio and for a moment I thought would walk toward her old home. Instead she sat down in the chair she always took when visiting. I wondered if I should show her where Sam was buried at. Then she trilled, that odd sound she always made to call him. I wanted to cry. I wanted to wrap arms about her and tell her to stop it. But a tiny squeaky mew more of a kitten sound than a full grown cat answered. A muddy Sam came racing through the yard and leaped up into her lap. She buried her face in the fur and cried.
I was in shock, over joyed this rare and special cat was alive. He hadn't been able to catch Sam, had instead caught another black cat, that was why he had beaten the body to make it unrecognizable. He wanted to torture Anita, HAD tortured her. I did hug her and that filthy cat. She looked at me, "Sam's back."
"He needs a bath." I was laughing to keep from crying. "And I have a feeling he will require a blood sacrifice for that."
"No.. he wants to be clean too." She was smiling with the look of a proud mother at the purring green eyed cat.
Days later, the police released the house. A company came in and cleaned and removed all evidence of the gruesome suicide. Anita said she would like to remodel it seeing as it was almost gutted now. I was shocked she was willing to move back into it. But she said it was her home, and Sam's. I was mowing the yard while she talked with a contractor. I noticed the disturbed area beneath the lilac bush. The other cat I thought, poor thing. Was someone out there looking for it? I should contact the local animal control. I then noticed.. it was dug up.. no.. it looked like something had crawled out of it. The dirt pushing out over the mulch rather than scraped away.
I went back into the house. The bloody words I had seen written on one wall through the window the morning after. *Exodus* 22:18, the bible was on the top shelf of my [bookcase](https://gelfwyn.wordpress.com/) , a little neglected and dusty.
*Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.*
I heard Sam chirp and looked to see Anita standing there with him, "John was an idiot, only a human can be a witch."