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HERE KITTY! KITTY! A Short story
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Short Stories We'd been in the house, in Port Stanley for a couple of days now. Willie was about the only one in the party that
went out of doors. The rest of us decided to stay put, in the relative safety within the four walls. Nobody knew what Willie did on his little trips out, that was his business. Perhaps he had become slightly claustrophobic. After all, we had spent considerable amount of time out of doors. As was said in the immortal film "Ice Cold In Alex", you never ask a man with a shovel in the middle of the night , where he's going.
Besides, it was supposed to be all over now, the biggest end - ex, since WW2. Quite honestly, there were a lot of
mines out there. We had done quite well up to now. Everybody was in one piece, well, their bodies were at least.
Who knew what went on inside anybody's head any more.
The house we were staying in, belonged to an oldish couple. I really don't think they were all that chuffed, about us living there. But we were the conquering heroes after all, so they couldn't exactly tell us to fuck off out of it. Which is, I'm quite sure , what they really wanted to do. The old girl said she was worried about her cat having something to eat, the poor little thing, and that was the only reason, that they had come back . That, and the fact we had managed to blow up a couple of houses and put lots of holes in them during the last final attacks. They wanted to see it was still standing.
Well, we had tried to feed it a couple of times. Opened a couple of tins of Argy beef, big chunks of beef in gravy.
We'd tasted it first of course, but it was too rich for our stomachs, and had given everyone who'd eaten it the shits. Secretly we hoped it would give the cat the shits to , but it wouldn't eat any of it. In fact, when the old dear saw what we were trying to give her cat, she mentioned that they had been quite short of food themselves. So we loaded up her and the old man, with all the unopened tins we had. Quite happy with all the free scoff we'd given, the cat was temporarily forgotten about.
They hadn't been gone all that long, when Willie returned, from one of his little trips out. After we'd told Willie about the old couple's visit and the attempts to feed their cat , he'd started to laugh. Willie didn't like the cat, and the cat knew it. In fact, when it saw Willie, it would head for the hills, literally. Just behind the house was a ridge that ran along the back of the race course. From the bottom of Wireless Ridge, and Moody Brook, virtually all the way to Stanley's airport. The cat practically lived up there, except for when Willie left the house, then it would sneak back down .What we didn't know at that time was the ridge was where Willie had first seen the cat.
When Willie had managed to stop laughing, he explained why the cat wouldn't eat prime beef, and why it took off
every time Willie appeared. "B" Coy, had cleared the ridge behind the house, and apparently, there were still a few bodies up there that hadn't been recovered yet. Willie had caught the cat on the ridge beside a body, preening
itself. The body's bluey grey face, staring angrily up at the sky. The eye sockets dark red holes. Willie had found
several more bodies in similar states. It wasn't until Willie's third trip up the ridge, that he'd actually caught the cat in the act of tearing the eyes from one of the bodies and eating it.
Luckily for the cat, we left the house the next day and moved into the school house in Stanley. Two lads from Coy
HQ, who'd shared the house with us, later mentioned they'd woken up in the middle of the night , to find the cat on
their chest staring at their faces.
