Larry's Cat House

Larry wasn't quite sure how it happened other than the fluffy-white, scraggly feral cat that he fed outside the back door managed to make her way into the basement one day.

She was friendly enough... She must have been somebody's pet once upon a time. Maybe her owners abandoned her when they moved. Or maybe somebody died... He wasn't sure but he always had a soft spot for cats.

One day he went down to the basement to get some laundry out of the dryer and he heard a bunch of mewling. It took a minute or two to find the source, but there she was, the scraggly cat, and beside her belly suckling on her pink teats was six little kittens.

As he went to rise up the stairs with his load of laundry bundled in his arms, he always forgot his basket when he needed it, he saw a gray shape in the shadows. What was that? And then he saw a tail as it scurried way. It look like a ghost cat.

He kept the bowl outside of the back door filled with cat food... He charged to the store and purchased a bigger bag of food.

The next day he went down to the basement to toss another load of laundry into the wash. In the light of the window he counted three more cats. These ones looked to be under a year old. His whole basement was becoming overrun with cats. They looked at him stoically. These ones weren't even afraid.

The following day he came back from the store with a water bowl. He was feeling that the mama cat needed some water. He couldn't leave her go thirsty, could he? She had six mouths to feed.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs he was surrounded by cats... He counted 1, 2, 3, 4, he got all the way up to 17 and he threw his hands up in exasperation. A couple of them ran off... Scaredy-cats, he thought. There were 17 cats living in Larry's basement. How did he become the local cat house?

Larry marched back up the stairs shaking his gray head. What was he going to do with all of those cats?

As he was approaching the top of the stairs he heard somebody knocking on the door. He scratched his head in bewilderment... Who would be coming over to visit?

He went to the door and peered out of the small grimy window. It was the little old lady that lived across the street. She was holding a bag. He wasn't expecting anybody, what would she be bringing over to his house?

He slowly unbolted the three bolts on the door and unhooked the hook. He wasn't fond of visitors and nobody ever came to visit him. He's slowly creaked open the door poking just as nose out.

Tuesday me she asked me the most peculiar question I'd heard lately.

"Do you think that Larry could use some extra tuna? I have a stockpile that I keep getting from the food pantry and I don't know what to do with it!" I told her she should offer it to him.

"Hi Larry, I'm Martha and I was talking to my daughter a week ago because I was looking for somebody who could use a bunch of canned tuna. My shelves are so loaded with it I just don't have any more room for my canned goods. You're welcome to it if you would like it."

Larry mumbled something and reached for the heavy sack. He said thank you and quickly closed the door in Martha's face. This was getting out of control.

He walked to the kitchen and dropped the sack of canned tuna on the table. He scratched at his mussed hair and stared at the cupboards... He had enough food in there to last through a 10-year war. What was he going to do with this huge bag of tuna?

The only place that had space was the refrigerator. It was filled with ice and frost. It was one of those old ice boxes that you had to defrost. He opened up the door and pulled out all the food... that was the way he remembered.. the way Herb defrosted the refrigerator when he was a child. Herb was a smart man and Larry always followed the way Herb did things. There wasn't much cold stuff, he mostly ate out of cans.

Larry started removing everything until it was completely bare. He looked and dismay at the mountains of food and realized he could feed some of that to the cats. They weren't moldy yet. He slowly started removing cans of sun sea tuna. He examined the cans curiously. They had a cute little tuna hopping out of the water. None of the photographs of tuna he'd ever seen looked quite like that. He heard a rustling downstairs.

He took five cans of tuna and open them. He dumped them on a plate with some leftover fish and chips. He walks to the basement door and thought about renaming this house Larry's Cat House.

Image is my own Newt as a kitten

This is my late response for the last weekend prompt from @mariannewest.
As some of you know, I struggle with migraines, so I'm trying to catch up on a day off with some of my writing. This one was extremely fun to write and I always wonder what's going to come out of my brain with the dramatic twist. They were minor edits for clarity and grammar, I remained just true to form as I could be. I use Google Voice on my phone and I find that I can produce a lot more copy this way. I hope you enjoy it and if you like participating here's a link to the third prompt. Please remember to follow her, too, so that you can take part in all of the freewrite prompts.
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/the-weekend-freewrite-4-part-3-the-dramatic-twist

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