Inspiration and perspiration: Devil Cat

Inspirational Credit to Abigail Oliver, on Side7. She was curled up on Shane's monitor when we got home, sleeping apparently, wings folded behind her like a little red tent, their claws hooked to hold in the heat that radiated from the back of the screen. You'd think she was asleep, but for the regular-as-clockwork twitching of her tail and the faint glow of gold emanating from her eyes. Devil cat. She wasn't asleep though, proven quickly when the soft creak of footsteps entering her demesnes alerted her to the imminent presence of food. We were never sure whether to call it flying or gliding, the motion from high to low that she so preferred to employ. It was at once a complicated and supremely graceful process, involving the interplay of bone and muscle and the trabeculate sinews of her skeletal wings, their blood-red webbing unfolding with a mechanical precision. She would coil her body into takeoff position, hesitating before launching herself into midair, tail becoming a miniature flag to indicate the direction and velocity of the wind as it breezed past her. It would be gliding, but we never saw her touch down an instant before she intended to. It would be flying, but we never saw her achieve heights greater than where she started. How she got to the top of the bookshelf, the computer monitor, the kitchen table, the stairway to the cramped nook of a garret room where I kept my desk and my papers (strewn everywhere, in piles that mad no sense to anyone but me) we did not know. We never saw her walk there, or climb, or do anything a normal cat would. She just flew and walked the flat, as if we were the plebians whose purpose was to slave away and serve her. Devil cat.