It was Eld Bartimas’s Day, High Prayer was six minutes away by the sun’s position, and the prayer book was nowhere to be found, no matter how many cupboards the priest ripped open and ransacked.
And his goddamned cat wouldn’t stop complaining at him.
“No no no not here damn double damn damn triple damn damn damn.”
“Mow.”
“Shut up.”
“Mowwwwww.”
“Maybe in the kitchen? No no no I already checked there.”
“Mrrrrreeeaaah.”
“Shut up! On top of the bookcase? No, I can’t even reach there.”
“Aaankk.”
“Shut up shut up shut up!”
“Brreeeaaaow.”
The priest picked up the nearest object and spun to throw it at his cat, then saw that it was sitting on top of the prayer book.
Well, the half of the prayer book it hadn’t torn out and eaten, from the ink stains on its face.
“You little bastard if you weren’t technically thirteen percent holiness by weight I would skin you so much right now.”
“Mow.”
He read High Prayer from memory, and if there were a few more portentous silences than usual nobody in the congregation caught on.
***
Late August was scorching, blistering, soul-sweating weather, and that was when the church caught fire.
It was a good time for it, if such a thing could exist. It happened when nobody was present; it happened the day a torrential rainstorm finally broke the weeks-long desiccation of high summer; it happened when there was plenty of spare lumber and manpower available to repair and restore it; and best of all the priest hadn’t seen the cat since it happened.
Not that he’d wish harm on any of the creator’s children, of course. He just hoped the fuzzy jackass had been scared off and would live out the rest of his days in peace, very far away somewhere.
Autumn’s footsteps were fast coming, and the reconstruction had been completed just in time. The priest could still finish this last big warm cup of tea and smear the myrrh over the threshold before the equinox of the evening.
Another sip, long and slow. Oh lovely, mint. Such a fine thing. Funny how his heart was racing, though. Pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat-THUD CLUNK.
The priest put down his mug and hurried to the threshold. There he found his cat, a toppled vessel of myrrh, four myrrh-coated cat feet, and a lot of complaining noises.
“Fuck you,” he told the cat.
“Mrrrrrow.”
It did not listen to him. Then again it was at least thirty-three percent holiness by volume now, so perhaps it outranked him. Not that he’d tell anyone about it.
***
Fletcher was a big, big man. Hope was a big, bigger woman.
Their daughter, Charity, was somehow bigger than both of them despite being still daisy-fresh to the world. It was times like this the priest was glad the baptismal font was extra sturdy.
Everything was ready, and not a moment too soon – a glance at the window put the happy family almost at his doorstep. He was glad he’d blessed an extra-large decanter; that baby was going to need it.
“Mow.”
“Not now you little shit.”
The silence that followed was perhaps the most dreadful thing the priest had ever experienced in fifty years of life. It was as if gravity had stopped working, or the sun had been switched off. The cat DID NOT listen to him.
Then there was a slight scraping sound.
He turned around with the slow weight of a man who knew he was going to meet his own execution and met the eyes of the cat, who was perched on the edge of the font, one paw carefully touching the decanter of holy water, eyes round and full of nothing but total, perfect, perpetual innocence.
“No.”
“Mow?”
“No, no, don’t do that.”
“Mreeah.”
The priest began to sidle forward, hands extended, tongue clucking like a nervous chicken. “No, no, you don’t want to do that. You’re a good kitty. Goooood kitty.”
“Mowwww.”
“Gooooood kitty. Gooood miserable little bastard. Goood DON’T DO THAT DON’T NO YOU LITTLE FUCKER-”
The door opened, the priest leaped, the cat slipped, the decanter spun around and did three flips in the air, and that was that.
The priest turned around, soaked cat clutched in his arms, and met the eyes of Fletcher and Hope. And Charity, who seemed very pleased by all of this.
“Did you see that?”
They nodded.
“Are you CERTAIN you were witnesses to that?”
The parents nodded again, very slowly. Charity gurgled happily.
The priest sighed, the bone-deep, soul-weary breath of a man discovering atheism. “Well, that’s that then,” he said.
***
Saint Little Fucker the Fuzzy, Patron of Those Who Suffer Sociopaths was, to the church’s immense displeasure, very, very, very popular.