Turtle and the Not-Cat

The storm had teeth that night. It gnawed at the eaves of the old Victorian home, making the whole house shake.

Amelia sat by the hearth, reading a romance paperback—the kind of book that made Turtle roll his eyes, even though he secretly enjoyed skimming through the smutty parts when no one was watching. She held the book in one hand, the other cradling a mug of something sweet and decadent, more marshmallow than beverage. Turtle often thought that both he and his mistress thrived in cold, dreary weather.

Turtle was a cat, a familiar. His fur was the color of midnight, sleek and unbothered by the storm outside. He’d been affectionately named “Turtle” because he’d been alive for centuries. In his lifetime, he had served five witches from the same family. In a sense, this old Victorian mansion by the sea was his home, and the witches merely passed through it.

He enjoyed his role as a familiar. In his experience, witches weren’t inherently evil. Amelia was more or less benign—kind at best, incompetent at worst. They really didn’t make witches like they used to. These young ones were full of anxiety and impostor syndrome. A pity, really. So much unfulfilled potential.

Turtle lounged on the windowsill, lazily admiring the rain while he cleaned his paws and preened, tail curled neatly around his hind legs. Moments like these were his favorite kind. He knew peace when he saw it: books, warmth, rain—his kind of peace. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Then came the sound: a wet, pitiful yowl.

A drenched, ginger cat pressed its face against the kitchen window. Turtle hissed softly, hoping it would take the hint. He didn’t need another nuisance in his house.

The yowl came again, louder this time, and Turtle flattened his ears, growling. Amelia didn’t look up from her book. Of course she didn’t. The woman could ignore a banshee if the plot was spicy enough.

He leapt down from the sill, landing with the grace of a creature who’d been perfecting it for five lifetimes, and stalked toward the kitchen window. The ginger thing was still there—shivering, ridiculous, dripping water like a leaky faucet. Turtle sighed through his nose.

“Go away,” he muttered, fogging up the glass with his breath. The cat blinked at him, eyes too bright for something half-drowned. There was something almost unsettling about them. They were too aware.

He tossed a coin in his head: heads, comfort and solitude; tails, his good deed of the week. He didn’t like the result of the imaginary toss and was considering trying again when the wet beast gave another yowl.

With an exaggerated flick of his tail, Turtle nosed the window latch open. A gust of rain and sea salt slammed into the room. The ginger cat stumbled inside, mewing like it had been personally wronged by the weather.

Turtle stepped back, tail twitching.

“You’re welcome,” he said. The cat shook itself, spraying droplets onto the rug. “Charming,” he added dryly.

From the armchair, Amelia finally looked up.

“Oh! Who’s this little thing?” she asked, setting her book aside.

Trouble, Turtle thought. But she was already cooing and wrapping the newcomer in a towel, and that, as far as he could tell, was the end of his peaceful evening.

He jumped back onto the windowsill, and went back to cleaning his paws.

Amelia cooed and fussed over the newcomer. She dried the hairy monstrosity with a towel that probably cost more than Turtle’s entire existence, then served it canned tuna in the family heirloom china—the one with the moon phases painted in gold.

Unbelievable, Turtle thought. A stray a moment ago and already dining like royalty.

He expected her to set the cat down on a pillow by the hearth or in the laundry basket where sensible creatures slept. Instead, she carried it upstairs. Turtle followed, his paws silent on the carpet.

She opened her bedroom door and whispered, “Come on, sweetheart, you can stay here tonight.”

Turtle froze in the doorway. Her bed?

Absolutely uncivilized.

A familiar’s place was beside the fire, not in a witch's bed. There were rules. There was an order of doing things. There was dignity.

He sat in an ottoman and watched, appalled, as the ginger cat curled into the crook of her arm like it had always belonged there. Amelia smiled in her sleep. The intruder purred, content.

Turtle’s tail flicked. He had served a lot of witches, and none had ever broken a boundary quite like this. He told himself it was none of his concern, that he didn’t care if she wanted to cuddle a damp street rat. But when the candle by the bed guttered out for no reason at all, he felt the fur on his back rise.

Something in the room hummed—soft, low, and wrong.

Morning came smelling of sea salt and coffee. Amelia hummed downstairs, bright and chipper, which was frankly offensive. Turtle sat on the counter, glaring at her box of cereal like it had betrayed him.

The ginger cat trotted after her, tail high, fur fluffed to perfection—as if it hadn’t spent the night soaking wet in a storm. Turtle noted, with deep resentment, that it now wore one of Amelia’s ribbons around its neck. Pink. Satin. Tragic.

Amelia said good morning to Turtle, scratching behind his ears.

He blinked at her, slow and deliberate, the universal feline gesture for you’re an idiot.

When she turned her back to fetch the milk, their guest jumped onto the table, delicate as a thought, and tapped her mug with its paw. It began to glow, it was gentle, almost unnoticeable. There a moment and gone by the time Amelia turned to them.

Turtle’s pupils narrowed. It must have been residual magic from spending the night next to Amelia, surely that’s what happened.

The cat tilted its head, watching Amelia take a seat on the breakfast table. “Aren’t you the cutest!” she preened, scratching under its chin.

Turtle wanted to scream. Or at least knock the mug onto the floor in protest. Instead, he flicked his tail and muttered under his breath, “It’s just a cat.”

A few minutes later, Amelia opened the back door to let in the morning air. The cat stepped out onto the porch and it sighed. Not a mewl, not a purr. A sigh. Human. Turtle jumped down, fur bristling. “Oh, fantastic,” he muttered. “A stray with secrets.”

By afternoon, the house had settled into its usual rhythm—Amelia singing off-key somewhere upstairs, the sea pounding faintly in the distance, and Turtle pretending to nap on the windowsill while keeping one eye on the ginger menace.

The not-cat had discovered Amelia’s study. That, in itself, was suspicious; the room was warded. No ordinary animal should have crossed the threshold, yet there it sat on the desk, pawing at the corner of a parchment like it had business there.

Turtle stretched, strolled in casually, and hopped onto a chair. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. Not that it mattered. He knew Amelia couldn’t hear him, but sometimes he forgot that other creatures couldn’t either. “Go on—off the table. Shoo.”

The not-cat didn’t move. Its paw pressed into the parchment, tracing a curve. A faint shimmer glowed under its claws—a half-drawn sigil, old magic. The air thickened, heavy with the metallic scent of spellwork.

Turtle froze.

The not-cat looked up at him, and for the first time, he saw it: the intelligence behind the eyes, the too-human focus. It meowed once, sharp and deliberate, like punctuation.

“Don’t you dare,” Turtle hissed.

The glow faded. The not-cat stepped back, blinking, as if embarrassed by its own slip. It hopped down from the desk and brushed against his side on the way out—warm, familiar contact that sent an unpleasant little spark through him.

Turtle sat there for a long moment, tail flicking, staring at the parchment. The sigil had burned faintly into the grain of the wood, one line short of completion.

He sighed, ears flattening. “Well,” he muttered, “I’ve adopted a demon.”

Turtle made several attempts to warn Amelia, all of them ignored with criminal efficiency.

First, he tried subtlety. He dragged the half-burned parchment from the study and dropped it beside her tea. She glanced down at the sigil, frowned, and said, “Oh, sweetheart, did you knock this off my desk? Someone is a bit jealous that we have a new guest.” Then she kissed his head and went back to stirring honey into her cup.

Jealous. The insult.

Next, he escalated. While she napped, he positioned himself on her chest, stared directly into her dreams, and purred with the low, rhythmic insistence of prophecy. Amelia woke, stretched, and said, “You’re needy today.” Turtle realized that it had been so long since he tried to communicate with the witches he served, he had forgotten how to do it. Was he a bad familiar? No, surely this could not be the case.

Finally, he resorted to chaos. When she reached for the not-cat’s food bowl, he swatted it clear off the counter. Kibble scattered like hail. Amelia gasped. “Turtle! That was rude!”

The not-cat blinked innocently, tail curling around its paws like punctuation to her scolding.

Turtle hissed, tail puffed, and stalked off to his spot on the sill. From there he could see his own reflection in the glass: sleek black fur, eyes narrowed, dignity unraveling.

Down below, Amelia scooped up the not-cat and murmured, “Don’t listen to him, honey. He’s just antisocial.”

Antisocial. The gall. Turtle was not antisocial. He was just picky about who he socialised with. Those were two completely different things.

The not-cat met Turtle’s gaze over her shoulder. Its eyes flashed gold for an instant—brief as a candle flicker, but enough.

Turtle’s stomach sank. That wasn’t candlelight.

“Wonderful,” he said under his breath. “She’s cuddling a time bomb.”

That night, the house was quieter than usual. The kind of quiet that makes walls remember things. Amelia had gone to bed early, a book folded over her chest, the not-cat curled against her side.

Turtle took his place by the window, watching the waves flash white against the dark. He’d been alive too long to mistake that shimmer in the not-cat’s eyes for ordinary magic. It wasn’t a curse on the creature—it was a curse around it.

Behind him, the bed creaked. “You don’t have to glare at me,” said a woman’s voice, low and oddly human.

Turtle turned from the sea to meet its stare. The not-cat was awake, sitting up, tail tucked neatly around its paws. Its mouth hadn’t moved, but the words had landed cleanly in his head.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” the not-cat continued. “The spell was supposed to wear off days ago. I was looking for help, not—” It gestured vaguely with one paw. “All this.”

“You’re talking to a cat,” he said dryly. “I’m used to all this.”

Its whiskers twitched in what might’ve been a smile. “I’m Mira. Witch of the Lower Hollow. Or I was, before some fool decided to curse me.”

Turtle blinked. “And now you’re stuck like… that.”

“Yes. I thought your witch might help me break it. She’s kind.”

“She’s soft,” Turtle corrected. “There’s a difference.” Turtle paused before asking, “Why haven’t you said anything?”

“I tried!” Mira said. “But your mind is so closed off. I think I could only do it now because your thoughts were wandering.”

Turtle was offended by her statement. He was not closed off. He was the one that had let Mira in, wasn’t he? Still, he looked at Amelia’s sleeping form and sighed.

“Fine. Tomorrow we’ll tell her—together. But you’re doing the talking. I refuse to be blamed for another magical fiasco.”

“Deal,” Mira said. “But you’ll have to help her understand me. She can’t hear me like you do.”

Turtle stared at her, offended. “You expect me to play interpreter?”

“You’re her familiar!”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, and muttered, “I liked you better when you were just dripping on the carpet.”

Morning sunlight spilled through the curtains, soft and golden, like the house was pretending the last few days hadn’t happened. Turtle perched on the dresser, tail flicking, while the ginger witch-cat paced on the floor below.

“She’s in a good mood,” Mira said nervously, glancing at Amelia, who was humming to herself and fixing coffee. “That’s probably a good sign.”

Turtle arched an eyebrow. Amelia turned from the stove. “Good morning, my lovelies!” she said, smiling far too brightly. “Who wants breakfast?”

“I need to talk to you,” Mira blurted. It came out as an emphatic collection of several mews.

Amelia gasped. “Oh my god, did you hear that, Turtle? She said something!”

Turtle groaned. “Yes. English. If you had an ounce of sense—”

“Mew!” Mira tried again, louder this time.

Turtle leapt onto the table, knocking over a spoon to get her attention. “She’s cursed!” he shouted, but of course it came out as a hiss and a growl.

Amelia frowned. “Turtle! Don’t be rude to your sister.”

“Sister?” Turtle sputtered.

Mira snorted a laugh, which earned her another affectionate pat. “She’s not understanding a word of this, is she?”

“No,” Turtle said, rubbing his forehead with one paw. “She has a hard time talking to me.”

“Maybe you are not very good at communicating,” Mira offered.

“Do you want my help or not?” Turtle argued.

Mira stepped closer to Amelia’s cup, dipping her paw into the coffee. The liquid shimmered briefly, turning a faint shade of gold. Turtle quickly understood what she was up to and tried to help. Together they used their paws to spell it out on the table. After a long moment of using warm coffee as ink, the words Help me appeared.

For a moment, the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock. Then Amelia whispered, “Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, you’re not a cat.”

Turtle sighed. “Finally.”

Amelia looked between them—her black cat, calm and exasperated, and the ginger witch-cat blinking apologetically beside a steaming cup of dirty coffee—and laughed, a small, incredulous sound—the kind people make when they’ve run out of reasons not to believe.

“All right,” she said, taking the mug to the sink. “Let’s fix this, then.”

They waited until evening. Amelia said spells worked best when the light was neither day nor night—when the world was in between, unsure of itself. Turtle said that sounded like an excuse to light too many candles. She ignored him, of course.

The three of them gathered in the parlor. The storm had returned, the wind clawing at the shutters, thunder rolling like a warning. Amelia spread a circle of salt across the rug, muttering old words under her breath. Mira sat in the center, tail tucked neatly, trembling but resolute.

“Ready?” Amelia asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Mira said, which came out as a thin, frightened mewl.

Turtle prowled around the circle, watching the lines of chalk and salt. “Try not to explode,” he told Mira. “It’ll ruin the carpets.”

Amelia shot him a look. “You could be supportive, you know.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

The witch and familiar looked at each other. They had communicated. Whatever barrier was holding them down was slowly fading away. Amelia beamed at their success. Turtle rolled his eyes but prowled closer to her, taking his place as a familiar: by her side.

Amelia began the incantation. The candles flared blue. The air pressed down, thick and electric. Mira’s fur rippled, glowing faintly at the edges. The room smelled of rain and hot metal.

Then came the flash.

When Turtle’s vision cleared, a very human, very naked woman lay in the circle where the witch-cat had been.

Amelia dropped to her knees, eyes wide. “Oh,” she breathed. “You’re—”

“Under-dressed,” Mira croaked. Then she laughed, hoarse and beautiful, and Amelia laughed too, relief tumbling out of her in a bright, wild sound.

Turtle sat back on his haunches, tail flicking. For the first time in a long time, he was proud of his work.

Later, when the candles had burned low and the storm had gentled into drizzle, he found them in the kitchen—Mira wrapped in one of Amelia’s robes, both of them leaning against the counter, talking softly. They were flirting, Turtle realized.

He jumped up to the counter, stretching. “You’re both impossible,” he muttered.

Mira looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“You’ll live.”

“Unfortunately.”

She reached out to scratch behind his ears. He pretended to hate it.

Outside, the waves shimmered silver beneath the new moon. The house creaked, old but content, and Turtle felt something he refused to name.

He settled into the windowsill, curling his tail around his paws. “Fine,” he said to the room. “Stay. Fall in love. But if either of you brings home another cat, I’m leaving.”