City of Cats

This 250-word short story won third prize in the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Pandemic Postcard contest, which asked us to write about our experiences during lockdown. I had a cat who came and visited me at my back door (the only contact I had with another creature for months) so I spun a tale imagining what all the cats of the city got up to while all the humans were locked away…

Jury Comments: “The author of City of Cats surprises and delights from the opening with an expectation of magic. The Norwegian Forest Cat becomes the wise traveller purring and cuddling by day, but by night! Oh, he’s is not confined by any pandemic! He becomes a wanderer and an adventurer in the strange, dream-lit, surreal night filled magical realism and joy. Defying all rules of human engagement with the city, the cat makes us want for that kind of freedom, that kind of returning to home after a good time away. City of Cats wakes us up to the uninterrupted world of the urban animal.”

Read on the Writers’ Guild of Alberta website, or on Issuu.

You can also listen to the short story, narrated by Zach Running Coyote, on CBC Radio.