Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Once upon a time there was a man who fell in love with his cat. He was convinced that the cat was truly the soul of his dear departed and beloved wife reborn.
The tragic death of his true love had left him heart broken in the extreme and his mournful cries and moans had driven his fellow neighbours to distraction. It is not that they were uncaring. They could understand the depth of his emotions for a year. It was only after it had dragged on for the second year that they took action. The sounds of his haunted wailing as he woke from traumatic dreams interrupted their sleep. Many of the people had not experienced a peaceful slumber for many moons. After careful consideration the neighbours decided to speak to the Landlord and convince him to evict the man from his apartment.
The Landlord was a reasonable and kind hearted man and after much deliberation and argumentation with his wife, he evicted the man from his apartment but offered him the option to rent the Landlord’s remote hunting cabin high in the nearby mountains.
Every day the man would be so cold from the snow that he would welcome the relief of sleep and his body refused to wake up from his troubled dreams. On waking he would go to a nearby creek and crack through the ice with his bare hands to wash his face and his dreams away with the icy water. Soon it became a test of his physical pain threshold – to show how much cold and pain he could bare for the lost love of his heart. After six months had passed, he would wear only a thin shirt and his boots in the midst of the winter sleet, such was his devotion.
One day while performing his daily face washing ritual, he looked up to find two large green eyes staring unblinkingly from beneath the snow. A shadow of a kitten watched him with such hope and devotion that he was instantly convinced that it was his true love re-born.
Because of that, he and the kitten from that day forward could never be parted. When he had to chop wood, he would place the tiny kitten on top of his helmet so that the snow would not harm her. Everywhere he went, the kitten would be with him and day by day the bond between them grew as their hearts filled with their mutual love.
Because of that, the townspeople began to tell stories of the crazy man in the mountain who loved a cat more than any person. People could not understand why he would want to live by himself with only the love of a cat to keep him warm.
The man and the cat did not care what the townspeople thought. Soon it became impossible for them to live near the town, and the man decided that he no longer needed the shelter of a cabin. He and the cat walked off into the snowy mountain cold to start their new life together, away from the people of the world so that their love would never be judged again.
KV Perkin
kvperkin@gmail.com