“A Cat Called Grevious” A Short Story by R. L. Maizes - 2018

“A Cat Called Grevious” by  R. L. Maizes - 2018

You can read today’s story here

Website of R. L. Maizes

I first became aware of R. L. Maizes in a tweet by a writer I have followed for many years, Ethel Rohan.

Before I met my wonderful wife, i was blessed with a long term companion, Mr. C, a.k.a Charles, Charlie or King Charles,a Siamese.  I was often met with this line from “A Cat Called Grevious”.

“Sometimes I think you love that cat more than you love me.”

This is a great cat story, one of the best.

As the story opens a childless couple who marriage is still ok but has seen better days, adopts a cat they found outside and is struggling to live. She has just had kittens but they are lost:

“Her kittens were gone, eaten by coyotes, perhaps. Every day she prowled through snowdrifts that hid the withered Colorado landscape, wailing as she searched for them. She returned at night, wet fur pasted down, shivering. Ignoring the bowl of warm milk and plate of sardines we put out, she crawled into the boot.

After a week, she stopped going out. She sat on the porch, long neck stretched toward a shark gray sky, howling for hours. We called her Grievous.”

  It takes work to get her inside.  Gradually they become more attached to Grevious.  The couple has been trying for a long time to have a Baby and they finally have a daughter.  As the years go by the daughter totally falls for Grevious.

Cat people, the best sort, will relate how Grevious slowly takes over the family.

The ending is shocking and maybe i was wrong to laugh at the terrible thing Grevious does.

This is included in her debut Short Story Collection, We Love Andersen Cooper. I hope to read more of her work.

R.L. Maizes is the author of the short story collection WE LOVE ANDERSON COOPER (Celadon Books, Macmillan). Her novel, OTHER PEOPLE’S PETS (Celadon Books), is forthcoming July 14, 2020. Her stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and have aired on NPR.

Maizes was born and raised in Queens, New York, and lives in Boulder County, CO, with her husband, Steve, and her muses: Arie, a cat who was dropped in the animal shelter’s night box like an overdue library book, and Rosie, a dog who spent her first year homeless in South Dakota and thinks Colorado is downright balmy. From her website.