PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The cat Nicodemus was not much of a playmate but spent most of its time curled up amongst the stuffed animals at the head of the girl's bed. Had it not been for the confirmed purring and occasional ear twitch it might have been mistaken for one itself. Luxurious of ebony fur, adroit when it was of a notion to be, the cat was a fair hunter, often leaving mangled corpses of mice beside its food dish in trade for something more amenable to its finicky tastes. 

It was her mother's cat really and in the years between her birth until she was old enough to know how to look after it, the wretched thing roamed the house periodically emitting whiny yowls that were so unnerving the cook would throw it outside only to have it stand by the kitchen door yowling even louder to be let back in. He regularly threatened to make stew out of it if it didn't shut up, though would never do so as the lady of the house had been very fond of it and he in turn had been very fond of her. Indeed in the interim following her death, when melancholy was cast upon the household, Nicodemus mourned its mistress as much as, if not more so than everyone else and it had fallen on the cook to care for the cat as all the other servants were conscripted to the care of Mr. Fisher and his motherless child. Fortunately for all of them Mrs. Fisher had had the foresight to instate a nanny before the dreadful day she exchanged her life for her newborn daughter's. What that nanny knew that no one else did, not even Mr. Fisher, was that his wife had of late been attending seances at the London home of a well-known medium and was aware of her own impending demise. Also that Nicodemus could see as clearly as she that although Mrs. Fisher's body was entombed in the family's mausoleum at Kensal Green, her spirit had not left the family's house.