Back to Summer 2026

Caterwaul

Casey McConahay | Fiction, Summer 2026

The man was sitting by the telephone, an open notebook on the counter, fresh inked notes on the pages of the notebook. 

The woman was in the living room, the evening news in the background. There were fires burning somewhere on the television broadcast, and she called from the loveseat where she sat with a pillow.

Any news yet? she asked.

He had a pen in his hand. He put the cap on the pen.

No, there isn’t.

He’d smeared some ink on a page with his handside. Some of the notebook scribbles were in the woman’s careful writing, but there’d been hundreds of futile phone calls, and she had long ago stopped calling. It was difficult—making phone calls. She’d often sobbed through the calls. They were searching still, the detective assured them, but there was nothing to report. He’d added notes on the pages as he talked to the detective. Is there anything we can do? he asked. Is there any way we can help you? But the detective, exasperated, told him, I’ll tell you when there’s news. You don’t need to call. I’ll call you.

The man tapped the end of the pen on the counter. Next time, he thought, he’d ask about the security cameras. He’d ask the detective if this was a case they were prioritizing or if they regarded it, as the woman had suggested, as a disruption, an annoyance.

There were dishes on the countertop. Unwashed plates, cups, and soup bowls. It was months after their son had gone missing—after he left from the nightclub but did not make it home—and there were chores that they’d neglected. Washing dishes. Doing laundry. There were shrubs that needed trimmed, and they looked big, wild, and fringy.

He placed the plates in a stack by the sinkside, and it was there in the kitchen that he first heard the mewling. It was faint, distant, and he thought that he’d imagined it. But then he heard the sound again. He couldn’t tell where it came from. He called the woman in the living room and asked her, What are you watching?

She said, The news.

What’s that sound? What’s that cat sound?

The woman sat on the brown-leather loveseat. He remained at the doorway near the source of the mewling, and when he heard the sound again, the man said, There—did you hear that? But the woman, who looked bewildered, didn’t look from the newscast. Are you sure that you aren’t hearing things? she asked him.

The too-long sleeves of the woman’s sweatshirt reached her fingers, so she rolled the sweatshirt’s sleeves before rising from the loveseat and they listened to the sound—to the catnoise.

Where is that coming from? she asked him, and she looked in the cabinets. By the stove. By the fridge. Beneath the sink with the trashcan.

It sounds so close, the woman told him. Over here. Here it’s close.

She put an ear to the wall.

Here.

Inside?

The husband leaned toward the wall, toward the woman. He heard the cries past the drywall. They were clear, constant, loud.

She said, It’s there. In the wall. It’s a kitten.

He asked her, How did it get in the wall?

The woman walked from the sound, from her husband. She went across the messy kitchen toward the shelves with the portraits—to the framed family photos of their son and the daughter who they’d seen much less often since their son disappeared. Who seldom came to their home like she used to.

We have to help it—the cat.

He said, Help it?

The cat can’t stay in the wall. It could die.

Her husband stood to the right of the cat wall. He crossed his arms at the doorway as the wall kitten cried.

I don’t know how, said her husband. We can’t get to the cat.

It got inside though, she said. We can reach it. We can find where it is.

He said, How?

The woman walked from the shelves toward the kitchen. She’d sometimes wake in the night and leave their bed for the hall where she’d say prayers for the safety of the son they’d not found while the husband remained awake with his eyes closed. She went out to the counter while the cat cried and searched through things in the junk drawer—through the batteries, pens, a pair of dull gunky scissors used on Otter Pop tops—and in the drawer was a flashlight that she brought to the man.

She said, We’ll get to the cat from the crawlspace.

He said, We can’t. From the crawlspace?

You can reach.

No I can’t. It’s in the walls, said the man. Not below them.

We can look there at least. We can try.

She’d make him do what she’d asked . She was stubborn. She’d been stubborn when he met her years before at the skating rink, and in the days after their son’s disappearance, it was she who’d made the phone calls. It was she who called detectives, and when the answers they gave her were impersonal and vague, the woman drove to the police station, and she spoke to the policemen. I’ll not let you forget about him, she told the detectives. I’ll not let you forget about my son.

He used the beam of the flashlight in the hall, in a bedroom. He shone the beam through the darkness to the room’s open closet and pulled the panel from the closet wall and looked in the crawlspace—shone the light in the cramped, dirty crawlspace. And he called to the kitten, voice grown soft when he called, and searched the dark of the crawlspace with the bright flashlight beam until he came from the crawlspace. Cobwebs were stuck to his clothes, and he picked them off from his chest, from his sleeves.

I couldn’t see where it is. I can’t find it.

But you heard it?

I heard it.

Were you close to it?

No. It’s in the wall, said the man. I can’t reach it.

You can’t get to it?

No. No I can’t.

The woman stood near the door of the closet. The kitten cried in the crawlspace as she stared at the dark and brushed the dirt from the shoulders of her tall husband’s shirt.

We’ll set out food, said the woman.

He said, What?

I don’t know. I’ll have to look. Maybe milk. Cans of tuna.

There’s some hamburger still.

It needs to thaw.

The man had dirt in his hair, on his clothes. He left the room, went to shower, and she backed from the closet. Once, years ago, they’d fed a stray in the side yard. Her son had brought it home one day, and he came in with the cat and set the cat on the counter. Where did you find that? her daughter asked him. He said, Outside by the doorstep. The children asked to keep it, but her husband wouldn’t let them, and the late autumn cold drove it elsewhere.

Her husband came from the bathroom, hair still wet from his shower. Neither of them had eaten. There was bacon in the refrigerator, and her husband fried the bacon. Afterward, when they were done with their sandwiches—when the grease from the bacon had congealed in the pan and plates they’d used during dinner joined the stack by the sink—the woman went to the closet with some milk in a bowl and then went back to her husband on the brown leather couch.

It hasn’t come yet, she said.

Just be patient.

If it’s stuck—

But it isn’t. It can leave when it wants. The cat won’t come from the wall if it sees you.

If it’s stuck though, she said.

But it’s not.

They watched some shows on the couch. Evening gameshows. They guessed clues on the gameshows but were usually wrong, and later, during a commercial break, he told her, Maybe it’s time to hire an investigator—someone who’ll give it more attention.

The woman leaned on the coucharm—leaned away from her husband. How would we afford it though? I don’t know how we’d pay for it.

The husband stared at the screen and watched an ad for a sportscar. We shouldn’t worry about the cost, he told her. He told her, Finding him—that’s the important thing.

They watched the rest of the gameshow and the start of a singing contest. The woman listened for the kitten but did not hear its crying, and she got up from the couch and went again to the closet. She went slowly, silently, so she’d not scare the kitten, but when she went in the room, she saw no cat—just the milk bowl. She said, Here kitty. Come. Aren’t you hungry?

It didn’t call from the dark of the crawlspace. She returned to her husband half asleep on the couch.

Has it come out yet? he asked.

No it hasn’t. It’s still there. Where it was.

What?

The milk.

He’d turned the show volume down in her absence. He rubbed his eyes—slowly rubbed them—and he looked from the program.

I’m so tired, said the man.

I can see that.

And it’s late.

No it’s not.

Well it’s night.

The husband stood from his end of the loveseat. Then he walked toward the hallway—toward their room down the hall—but on the way to their room, the husband paused by the wall.  She got up from the couch and heard it too—heard the cat—before she tapped on the drywall and the cat called again.

We have to help it, she said.

Just be patient.

Can’t we help it? she asked.

He said, How?

He had his hands on his hips. He was thinking. The kitten mewls past the drywall sounded sad, feeble, thin, and he asked, What do you want me to do about it? He asked her, What? Break the wall?

The woman glanced at the shelves, at the portraits.

He said, We can’t. I won’t do it. We’d have holes in the wall.

She told him, Please.

He said, No.

But we have to. We can patch it.

The wall?

Please. We must.

Her husband stormed from the room. She stayed back with the kitten as it cried in the wall, and she said, Wait. Wait. He’s coming. And she sat on the floor, and she heard doors that he opened when he went through the home to the garage and his workspace and his toolchest, its drawers, and as the voice of the kitten grew so soft, sounded strained, the man came back through the doorway with a short-handled sledge and brought the tool toward the woman who’d remained by the wall, his meaty fist on the handle of the steel-headed sledge.

You show me where, said the man.

Where the cat is.

Are you sure? I could hurt it.

Don’t hit hard when you hit.

I have to break through the wall, said her husband. It won’t break if I don’t.

She said, Oh.

She took his hand—took the hand that was toolless. She slid his hand on the wall above the source of the mewls. She told him, Here.

He said, Fine. He said, Ready?

She said, Yes. She said, Go. She said, Swing.

He aimed the head of the tool where she’d showed him. The crack was loud like a gunshot when he punched through the wall, and bits of white brittle [CM8] plaster formed a brief hazy cloud before he pulled on the handle of the wall-crushing sledge and dropped the sledge on the carpet, plaster crumbs on the floor. They saw no cat—only studs. Insulation.

Do you see it? he asked.

She said, No.

She touched the loose ragged edge of the wall hole. Nothing crawled from the drywall. Nothing moved in the gap. They’d put a hole in the wall. It was pointless. But beside her, her husband heard a soft, gaspy cry—the mewling faint in the darkness of the wide, ugly hole—and then he reached through the hole in the drywall. His hand went deep in that darkness, and his arm went in too, and he withdrew it—the arm—and brought a cat from the hole. The cat was white. It was small. It was lifeless. He cupped the still curled-up kitten in a dust-covered palm, and as she stared at the kitten he’d found dead in the wall, she brought her hands to her mouth to catch the fast-rising sobs and heard the phone loud, insistent, past the door to the room above a sound—something else—in the wall hole. He turned back to the crying, and he reached through the hole and touched the soft insulation and the much softer coat of something warm, something wriggling as it cried in the dark, and it cried out as he brought it from the hole to the light, the gray striped cat mewling louder in the light of the room until she reached for it—took it, brought the cat right to her chest. The woman wept with the cat and held it tightly. Both held cats—her, her husband. And they wept. Both did. Both. The kitten claws poked like pins through her sweatshirt. And, Our son, said the woman.

He said, Yes. Yes I know.

But is he—

No. No he’s not. No.

I miss him.

He’ll come home.

Yes?

We’ll find him.

Will we?

Yes.

She saw the hole in the wall. Past it, darkness. And it writhed then—the kitten—but she’d not set it down. The phone rings screamed from the phone in the kitchen.

And it cried. Her cat cried.

One cat cried.

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Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

“The past several years have taught us that terrible, inexplicable things are happening daily, and we are powerless to prevent them.” 

Casey McConahay is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author whose work has appeared in December, Beloit Fiction, and Southern Humanities Review. He lives in northwest Ohio.