House of Cats

I start the day stepping inside the mansion. It’s dark and damp, I can’t see a thing besides my own lamp and the reflective, narrow eyes staring me down. They come to welcome me. It’s like fur, nice and soft, rubbing against my legs like a bunch of wool rugs gliding past. I step further, the last of the meows gliding past my feet. As my eyes adjust, my vision gets clearer. The faces all seem to be happy to see me, walking around carefully to avoid breaking anything. As I step again, I nearly step down onto something soft, with a thin, strip of something hard underneath the fluff. It’s like a hair-trigger, waiting to be tripped. I narrowly avoid it and step over, holding up my lamp to check my surroundings. As my vision gets clearer, I notice tails flicking in the back of the room. The eyes stare into each other, not daring to make a single move. Their bodies like tripwires, something trips them, causing a flurry of darting fur and a dissonance of screeching and growling. The rest of the bodies around me look tense, and the path ahead looks crowded with tension, condensed into little furry bodies. My eyes adjust for the last time, and I notice them all looking at me, watching my every move and step, like cameras. A room of tripwires, hair-triggers, and landmines waiting to explode. I step forward, slowly making my way through the house of cats.