{"id":4114,"date":"2024-05-08T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T15:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=4114"},"modified":"2024-05-08T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T15:59:00","slug":"the-pink-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=4114","title":{"rendered":"The Pink Cat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pink Cat<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I started getting phone calls about the cat before the ink even dried on the letter I had composed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo I hear you found a pink cat,\u201d the caller asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you find out?\u201d was my reply.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, in the paper, of course. Where else would I have seen it?\u201d she announced as if I should have known that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut I haven\u2019t sent the letter to the paper yet,\u201d I said, confused.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she quickly responded. \u201cI must have the wrong number,\u201d she said, then hung up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next phone call was even more baffling. \u201cAllo, I heer you are luking to get rid of pink cat,\u201d a voice said with a distinctive foreign accent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you find that out?\u201d I questioned suspiciously.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI reed in paper, Da.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said, \u201cyou have the wrong number.\u201d And I hung up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This continued for many minutes. Each call was more bizarre than the last. All of the callers seemed to know about my finding a pink cat and my desire to find its owner or a suggestion of where I could bring it. And I had yet to notify anyone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was then that I heard the knock at the door.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking through the peephole, I noticed a man and a woman standing there. The man was tall, wore a dark black suit, and had sunglasses on, which was odd since it wasn\u2019t sunny outside. The woman, a little shorter than the man, wore a dark pantsuit, which went with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. She didn\u2019t wear sunglasses, but her eyes were well-focused, looking everywhere, surveying the area in front of my house. Both were well built as if they spent most of their life in an exercise training program. They both wore earpieces, and it seemed they were communicating with someone other than each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d I asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman flashed an ID in front of my peephole for me to see as the man stated, \u201cWe\u2019re from Homeland Security.\u201d Her ID was replaced by his. \u201cWe need to speak with you about your cat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Slowly, I opened the door as they pushed their way past me and told me to shut the door and lock it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my cat. I just found it. What\u2019s this all about?\u201d I asked rather nervously.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d said the woman, \u201cbut that is classified. We just need to ask you a few questions, and then we\u2019ll gladly take that cat off your hands.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was stunned, not knowing what to say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere did you acquire that cat?\u201d the male agent asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI found it nosying around my garden. Since I couldn\u2019t chase it away, I managed to pick it up and brought it inside until I could decide what to do with it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWeren\u2019t you surprised about its color?\u201d asked the female agent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSure I was. I figured it was someone\u2019s special cat. Either they must have dyed the cat pink, or it was a unique mutation of a normal colored one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInteresting,\u201d the man replied. \u201cDid you tell anyone else about it, or did anyone else see it?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot that I know of. I\u2019m kind of isolated here and don\u2019t have many friends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHas anyone else called you and asked about the cat?\u201d the male agent continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, in fact, there were a number of calls, which didn\u2019t make sense, as I hadn\u2019t posted the letter I wrote to the papers yet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The female agent jumped into the conversation. \u201cWe\u2019re just verifying if you\u2019re telling the truth. We know about the letter and your phone calls.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut how? I never even sent\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s classified information; Need to know only, and you are not considered one who needs to know.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That ended the conversation. Both agents had received the answers to the questions they were looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0I had to sign a Non-disclosure agreement stating that if I shared anything about the cat or this meeting with anyone, public or private, I would suffer some life-threatening consequences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The female agent picked up the cat and petted it\u2014at least, that is what it looked like. Whatever she did, the cat went limp in her hand after the petting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I noticed the male agent hanging around my desk. He picked up my phone and examined it. He turned his back to me and appeared to be doing something with the phone before he put it back on my desk. I then watched as he picked up the pen I had used to write my letter and replaced it with an identical one. I was wise enough not to question his actions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After a quick survey of the room, both agents left with the now limp cat, and I was left alone to try to piece together what had happened.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sci-fi images of alien cats, or spy cats, with Homeland Security agents or Area 51 agents taking these cats apart to discover some dastardly plot against the United States or Earth, passed through my mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nah, that can\u2019t be it. Can it? Maybe I shouldn’t have written this story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pink Cat I started getting phone calls about the cat before the ink even dried on the letter I had composed.\u00a0 \u201cSo I hear you found a pink cat,\u201d the caller asked. \u201cHow did you find out?\u201d was my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[177],"class_list":["post-4114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-stories","category-story-writing","tag-writing-prompt"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4116,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions\/4116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}