He’d followed the first instruction for six months. The second was harder—Scratch seemed to feed himself, returning each dawn with a full belly and a faint, coppery smell on his breath.
But tonight, the scratching was relentless. It wasn’t just annoying. It was inviting . A rasping whisper between the scrapes: “Leo… Leo… let me out.” Catscratch
And sitting on the kitchen counter, cleaning one gray paw with deliberate slowness, was Scratch. The cat yawned, revealing a mouth full of needles, and for the first time, Leo saw the truth in those yellow eyes: I was keeping it in. You let it out. He’d followed the first instruction for six months
The basement had been off-limits since the day Leo moved in. Grandma’s final note, taped to the door, read: “Leo, whatever you do, do not open this door. Feed the cat. Trust the cat.” It wasn’t just annoying
The scratching stopped. A long pause. Then a single, clear word: “Company.”
Leo lived alone in his grandmother’s old farmhouse, a creaking relic at the end of a gravel road. The only thing he’d inherited along with the house was a single gray cat, whom he’d reluctantly named Scratch. Scratch was not a nice cat. He didn’t purr. He didn’t knead. He watched. Always from the corner of a room, yellow eyes half-lidded, tail flicking like a metronome counting down to something.
Not the gentle pad of a paw on wood. Not the soft scrape of claws on a rug. This was a slow, deliberate thrrrp-scrape … thrrrp-scrape … coming from the other side of the basement door.