Crazy Cat Girl

Chapter 1

If you asked her, Eloise would tell you that the first ghost she ever saw didn’t scare her. After all, she knew that cats had more than one life.

If you had asked her anything, Eloise would have answered you with a cat fact. Woven through an elaborate story with just the right balance between entertaining and moral, because it was a cat story.

Eloise loved cats, cats didn’t care much about her. But she knew that was the nature of the beast and she didn’t feel offended.

She would talk to cats, and they would answer back. Cats were easy to understand. She told them all that bothered her. Her friend moving out of the village and leaving her by herself, her new friend that wasn’t yet aware of her.

The cats would stretch, roll on their bellies, scratch and lick themselves. In their language, they would tell her that they were listening and that her presence was welcome.

She knew not to push, flat ears and a twitchy tail meant that the conversation was over. Occasionally she would forget herself and would pet a cat other the threshold of what the little animal could handle and get a growl and a nip.

But unlike every other person she knew, the cats would always come back, eager to know more about her thoughts on the other girls at school and her new passion for video games.

——–

Recess was not going well.

The girls had started a game they called The Big House.

Eloise was invited of course, but little by little she could feel that they just used her to be the butt of their jokes.

The rules of the Big House were simple, you had to pretend you lived on one of those houses where cameras followed your every move; Putting on a show for the viewers at home.

Sara was playing the model, the more experience one of the group, she strutted around and expected all the girls to praise her for being beautiful, which they did.

Mary was playing the bossy, or rather was being the bossy one, she ruled over the game assigning roles to everyone. While all the other girls were given cool characteristics – Emma was a veterinarian looking for love, Camilla was a famous artist with a lot of money – Eloise was stuck being a witch. Yes, a witch.

Her role was to ruin everyone’s fun an make a nuisance of herself which she did really well. So well in fact that Mary told her she was being annoying.

“I thought that was the whole point!” Said Eloise.

“You’re being too much, and we think you should stop playing with us.” Said Mary, who hadn’t asked anyone else. The other girls nodded.

Eloise felt her face growing hot and tears forming behind her eyes. She ran off to the far left of the schoolyard where Paul and Pablo were playing football.

“What happened?” Asked Pablo?

“Nothing!” Said Eloise, too ashamed to say that she had been voted off the group, again.

“You can play football with us” Said Pablo, and he gestured to Paul to kick the ball so Eloise could play.

She wasn’t very good at football and hated that she had been pitied on by the least popular boys in the school.

They started talking about cartoons. Eloise loved watching cartoons. She didn’t have a TV a home thanks to her weird parents and their weird rules about what was good for her.

She would sneak out of the house to watch cartoons every Saturday mornings at her elderly neighbors’ house. The one who had all the cats.

Sitting on the couch, petting one or more cats and eating stolen mints, she felt as if everything was alright with the world.

Paul, Pablo, and Eloise had stopped playing football and were chatting excitedly about the new Teen Titans cartoon. Eloise had almost entirely forgotten about the other girls when Paul said: “They are bullying the new girl again.”

Eloise turned around and so Sara and Mary laughing at the new girl who was playing on her phone, not paying attention to them.

She stood up, not knowing why and instinctively marched over. She could hear them say “She’s only pretending she doesn’t hear us.” “She’s so weird.”

As if moved by an invisible force, or maybe a sudden newfound strength, she sat down on the ground, next to the new girl.

They didn’t exchange a word. But at that moment, Eloise knew that she had found her new best friend. She just had to make her aware of that fact.

——

Later the same day, after school, Eloise told all that had happened to her favorite cat, Xaph.

And when she went to bed that night, she felt that something had shifted inside of her. She didn’t feel that alone anymore, and something warm and fierce was running through her veins.