Instinct

Nine By Seanan McGuire

CATS HAVE NINE LIVES, THEY SAY. Cats come back nine times, and our lives follow a strict pattern. Three to stray, three to play, and three to stay. And then, they say, it’s over. No eternity for Cats, oh, no, but nine lives should be eternity enough for something small, and soft, and swift. Nine lives should satisfy our souls.

The people who say that don’t account for the ones we love, the ones who walk more slowly, the ones whose hands are soft but whose skin is as rough as a paw-pad, the ones who tower over the world. We are their hearts gone running wild through the places they cannot see, and to say that we don’t deserve anything more than nine is to say that our Humans must go to their own eternities without their hearts.

I would never have known how little Humans loved themselves if not for the way they spoke of Cats.

But nine is a well-accepted number, among the people who like to say such things. Somehow, those are never the ones who sit down and do the math of how long a Human life is, and how short a Cat’s life can be, when our Humans are unable to care for us as the ancient compact demands. They fail to do the accounting which shows that as Humans have grown better at tending to their own needs and extending their own lives, they have done the same for us.

Nine is the number of times a Cat comes back, and nine is the number of times we will find our Human waiting for us when we return. Nine is the distance between a kitten and a child together, running through the grass with no understanding of the perilous and persistent future, and an elder of each kind, withered and weighted with the ghosts of those long-lost summers, sitting together in a final sunbeam, ready to embark on one last trip into the dreaming dark. Nine will get us from here to there, in almost all circumstances. Sometimes, when the world is not kind, it is far more than nine. Sometimes, when the world is either very kind or very cruel, it is fewer. But nine is the average.

Three times to stray, through the wild and fickle hours of youth. Three times to play, when spirits have settled but fire yet remains. And three times to stay, mellow as a moment, curled beside the people we adore, choosing the hands we have known before.

There is no great office which assigns the hearts of Cats to their Humans, and some Cats, seeking a Human heart to tether to, find themselves greeted by fallow ground, cruel words and disinterest. When this happens, they go looking elsewhere, for the lives of straying are still in flux: they can change allegiance. There is yet no investment in the Human, no reason to stay loyal. We are not dogs, to give ourselves so easily. Dogs need but a single life to become totally devoted.

So, this is the first lie they tell themselves: There is no true limit to the number of times a Cat may stray, in the search of the home where they belong. We try on Humans like Humans try on shoes, checking their fit and then discarding them, until we find the right one. This is not always due to cruelty. At times, a Human and a Cat simply do not suit each other, and both can be best served by moving on. So, we quest, and we consider, and we ponder. If a Cat is so fortunate as to find their home quickly, they may cut the lives of straying short, may choose to move straight along to playing. This is most common when the Human is older, already grown enough to live in harmony with themselves, already secure enough to provide a harbor.

A Human is a harbor, if nurtured right, if trained by the proper deeds and whispers and nudges. A Human can be a place of safety and unending affection, where there is no need to fear cold, or hunger, or the tearing teeth of predators larger than ourselves. A Human can also be a source of endless sorrow. For we measure our time in the number of lives it should take for us to match their time in flesh, but Humans are as temporary as we are, if on a somewhat longer scale. At times, the count is wrong. At times, they reach the end of their time while we still have miles to go on our own, and they must go first into the clearing that awaits us all, when our count of nine is finished.

It is a sad thing, to see a Human go on ahead, unaccompanied and alone. It is a glorious thing, for it tells us the counting time is finished. When next we shrug off flesh and fur for the space of wind and starlight that waits beyond, there is no need to struggle with the question of return, whether our Human has the time to need us again, whether they will be too deep in mourning to accept us if we chance to come before them. We can simply go, onward to what waits beyond, which neither Cat nor Human can know with any certainty. We exist; we end; we go to the clearing at the end of the path, to wait a time before we return to help our heartless Humans along, and when we find ourselves there together, we must decide together.

Should they choose to return to the world they’ve left, we go with them, to serve another nine as their roving hearts, their small and vulnerable pieces of the world. And should they choose to follow the pathway that leads from the clearing into whatever waits for weary spirits tired of flesh and fighting, we go with them there as well, and we are never seen again, neither Human nor heart, neither custodian nor Cat. We find our endings in that hollowed, hallowed space outside of everything, and we are content with this way of things.

I have seen Humans in the clearing who never knew their hearts were in the world, or knew but didn’t care, or found their hearts in other forms, and were waiting for them still. I saw them, and I knew them, and I knew which they were, whether the companions for which they waited were Dogs or Horses or—in a few rare, terrible cases—nothing at all, whether they had lived their lives so outside the possibility of love that they had never found comfort outside the sanctums of their skins. Those Humans, who have never learned to love anything other than themselves, find only one route from the clearing, and it leads back to the world they left. They have to go again, to run a life the length of our nine, in hopes that their return will teach them love.

That alone makes me look forward to the day when I will take my last trip to the clearing. There is no promised paradise that I have ever seen, only the clear and quiet green at the ending of the longest road, but it only allows those who have learned love to continue on. Whatever comes next, whatever form it takes, we go together, and we go knowing the shape and the substance of love. That is a powerful thing.

But they count our lives in nines, and that is a good and useful thing, because it tells us from the very start that we must continue to return until we have finished. Until we have led our Human home.

I can see that you do not understand. Don’t worry, child. Soon enough, you will. These are things you must know, before you take to flesh for the first time, things you must understand: Kittens are very skilled at the art of dying. It is not a thing that anyone will teach you, nor should they have the need: It is a thing you will understand as soon as you feel the tension of blood and bone settle over you. You will want to live, for all things yearn to survive, and if fortune is on your side, you will have the opportunity.

If it is not, as it will not always be, you will end your one and return here, to speak to those who linger, before you undertake your two. If you do return quickly, do not think that you have failed in any way: It is common, to return swiftly after a first outing. No one expects you to find your Human immediately, nor will shame you if you are not among the lucky few who accomplish such a thing.

You may run through all nine of your lives in searching and find them when they are elderly and tired and you are much the same, weary of the going and returning, ready to remain. Or you may find them swiftly and settle by their side. That is not for you, or for me, to know.

Their world is large, and we are small. Our spirits can be large as anything, but our bodies are not the same. You may spend several lives searching. They will not always be easy ones. For every kitten born into warmth and comfort, wanted and wished for, there are a dozen born into the great, cold wild, hungry and afraid, fighting to survive.

Those kittens, when they survive to grow strong and swift, are still at the mercy of a world so much larger than themselves. Some Humans will want to help them, and others will wish to do them harm, and they will not always look different from one another.

You may meet some of these Humans, in your time. They may end those lives before you’re ready. You must be quick and clever to escape them, but you must not let their existence close you off to the promise of your own Human, waiting somewhere in the world for you to find them.

I have sometimes wondered whether the cruel ones were those whose own roving hearts had been broken before they could ever meet, and so now they seek to deny other Cats their chance to find their homes.

Time will be your friend and your enemy, and it is very likely you will go before your Human, even if you find them swiftly, even if you return to them again and again and again. We have the potential to outlive them by so very long, if we take our full ration of nine, but potential and reality are not always acquainted.

You will very likely die and leave them living, mourning you for the rest of their long days. Mourn with them, but do not hurry back unless you are sure—truly sure—that they have long enough to not leave while you are once again living, trapping the pair of you in separation. The clearing waits for us. It is good here, and green, and comfortable. You can be content here until they arrive.

And oh, when they come! When they come walking down that path, grief in every step, sure that you have left them forever, for that is the lie the Humans tell themselves—that they are forever, and Cats are only temporary—only imagine the joy in running to their sides! Only imagine their surprise, while they are grieving their own deaths, to find that you have waited for them, however long it took, that you have not gone on ahead! They grieve the temporary, so that we can help them rejoice in the eternal.

There: those are three things you should know, one for each triad of lives you have yet to live, all the wonders that are yet ahead of you. It will be hard. The dangers will be great.

The rewards will be greater still.

So go, kitten: go and begin your counting down. Go and begin your living. Find the Human whose heart you were always intended to be and keep them from becoming cruel in your absence.

I will be here when you return. My Human has yet a little time left to her—not so much as once she did; not enough for another life together—and I will wait until she comes. You will all but certainly return before she reaches me. I will see you in the pause between numbers, and I will remind you, each time, that it’s worth it.

They’re worth it.

All nine times we have them, they’re worth it.

Seanan McGuire is a native Californian, which has resulted in her being exceedingly laid-back about venomous wildlife and terrified of weather. When not writing urban fantasy (as herself) and science fiction thrillers (as Mira Grant), she likes to watch way too many horror movies, wander around in swamps, record albums of original music, and harass her cats.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye, InCryptid, and Indexing series of urban fantasies; the Newsflesh trilogy; the Parasitology duology; and the “Velveteen vs.” superhero shorts. Her cats, Lilly, Alice, and Thomas are plotting world domination even as we speak, but are easily distracted by feathers on sticks, so mankind is probably safe. For now.

Seanan’s favorite things include the X-Men, folklore, and the Black Death. No, seriously.

She writes all biographies in the third person, because it’s easier that way.

To learn more about Seanan, go to: https://seananmcguire.com/index.php