Chapter 1: The Cat Distribution System

Chapter 1: The Cat Distribution System

The city exhaled a damp, chilled breath, smelling of wet pavement and exhaust fumes. Streetlights cast a sickly orange glow on the slick asphalt, blurring the edges of the world into a watercolor of a dreary autumn night. Elara huddled deeper into her coat, her arm linked through Liam’s. The dinner with his boss had been exactly as she’d predicted: a three-hour marathon of forced smiles and stilted conversations about quarterly reports.

“I think I successfully pretended to care about logistics for a solid forty-five minutes,” Liam said, his voice a low rumble beside her. “That’s got to be a new record.”

Elara managed a tired smile. “You were very convincing. I almost believed you knew what a ‘supply chain bottleneck’ was.”

“Hey, I do,” he protested, feigning offense. “It’s… a bottleneck. For supplies.”

She laughed, the sound small and swallowed by the city’s hum. Their apartment building was just around the corner, a warm beacon in the cold night. It was their sanctuary, a cozy world of their own making, filled with half-finished design projects on her desk and the faint, pleasant scent of sawdust from his woodworking hobby. All she wanted was to kick off her shoes, pull on her favorite hoodie, and forget the outside world existed.

That’s when they heard it.

It wasn’t the typical, plaintive meow of a stray. It was a single, peculiar chirp, like a rusty hinge, that cut through the monotonous drone of traffic. It came from the narrow, ink-black alley between a laundromat and a boarded-up butcher shop.

Liam paused, his head tilted. “Probably just a rat.”

“No,” Elara whispered, her artist’s ear catching the strange inflection. “That wasn’t a rat.” She felt an irrational pull toward the sound, a tug of empathy that always seemed to override her common sense. She unlinked her arm from his and took a step toward the darkness.

“Elara, come on. It’s late,” Liam said, his voice laced with practicality. “It’s a dirty alley. It could have… I don’t know, diseases.”

But she was already peering into the gloom, her eyes adjusting to the dim light spilling from the street. There, sitting in the center of a soggy cardboard box, was a creature that seemed assembled from the leftover parts of other cats. Its fur was a chaotic patchwork of tabby stripes, calico splotches, and solid black. Its ears were too large for its head, tufted at the tips like a lynx’s, and its paws were disproportionately big, as if it still had some growing to do.

And its eyes. They were enormous, perfectly round, and so dark they seemed to drink the light. As Elara stared, the cat didn't hiss, it didn't cower, it didn't even blink. It just watched her, its gaze unnervingly intelligent and still.

“Oh, Liam, look at him,” she breathed, her heart clenching.

Liam sighed, the sound of defeat, and came to stand beside her. He shone his phone’s flashlight into the box. The beam illuminated the cat's bizarre features, making its glassy eyes gleam. “He’s… something, alright. Looks like he lost a fight with a lawnmower.”

Despite the jab, the creature remained motionless, its weirdly oversized head tilted. Elara reached a hesitant hand forward. The cat didn’t flinch. Its fur was matted and thin in places, and it was bone-thin under her fingers.

“We can’t just leave him,” she said, her decision made.

“El, we can’t just take in every stray we find. We don’t know anything about it.”

“Just for tonight,” she pleaded, turning to face him, her own eyes wide. “It’s going to freeze. We can take him to a shelter in the morning. Please?”

Liam looked from Elara’s earnest face to the freakishly calm cat and back again. He knew he’d already lost. “Fine. Just for tonight. But I’m not cleaning up its mess.”

Carefully, Elara scooped the surprisingly light animal into her arms. It didn’t struggle. It just settled against her coat, its strange, unblinking eyes now fixed on Liam as they walked the final half-block home.

Inside their apartment, the creature—which they quickly decided to call Jinx, given the odd circumstances of their meeting—began to explore. Its movements were what struck Elara first. They were utterly silent. It padded across the hardwood floors without a single click of its claws, a furry ghost gliding through their space.

“Check this out,” Liam murmured, pointing from the couch.

Jinx was sitting at the base of their tallest bookshelf, a floor-to-ceiling unit packed with art books and Liam’s engineering texts. It stared upwards for a long moment. Then, in a single, fluid motion that seemed to defy gravity, it leaped. There was no preparatory crouch, no gathering of haunches. It simply launched itself from a sitting position straight to the top shelf, landing with the softest thump, not a single bookend disturbed.

“Whoa,” Elara said, her jaw slightly agape. “That was… impressive.”

Jinx surveyed the room from its new perch, its oversized ears swiveling independently. Then it began its game.

It would fix its gaze on one of them and take a single, stealthy step forward. But the second they turned their head to look directly at it, it would freeze, one disproportionately large paw held mid-air, its body rigid. It held the pose, a living statue, until they looked away. Then, the silent advance would continue.

“It’s like a real-life game of Red Light, Green Light,” Liam chuckled, amused. “He’s a weird little guy, isn’t he?”

They laughed, charmed by the cat’s quirks. They gave him food, which he devoured with a quiet intensity, and a bowl of water. That night, they made him a small bed in a corner of the living room, but when Elara woke in the middle of the night for a glass of water, she found him sitting at the foot of their bed, a dark, motionless silhouette in the moonlight, his round eyes gleaming. Just watching. She shivered, but told herself it was just a cat getting used to a new place.

The next morning, Liam left for work, reminding her to call the shelter. Elara, a freelance designer, settled in at her desk, Jinx curled on a nearby rug. A few hours into her work, she glanced down and noticed something odd. Yesterday, when she had picked him up, she’d felt a patch on his back where the fur was thin and matted, the skin beneath it pink and raw. She leaned down to check on it.

The patch was gone.

In its place was a swatch of thick, jet-black fur, so sleek and healthy it looked like velvet. It didn't match the chaotic patterns of the rest of his coat at all. It was… new. She tentatively touched it. It felt unnaturally soft, impossibly fresh. A cold knot formed in her stomach. How could fur grow back that fast?

Her eyes darted to his paws, the ones that had seemed too big for his body. His claws were visible, extended just slightly from the furry sheaths. They looked longer than she remembered. Sharper. As she stared, mesmerized by a growing sense of dread, one of the claws retracted. It didn't slide back smoothly. It pulled in with a faint but distinct snickt, a sound that was less organic and more mechanical.

A noise. A predator's tool, being put away.

Her phone buzzed on the desk beside her. A text from Liam.

Did you call the shelter yet? Don’t get too attached!

Elara stared at the creature, who stared back at her with those bottomless, all-seeing eyes. The word “shelter” echoed in her mind, but it no longer sounded like a solution. It sounded like a horribly naive, dangerously inadequate idea. She was attached, alright. Attached by a thread of ice-cold fear.