5/20/2026 – A silly story to start a self-explanatory series that will have no structure to it until I find one with the only rule being that a story of some kind must be posted each week.
The streets of the Northwest industrial district are lined with painted brick buildings, pock marked pavement, and disorganized piles of lumber and steel. It has grown smaller over the years; the city’s overflow has pushed the industrial area beyond highway 30 up against the river to the north and the hills to the west. Roving bands of feral cats with malicious intent who through collective force could take on a labrador, maybe even a medium size pit bull, are the area’s most well-known inhabitants.
One time, a nearby kennel tried to round them up in one fell swoop by cornering the band in one of their preferred hideouts, offering them tubed tuna from a distance. The cunning, almost militant communal structure of the cats could not be broken not only because they preferred the area’s mice and small birds, but because food requires chase. They could not fathom that food could come so easily so they did not approach the khaki-ladened kennel employees. The humans, for the moment, went away in defeat and frustration.
The second wave led by the passionate and underpaid kennel employees included toys, nets, and reportedly some sort of tranquilizer but that remains disputed. They aimed to dismantle the leadership hierarchy beginning with the middle-aged female leader who had earned the name M. She was a round-faced orange and white cat who had a scar across her right eye like that of a Bond villain, of which she would probably proudly agree. The thinking was that with lions, females hold the dominant position in the herd so it shouldn’t be different for a dozen or so domestic short hairs. If they could get at the leader, the others would surely cave.
The cats often spent time in the vacant alcove of one of the white brick buildings that had a barbed wire fence across the front. The fence had been built to prohibit all access to the space and did not include a door of any kind. As with any fence, the years had created larger and larger gaps allowing simple access for the tribe of cats. The alcove itself was typical of the industrial district. Uncut grass filled with dilapidated pallets and cigarette butts along with an old lean-to roof were the only things that populated the space beside the cats when they came around. According to the kennel workers, the alcove was perfect for the cats in terms of safety, but the most exposed militarily among the four or five areas of the district that the cats frequented because the building covered them on three sides. After tracking down the building owner, which took nearly a month, the workers called in a specialist to alter part of the fence while the cats were away so that it could be quickly removed for them to enter when the cats returned.
With a camera planted to know that the cats were there, and with tactics designed as if the cats oversaw a 20th century Latin American country, the kennel workers were ready to march on the encampment. On the day of the attack, the kennel workers, who numbered seven – two to handle the fence, four with toys and treats and nets, and one whose job was left unspecified but likely was the carrier of the disputed tranquilizer gun, had one goal, which was to capture the leader M. She had just given birth a few weeks prior, the father unknown and inconsequential but the mix of gray striped kittens narrowed the pool of potential suitors. The day before she had been spotted for the first time in a month on the camera with her babies in tow.
The moments before the surprise onslaught were like any other for the herd of cats. M lounged with her babies beneath the lean-to as they nursed, she being the only regal one of the adults. The others were mangy but well fed; their matted and unclean fur a small price for semi-regular food. That was the benefit of the group. M did not mother the others, but she did look after them, and they looked after her. Domesticated cats tend to be communal only in the most necessary and fundamental ways. They are not sentimental, but they are always aware of what the others need. In those moments, the cats avoided the noon sun with ease as most found themselves on their side or curled in a ball having fed earlier on a mix of a disturbingly large rat and the remnants of somebody’s fast food leftovers that had been tossed from the window.
The kennel employees parked a block away and moved in silence the second the doors of the van slid open. One of them wondered if this is what Seal Team 6 felt. Creeping as if the cats deployed lookouts on the rooftops, the workers positioned themselves in front of the doorless fence and with a single heave shoved the compromised fence off its hinges. The cats should have been helpless but the principled M and her comrades could not be undone. They deployed a defense unknown to the kennel employees. In one of the corners particularly covered by wild grass, there was a water shoot connected to loose pieces of brick that at some point had broken up allowing an escape route into the warehouse where there were dozens of access routes the cats could disburse within before reconvening. The casual observer would not have noticed that where M lay with her babies before the attack was the only spot where she could have gotten all six of them into the gap in the case of a surprise by human or animal alike. Most anybody other than M would agree that the kennel worker’s intentions were good. They wanted to provide her and her friends with food, water, and medical support. But for M and her band, separation was worse than provision of any kind.
The attempt on the cats led to only one capture – a cat who’d escaped his family’s porch just three days before and likely had only stuck to the others accidentally through fear and necessity. Since then, the legend of the cats has grown leading some non-kennel employed do-gooders to venture into the area with treats and supplies to try to aid or capture some from the band, but with no success. The kennel has since diverted their attention elsewhere, not so much claiming defeat as a draw. The cats on the other hand make no comment, as victors often do.
Andrew Witt 
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