Petrovich

This story happened to me two months ago, and I don't think it's over yet. I don't know where to begin.

For my high school graduation, I was given a kitten. A regular, mixed-breed, white with black paws and a black spot on his back. Everyone in the family called him by his own name—Vaska, Murzik, Barsik—but for some reason, he started answering to "Petrovich." My father turned to a friend in conversation, and the kitten ran up and started rubbing against my legs.

We live on the ground floor. When Petrovich grew up, he started sneaking out through the window from time to time. We didn't neuter him, and every spring he'd disappear into thin air. Once, he ran away for a whole month and came back dirty as a plague, with a torn ear. This spring, I took a vacation and went to another city for my exams, and my parents, immediately after, had to spend a month in a sanatorium. We agreed that I would return exactly on the day they left. While I was at exams, we talked on the phone, and during one of our conversations, my mother casually mentioned that Petrovich had run away again. He didn't return for the next conversation, nor for the next, and then the exams ended, and it was time for me to go home.

Petrovich, visibly battered, was waiting for me on the rug on the landing. I called him, he came over, rubbed against me, and I opened the door.

"Come in, make yourself at home," I said to the cat (he hesitated for some reason, sniffing the threshold), and gently nudged him in the butt. He ran into the house, immediately rushed to his bowl—there was even some food in it—then to the litter box; basically, everything was as usual. I decided I should take him to the vet—who knows what he might have picked up, but I was terribly sleepy and starting to feel nauseous: the night before, and then on the train ride, my friend and I had celebrated passing our final exams.

I woke up in the evening, and as expected, I felt ill. I didn't feel any better the next day, or the day after—nothing seemed to hurt, but my head was spinning and I felt nauseous. I even took a pregnancy test, God forgive me—I always used contraception, but you never know. And then I called... I'm afraid to continue writing.

Then my mother called from the sanatorium and dropped the phone when I told her Petrovich had come home. Petrovich died, she said, and we decided to lie to you. They were poisoning rats in the basement without warning, he ate the bait with zoocoumarin and lived for a day after. You were probably visited by some stray cat that looked like him.

 I was upset and confused. What do you mean, dead? What do you mean, a stray? It can't be, don't I recognize Petrovich?

I was standing in the middle of the kitchen talking, and the door to the hallway was closed. From the very beginning of our conversation, the cat had been scratching at the door. Hearing that the cat couldn't be Petrovich, I told my mother, "I'll check right away," and decided to let him in and examine him more closely, but when I reached for the doorknob, the cat stopped scratching, and I thought I heard a chuckle.

I pulled my hand back. Suddenly, it became very quiet.

"Irra..." something said in a childish voice behind the door. "Irra is a fool."

The handle turned by itself.

I don't remember what happened next. I came to in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital, late at night, tied to a bed. My terrified parents rushed back from the sanatorium—my mother had heard my screams on the phone. They couldn't find the cat.

They chalked it up to stress from the exams, fatigue, and bad alcohol. I was prescribed a course of sedatives and psychotherapy. I told the therapist about everything—my boyfriend, my parents, my friends...

My health problems—dizziness and the like—have disappeared.

Lately, whenever I leave the house, I keep staring at the dead. A dead man lies there, with police officers over him, and sometimes a medical examiner hovers around for some reason. Homeless people who lived in the neighborhood basements are dying—who knows what they're dying from, maybe they're having an epidemic... They're homeless, homeless. And I invited that creature into my house.

I wait for it every night.