CatsCast Escape Artists, Inc.

February, 2024. Author: Dana Vickerson Narrator: Peter Adrian Behravesh Host: Laura Pearlman Audio Producer: Dave Robison
This story [originally appeared in Zooscape.
A content note: this story deals with themes of grief and loss.
The Best Way to Procure Breakfast 
by Dana Vickerson.
If Mama doesn’t get up soon, we’re going to miss our chance to get off Mars.
Mama is a human, but I call her “Mama” because she says I am her baby kitty and her special boy. She is sleeping, but I am hungry.
It’s a delicate art, waking up your human. If you’re too eager, they’ll likely get cross with you, and while Mama is a sweet and kind soul, I do not like to see her cross. If you are too gentle, though, your human is likely to continue their blissful sleep while you sit on the floor with a rumble in your belly.
So, like most mornings, I start today by walking back and forth across my human’s pillow. This is less startling than just going right for patting her face. The soft rhythm of my paws around her head signals to Mama that it’s time to start the process of bringing her consciousness to the here and now, where my kibble lives.
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Blood Water
by J.A. Bryson
The blood on Zip’s hands is dried the color of rust and sticks like clay under her fingernails. Mostly, it isn’t hers. Mostly, it belongs to the man she shivved, the one who mistook her for an easy mark. Zip is gray-eyed and hunger-slight. She’s a lot of things – fast, fierce, speechless since birth – but she isn’t easy. The old timers know this. The man waiting at the pits to grab her while she took a piss, he did not know this.
He’s a newcomer. His people came when jets rained fire on their homeland. They have no code. They left their children and their old timers to burn.
Their language is violence. One needn’t words to speak it.
Outside camp, Zip finds shade in a stand of scraggly pines with peeling bark and sun-bleached needles. She drags her palms over the parched earth. The blood remains. It doesn’t flake or rub away. She thinks to spit on it, to make a paste, to paint its warning on her sunken cheeks, but her tongue is swollen with thirst. She hasn’t spit to spare.
If it doesn’t rain soon, her band will strike up camp. Better to move than to choke on dust – to become dust. She closes her eyes and swallows. Her heart beats too fast.
The man she shivved will die. Serves him right for making her sweat.
Propped against a tree, Zip drifts. She doesn’t hear Cat come. She wakes to his rough tongue grazing her knuckles. Groggily, she peeps an eye. The sun is not where she remembers it.
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December, 2023. Author: K. M. Veohongs Narrator: Dave Robison Host: Laura Pearlman Audio Producer: Dave Robison
This story originally appeared inTranslunar Traveler's Lounge, February 2022
A content note: there is some death in this one.
Kindly, Stop for Me
by K.M. Veohongs
I rise from my spot by the window in Room 126 of the Sunny Glades Home for Health and Rehabilitation. The sun set an hour ago, so it’s no great loss. My front paws extend, claws out, before I shift my weight forward and kick out each hind leg. I don’t have the range of motion I once did — everything creaks and clicks now — but since the moment I selected my first feline host, I found there is nothing quite so satisfying as a good stretch.
I jump down and land on the tiled floor, hard. I wish they’d carpet the rooms, but that’s hardly sanitary, is it? The hop up onto the bed is more difficult still. We’re in the hospice wing, of course, and these beds are tall. I’ve still got the ups to make it, but it’s a near thing.
Finding a replacement body should be on the top of my to-do list. This one is rather past its natural expiration date, and if I don’t find a new host before it gives out completely, I’ll be as rudderless as the souls I’m supposed to help. It’s only that I’m rather attached to the form I’m currently inhabiting. I’ve been Archimedes for so long now, I’m not sure I remember how to be anyone else.
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Author: Nicole Walsh Narrator: Matt Dovey Host: Laura Pearlman Audio Producers: Wilson Fowlie and Dave Robison
This month we’re re-running The Cat by Nicole Walsh, which ran on our patron-only feed in June, 2022.
Content note: although it’s not a major theme, there is some domestic abuse in this story.
This story originally appeared in Teleport Magazine in May, 2021.
The Cat
by Nicole Walsh
The cat followed him home.
Tomas Shine spent three and a half minutes in the stairwell hyperventilating. He heard Mrs Helen Acres, the widow from Unit Two, clatter and batter her way out her door, shopping bags in hand. She spotted the cat outside the stairway and reversed soundlessly into her unit.
Tomas sucked in a ragged breath, filling his lungs to the brim, and looked up. The cat waited on the far side of the glass door. Its tail lashed back and forth. Tomas used the rail to heave himself upright, then crept down the stairs. He opened the door. The cat stood, butt shooting into the air, tail upright like a comma. It mewed.
Tomas stepped aside.
The cat led the way up the stairs. Tomas walked slowly, careful not to step on it. His hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t get the key into the lock. His work bag slid awkwardly down his arm. Sweat pooled at his armpits, licking wet trails past his ribs.
The cat pressed into his leg. A small, frightened noise slipped from his throat.
 “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m trying.”
Nervous sweat coated his fingertips. The keys slipped free. They landed on the tiled floor with a loud clang, startling the cat. Tomas pressed into the wall, hand raised defensively. 
“Sorry!”
The cat stared, tail low and flicking. Tomas crouched slowly, extending a shaking hand for the keys. For a sickening moment he was almost eye to eye with the creature. Tomas rose. He slowly and deliberately inserted the correct key into the lock and opened his door.
 A small white shape flittered past his brown work shoes.
 It was done.
Tomas Shine had a cat.
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Description
Authors: Nathan Susnik and Monica Joyce Evans Narrators: George Fowlie and Sandy Parsons Host: Laura Pearlman Audio Producer: Dave Robison
The Tan One by Nathan Susnik originally appeared in Shoreline of Infinity.
Alligators by Monica Joyce Evans originally appeared in Nature Futures
The Tan One
by Nathan Susnik
Some days I pick the white pill. Other days it’s the black. For some reason or another, I prefer the brown pill on Tuesdays. Today, feels like it’s going to be one of my bad days. So, I pinch the tan pill between my thumb and index finger, flick it into my mouth and take a slug of water. It catches halfway down, but when I swallow again, it dislodges quickly enough. As it hits my stomach, I’m already more optimistic. My cat rubs against my leg.
“Oh, hello Lionel,” I say. Abyssinians have ticked fur. It looks like one color from afar, but if examined closely, it’s actually bands of light and dark shades. I bend down, leaning hard on my cane (it’s really more of a modern crutch) and stroke him. Pain shoots out of my lower back, wrapping around my hip. But I clench my jaw, ignoring it, running my hand over the cat’s back. He purrs, and perhaps today won’t be so bad after all.
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Author: Ember Randall Narrator: Laura Pearlman Host: Laura Pearlman Audio Producer: Wilson Fowlie
This story is a CatsCast original.
Match.Cat
by Ember Randall
They say cats have nine lives, but that’s not quite right. Nine is more of an average--in reality, you get as many as Death gives you, which means it behooves any sensible cat to suck up while they can.
Or, at least, that’s what I told myself as I wound around Death’s legs, giving them my best never-been-petted meow--the unmatched quality of their ear scritches had nothing to do with it.
A snort echoed above me. “You look like one of those spoiled lap cats you’re always deriding, you know.”
I glared up at Alfonsius--Lord Alfonsius Darrowfell of the Silent Wing, to give the owl the full title he often insisted on. “Insurance is never wasted.” I was on my seventh life, and a cat couldn’t be too careful, right?
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