The moon shone brightly, casting shadows around the room, as the old lady opened her eyes to a soft, wet nose, and load purr. A brown, furry face stared down at her, and licked her face with a tongue like sandpaper. The woman laughed, put on her glasses, looked at the clock, which said 4 AM, put in her dentures, and sat up. She petted Sammy, the oldest, and her favorite out of her 17 cats. He had a bent back, broken tail, thin, scraggy fur, and a hoarse meow, it seemed like he struggled even to lift the weight of his collar around his neck. She had named him when she got him, after she had given up love after her only boyfriend dumped her the night she thought he was going to propose, the night she became officially obsessed with cats.
The lady stood up, and with Sammy rubbing against her ankles, walked through the hallway, and into the kitchen, where she began to empty cans of cat food into the 17 dishes lined up against the wall. When she was finished, she stepped back and squinted. The line of bowls lay untouched and uneaten, all except for Sammy's. That was strange. Her cats had never been late to a meal, let alone didn't even show up.
She opened the door and walked outside and clinked one of the bowls, "here kitties, here kitties", she called out across the yard. Just then, Sammy bolted through her legs, and ran outside, across the street and into the darkness.
"No! Bad kitty! Come back Sammy!"
Sighing, she looked up at the sky. There was a full moon, the biggest she had ever seen in her life, but there were no stars. She scanned the yard, hoping to see some sign of her beloved kitties.
She gasped as she looked to the left and saw droplets of blood leading away from the house. With slow footsteps, she followed the gruesome trail, it looked as though something had been rolling around on the ground, getting bigger and bigger, into the backyard. She rounded the corner of her house, and she squinted with confusion and surprise. The trail had stopped, there was no sign whatsoever of the blood or the tracks.
The lady stood up. She was just about to turn around when she heard a yowling, like nothing she'd ever heard before. It sounded like the battle cry of a thousand dying souls, and immediately visions of every terrible thing she could imagine flashed before her eyes.
She screamed and dropped the cat dish, and it shattered into a million pieces on the hard pavement, making a loud crashing sound. Immediately the yowling stopped. The women held extremely still, straining her ears for some sound, any sound. But the night was completely silent. No crickets, no cars, not even the rustle of wind through the trees. Only silence.
Just then, the lady felt the hairs on her neck rise, feeling like someone, or something was watching her. Ever so slowly, she turned her head. All she saw was a pair of glowing, green eyes before a piercing scream filled the air, and everything went black.
Sam walked up to the door of the old motel in Pawnee, Indiana. It was his turn to get breakfast, and he held two bags, one containing his own bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, and the other containing Dean's triple decker breakfast pizza from the famous JJ's diner.
He opened the door, "Finally! I'm starving," Dean yelled from inside. Sam stopped. Something felt different about the room. Or smelled different. It smelled like old tuna and wet fur. His eyes began to adjust to the dark motel room, and he looked around.
"What the hell, Dean," she said. There were cats everywhere. On the beds, on the cabinet, on the TV, on the desk, even on Dean. His brother sat in the chair, holding one of the cats on his lap. Sam looked at his brother with utter surprise, "I was gone for an hour and you've turned into a cat lady. Well that's just wonderful."
"Aren't they adorable," Dean joked, "look Sam, this one looks exactly like you!". He held up the cat in his lap. It was an old, scraggly cat, with a bent tail and messed-up back, and let out a pitiful "me-ow", that cracked in the middle and ended up sounding like a dying animal. It's heart-shaped collar had the words, "Sammy" printed on it in bubbly cursive writing.
Sam rolled it eyes, "seriously Dean, what's with the cats?", he ran over to the bed, and shoved about 5 of the squirming furry animals off of it.
"I'm not saying anything until you hand over my breakfast," Dean smirked.
"Fine."
Sam handed Dean his bag and watched his wolf down his triple decker breakfast pizza.
Dean smiled, "they do breakfast right in Pawnee."
"Ew, how can you eat with that smell?" Sam's breakfast lay untouched in the bag on the bed. A cat sniffed it, and pawed it playfully.
"I could eat a triple decker breakfast pizza anytime and anywhere."
Dean licked his fingers, and looked at Sam.
"OK, you were taking so long to get breakfast, so I decided to walk to the Paunch Burger to get some coffee, and these cats just like, followed me back."
"You didn't have to let them in...tell me what you did with my brother, cat lady."
Dean laughed, "very funny, Sam. Oh and I also saw this on my way home," he held up a piece of paper with the words MISSING: Ethel Beavers printed in bold on it, with a picture of an elderly lady surrounded by cats, "look familiar?"
Sam snatched the piece of paper, "great now we can return these cats."
"Yeah, but where's the lady?" Dean asked.
"Probably worried about her babies," Sam replied, sarcasticly.
"No, look. The flyer says she's been missing for around three days. AND I did some research into her disappearance, and the official police statement says that she was last seen in her yard, calling for her cats. The spot where she was last seen smelled like sulfur and there were traces of a yellowish powder on the ground."
"So, what, are we dealing with demons?" Sam questioned. Dean shrugged.
"Dunno, but all signs point to yes. I say we head over to the police station and look at the parts of the file not released, then interview the neighbor who last saw her."
They went to the police station but that wasn't much help, for all the officers there were convinced Ethel had run off somewhere to find more cats, and all agreed that she was probably better off now, wherever she might've gone, than sulking around Pawnee with her 17 cats. Frankly, they seemed almost glad to be rid of her.
Empty handed, Sam and Dean walked out of the station, and went to the lady's neighborhood. They walked up the steps to the house next-door to Ethel's and knocked. A young woman answered the door.
"Hello beautiful," Dean said. Sam stomped on Dean's foot.
"We're with the Pawnee police department. Do you mind answering some questions for us?" Sam asked.
"Sure," the lady said reluctantly. The three of them walking inside, and the woman proceeded to tell them about the night Ethel went missing. She had first heard her calling her cats, and then heard the yowl, which almost scared her to death. She hadn't paid much attention to it, because she had given up on keeping up with her neighbor's cats and hobbies, she had just assumed it was her trying to create a cat chorus group or something crazy like that.
Sam and Dean thanked her and went back outside. They easily hopped the fence and crawled under the caution tape and into the backyard.
Sam looked down, "hey Dean, you might wanna see this".
Dean walked over, then bent down to examine the ground. There were tracks. They were not obvious, to the ordinary eye they just looked like a patch of brown grass or an uneven patch of dirt. However, to their trained eyes, they were definately tracks.
"We're dealing with a demon alright," Dean announced.
"I've only seen these tracks once before. Remember, that trip to Forks with Dad?"
"Yeah, werewolves. At least we now know what we're dealing with," immediately, Dean took out an EMF meter. He began scanning the yard, but immediately, the meter peaked and the device started to smoke. Dean quickly turned it off.
"Woah, the meter just peaked. I don't think I've ever seen this much demon activity in one foot of ground before."
With that, they got back in the car and drove back to the motel. When they opened the door, all 17 cats looked up and stared at them with piercing, green eyes.
"OK, lets look up any past werewolf occurences in the area," Sam said, as Dean sat down on the bed, pushing aside some cats.
Sam and Dean spent the next hour typing and googling and searching for warewolves in Pawnee, or even the state of Indiana, but there was nothing. At all. "It's weird. You'd think that such a big, well known demon like that would have had
more incidents with people, at least in the past year or so," Dean said.
"Yeah, especially when it left such obvious tracks. I just don't get it. It was almost too easy, and demons aren't stupid. It's almost if-" Sam paused
"As if they wanted us to find it," Dean whispered, barely audible. They both turned to look at the cats lounging throughout the room. The more they looked at the cats, the more they recognized them. Ethel had been harboring an army of demons.
"Hey Sam, have you ever heard of a ware-cat?" Dean asked.
"Well, there's a first for everything," Sam replied, and he smiled.