Not an original idea, but I wanted to play with metaphors and similies (Ooh, hark at me, sounding like an English teacher).

It was one late spring afternoon that we first saw Cat. It was lying on the corner of the lawn, the last triangle of sunny grass before the house’s sun-shadow swallowed it all. It raised its head as I opened the back door and it stared at me. Not the panicked stare of a nuerovore cat that lived on its nerves, starting and jumping at every creak and shadow. Not the pampered stupored stare of a lapcat barely able to raise an interest. This was the stare of the beast, the hunter, the carnivore. It was a stare that burned through you, turned you inside out and assessed your calorific value.

It was black. Not cat-black, sleek and shiny in the sun. Not old-black, flecked with the years. This was death-black. A tear in the universe. A hole ripped in the fabric of the familiar world to reveal the void of terror behind. It was hard to focus on. Your eyes tried to focus on the black starless vacuum beyond.

It moved, breaking the illusion. It flowed to its feet and padded off through the shrubs. Not a streak of terror, nor even a strategic retreat. It was a murderous lope that would end in a bird-bone crunch or the cat-screech of pain from a pretender to the crown.

It jumped onto the fence and paused, still and perfectly balanced on the edge. It glanced once more at me, with a look that said, ‘Thank me that I am not coming in your direction’. And then it was gone.

We started to see it more in the coming weeks. I think it was because we didn’t frequent the garden much. It was a refuge from the neighbourhood kids and yapping dogs. Not that they would have stood a chance. Cat would have sent them cowering into the kitchen. But it was not a social cat. It would not have sat in a gingham-covered basket with three other cats for a postcard photograph. It would not have hung stretched as a small child carried it hugged close to her chest. It would not have jumped mewling into your lap and forced its head under your hand. It had about it an aura that said that it wanted to destroy everything that breathed Cat’s own personal air. And it would too, but not just at this particular moment. Just this minute it was letting the sun warm it or allowing that sparrow there to become its dinner.

We didn’t think much of it, and I’m sure it thought less of us. Then one afternoon I was fixing the shelf in the spare room that once again had failed and dropped the books never read, but kept just in case. The screwdrivers were kept in the shed, a jerry-built affair that had been rickety when we had first moved in, and was even more so by now. I walked down the garden path in the heavy May shower. The door to the shed would never shut properly. The best I could do was jam it stuck a foot shy from the frame.

As I dragged the door open, there was Cat, sheltering from the rain. It stared me straight in the eye, its whole body taut as a neck tendon in a hangman’s noose. I had a sudden flashback to a news item I saw on TV. There was a skinhead, skeletal, sleeveless, his Doc Martins making him look like a matchstick man drawn by a kid. He was backed against a wall, surrounded by a group of rival football fans. There was a ten foot semicircle of space around him, filled with pure aggression. In his face there was no fear, no uncertainty. His face was contorted with hatred and something more. He was revelling in it. He knew, with an absolute certainty, that there was going to be blood spilled, and that most of it was not going to be his. And the others, greatly outnumbering him, knew this. They pushed against the invisible force field, but were unable to break through it.

Cat was the same. It was blood-ready. Its whole body was poised to take me down. Not out of fear but because I was in its personal space.

I glanced at the tool rack on the peeling plywood wall. There was just no chance. I looked back at Cat. It was still holding its stare. I read somewhere once that cats saw eye contact as a challenge. That’s why they zero in on the cat-hater in the room, because the cat-hater looks away.

Well, Cat was challenging me. To the death. Mine.

But it was just a cat, surely. It was, what, a few pounds? If that. It was thin, like that skinhead. That’s the price for being feral, I guess.

I returned empty-handed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. We were on a health kick. Again. By ‘we’, I meant Sonia was concerned that she was a few ounces over her target weight, and so I had to eat healthily. There was some thin-sliced chicken. That would have to do. I put it on a saucer, and put some milk in a cereal bowl. Cats drank milk, didn’t they?

I hunched back through the rain to the shed. Cat hadn’t moved. It was still in that exact position, poised ready to spring, eyes fixed on mine.

I put the meal down on the floor. Its eyes never left my face, never once glanced at the food. Then I backed away, like a flunky in the presence of royalty. Cat continued to stare at me, not letting its guard down for a second. After a moment or two, I gave up and left.

Later, I returned. The chicken was half-gone, the milk untouched. Cat had left, another battle in its campaign against the world had called.

Sonia was less than pleased when I told her about the incident. She wasn’t a cat person. She definitely wasn’t a stray cat person. Somewhere back in my brain I must have thought that she’d come around. That the loving woman I knew would include Cat in her circle of love. It never occurred to me to think about Cat’s opinion.

Over the following weeks, then months, Cat and I began to come to an understanding. Not a relationship, as such. More an arrangement. Very much on Cat’s terms.

I’d leave titbits out, on those occasions I was allowed meat. Cat came to accept that I wasn’t out to kill it. It put its plan to kill me on the back-burner.

There were milestones. Once I opened the back door, and there was Cat, sitting there, waiting for food. Later it put its head through the open doorway into the kitchen. Later still it would come all the way in, deigning to eat inside. But always with the door open. Always on its own terms.

Sonia hated it. Some people are just not animal lovers. That doesn’t make them bad people. I don’t like football. It’s the same thing. Cat didn’t like her either. Cat wouldn’t share the kitchen with her. Nor the garden. I’m not sure the country was big enough for the pair of them. But Cat always stopped short of biting her head off and dragging her carcass up a tree. It would just stalk off, with an air that said that, behind its impassive face, it was imagining what her insides would taste like.

Late summer, and there was a sudden heatwave. The air became souplike. Sonia’s asthma kicked in. It had never been so bad. She had her drugs, her inhaler, but still there was the odd occasion that she would cough herself purple, her throat closing to restrict her breathing to close to unconsciousness.

It worried me, but she had lived with it all her life. It was bad, but not that bad, she assured me. She was fine. The atomiser did its stuff, if she needed it.

I came home from work one oven of an evening. I dropped my stuff in the hallway and called out her name. Silence. She must be in the garden, I thought. I let myself into the kitchen, and there she was. Lying on the floor, head propped forward on the wall. She was a ghastly hue, black-purple. Her breaths were coming in horrifying wheezes. Her air passages were needle-diametered.

Her inhaler was on the floor, six feet from her feet. Between her and it was Cat. Cat had totally ignored my entrance. It was stationary, one front poor raised in mid tread. Its eyes were fixed on Sonia, its ears flat, its teeth bared.

It was stalking her. She was lying there dying, and Cat was getting ready to finish her off.

I screamed at it and stamped my foot. Nothing. Cat started to slowly put its foot down, carefully, not wanting to startle its prey.

I grabbed the atomiser off the floor and knelt by her, putting the mouthpiece between her Halloween lips, hitting the button. Cat raised its other foot. A low growl emanated from its throat. The sound of the end of the world. A sound that had made blood run cold since man had huddled round a flame.

I was praying out loud, I was begging Sonia to breath, and I was screaming curses at Cat, the words tumbling around each other, sobs mixing them all up. I pulled her round, off the wall, head flat on the floor to try and stretch her airways out. Her eyelids flickered.

After a lifetime of hell I heard the wheezing ease, the air pass with less of a struggle. Through tear-starred eyes I saw her hand raise, and she weakly took hold of the atomiser. She patted me with the other handed. She was going to be OK. I was weak and shaky with relief.

Then the growl intensified. I turned, and Cat was by her feet. It lowered its body, its legs tensing. Oh my God! She was going to spring.

I grabbed the teatowel from the rail and went for Cat. It completely ignored me, right up to the moment I grabbed it.

I tried to lift it, but it was as heavy as guilt. It scrabbled at the floor for a moment, its hunter’s gaze fixed on the still prone Sonia. As I hauled it clear of the floor it suddenly changed. Its claws ripped into my arms, the tea towel giving me no protection at all. It twisted like an eel, an unearthly yowling filling the kitchen.

I ran to the open door and tossed cat and towel out into the garden, slamming the door shut. I ran back to Sonia, but she was recovering. She smiled weakly at me.

"You OK, love?" I asked.

She nodded, then between panting breathes she said, " Yes, fine. But do you fancy a takeaway this evening? I don’t fancy cooking"

I laughed, eyes teared with relief. "Sure hon."

Cat hung around the garden for a few days after that, but it was different. We were both wary of each other. We would mark out our territory, and neither of us would welcome the other into it. Then it was gone. Onto new hunting grounds. Some other unprepared life to end.