The GrimalKIN

by girl ben Elohim

My Mammaw Mac used to read fortunes in the bottom of a stained porcelain teacup. I never believed her until the day the leaves spelled out the exact license plate number of the car that would change everything. Who throws a kitten out of a moving vehicle?

I never put much stock in haint tales or mountain spirits until the day I found that orange ball of fluff and fire.

Around here, folks just call me Kenny... It's short for McKenna. I live up in a quiet holler just outside of Millstone, Ky, where the trees get thick and the fog rolls in tight enough to choke a lantern. And that’s where I found him. He looked like a Maine Coon that had somehow gotten stuck in the spin cycle. I call him my forest cat creature. He had this majestic, distinguished face, complete with tufted ears and almost something of an old man's scowl, but he possessed these giant, pleading, saucer pan eyes that made him look permanently stuck at like... Barely eight weeks old.

I named him Marmalade. I scooped him up, brushed the briars out of his coat, and brought him inside. Little did I know, I wasn't just taking in a stray. I was taking in my late great great grandfather.

It didn't take long to realize Marmalade wasn't your average barn cat. He didn't care for kibble, and he turned his nose up at the mice in the shed. He got along with dogs and he seemed to have some sort of separation anxiety from me. He never could just solicit for affection like a normal mammal though... No. Instead, he made his demands known by sitting on the kitchen counter and knocking my coffee mugs onto the linoleum while staring me dead in my face until I figured out the exact attention he required.

Every single night, right as the sun dipped behind the Blue Ridge, he had to have a saucer of warm milk mixed with either mashed up tuna fish or sardines.

If he got his warm, fishy milk, he was an angel. He’d curl up by the woodstove, purring like a diesel engine, healing parts of my soul I forgot were still wounded. But if I forgot? If I worked late at the diner or ran out of canned fish?

Chaos ensued.

I don't mean he scratched the sofa. I mean biblical, physics defying chaos. My car keys would end up in the freezer. All the pictures would fall off of the walls or would be turned entirely upside down. The kitchen faucets would run backward. Everything went wrong.

The worst of it happened the week of the county fair. I’d run out of sardines and thought, he'll be fine with wet turkey paté from the dollar store one night.

He wasn't.

The very next evening, I ended up getting set up on a blind date by my well-meaning aunt. The guy, Terry, was handsome enough, drove a nice truck, and bought me a funnel cake. We sat in the bleachers watching the tractor pull, getting to know each other, when we started talking about our families.

"My folks are mostly from the other side of the ridge," Terry said. "The Nichols."

I froze, powdered sugar halfway to my mouth. "I am pretty sure..." I stopped for a second. "My great-grandmother was a Nichols."

Terry blinked. "Eustace Nichols?"

"Yeah that's her brother," I said, my stomach dropping out.

I was on a date with my fourth cousin. We had already made out.

When I got home that night, mortified and scrubbing my tongue with a washcloth, I found Marmalade sitting perfectly square in the middle of the kitchen table. I swear to you on my life, that cat was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

That’s when I pulled out Granny's old cedar box of letters and journals. Granny had always talked about the "family grimalkin"... It's a spirit sent to watch over the women in our bloodline. According to her diary, the spirit was actually old Silas Nichols, an ancestor who dabbled in mountain magic he didn't fully understand and got his soul tethered to the earthly plane living as mammals who cannot speak.

Silas had been stuck on the other side for over a century and a half. And from what Granny wrote, the boredom of being trapped in the ether had turned him into an absolute menace. Something of a trickster. He was supposed to be a guardian, but out of sheer, agonizing boredom, he’d become a jester.

He’s a descendant of the Grimalkin, I realized, thinking of poor Cousin Terry. Silas had orchestrated the whole thing just for a laugh. He thought it would be funny. Entertaining, if you will. I guess you get bored after 150+ years of living as a cat? I feel like it would be fun. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Especially around Marmalade.

I looked down at the orange cat. He looked back at me with those giant, innocent kitten eyes, utterly betraying the cranky, century old man trapped inside.

"You think you're real funny, don't you, Pappy Silas?" I whispered.

Marmalade just flicked his tail.

I could have driven him out to a barn three counties over. I could've taken him to the shelter. Lord knows I thought about it. I really did. But as I watched him settle onto the rug, staring into the fire with a gaze that looked far too heavy for a feline, I felt a sudden, sharp ache in my chest.

Imagine being stuck for a hundred years. No rest, no peace, just floating around the mountains, acting out like a neglected child, all your family gone, no one knows your story... Menacing just to feel like you still existed. He was a trickster because nobody had actually loved him in a century. They didn't show him care. They only feared him or tolerated him.

I decided right then that the chaos ended with me.

I started treating him differently. I didn't just plop the sardine milk soup down out of fear of his pranks. I did it out of reverence. I prepared it like a proper supper. I heated the milk on the stove, flaked the fish with a fork, and set it down gently.

"Here you go, little old man," I’d say, sitting on the floor beside him while he ate. I started talking to him... Telling him about my day, telling him about the gossip at the diner, the changing colors of the leaves, the simple, quiet things about being a human that he had been missing out on. I brushed his soft, fluffy orange fur every evening, working out the mats, scratching him right behind the ears where the tufts grew thickest.

At first, he was suspicious. He'd swat at the brush or give me a little warning nip. But I didn't yell at him. I just patted his head and said, "I know you're tired, Pap. You don't have to put on a show for me. You're safe here."

It took a whole winter of unconditional nurture. I poured every ounce of Appalachian stubbornness and mountain mama compassion into that little orange body.

Then came the first thaw of spring.

I had just set down his warm fish-milk. Marmalade took three laps, stopped, and looked up at me. Those big, wide kitten eyes suddenly looked incredibly old, and incredibly at peace. He stepped over the bowl, climbed into my lap, and pressed his heavy, distinguished face right against my heart.

He let out a purr so deep it vibrated through the floorboards of the cabin. I felt my shoulders drop.

As I continued to stroke his back, a sudden, warm draft blew through the closed up kitchen. It smelled of cigar, pine needles, wood shavings, and rain. The room glowed with a faint, amber light that seemed to rise right out of the cat's fur, lifting up into the rafters before dissolving into the air.

The heavy, restless energy that had always hung over the cabin simply vanished. The karmic wheel finally clicked into place. Silas was gone. He had finally been loved enough to let go.

I looked down at my lap. The orange cat was still there, snoring softly. When he woke up the next morning, he didn't demand warm milk. He happily crunched on regular dry cat food, chased a moth around the porch, and fell asleep in a sunbeam. He was just a regular old orange cat now.

I still make him a plate of sardines on occasion, though. Especially around Halloween. Mostly just out of respect. After all, you never know when family might be visiting.

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