Sweat was pouring off me and pooling where my bulletproof vest squeezed against my back. I’m Lieutenant Eleanor Ross from Animal Welfare. She looked up at me with what seemed to be genuine pleasure. The woman wouldn’t have cleared five feet without some impressive shoes and a generous hand with the measuring tape and her hands and face (the only parts of her that were visible from under the intricate layers of scarves and sweaters) were narrow and delicate. The door opened and I was confronted by the smallest person I had ever met. A few minutes later there was the sound of multiple locks being unfastened, then some more, then an abortive attempt to open the door, then one last, forgotten bolt sliding back. I have never been very good at predicting things. Maybe this one wasn’t going to be that bad. Couldn’t be more than a dozen cats here, max. It might just be some neighbor with a grudge. On a day like this, a cat overpopulation should be stinking to high heaven. It was one of those days when the world seemed to be actively rejecting human habitation, where the smog and the humidity made the air feel like warm mayonnaise. And something of a surprise, considering the heat. The house was small and tidy, a light blue bungalow with green trim and yellow curtains pulled across the windows, through which the cats were peering. I opened the tiny gate to the front walk (no fence, just a gate) and made my way to the door. I got out of the car, smoothed my shirt down over my bulletproof vest, and contemplated the cats. Schrödinger’s Cat Lady by Marjorie James is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Feedback for Episode 266: Kachikachi Yama.

The cat lady escape hospital