"The Stray" by Garry Kilworth (BADASS HORROR)

Tom is a Man-Cat or a Cat-Man

Writer’s Note: If you’d like to read these stories, they are all available in BADASS HORROR, the second Dybbuk Press anthology.

This is a very lightweight story, but it has its fans. An Amazon reviewer cited it as his favorite. Basically, it's about a man named Tom who lives in a cathouse and acts like a cat. He goes outside and howls at windows. He chases rats. He likes it when the hookers stroke his hair. One day, he wanders into a room when a gangster brags about his murders and the gangster wants him dead. The sex workers euthanize him. Shortly thereafter, the gangster gets killed by a truck. The truck driver was wearing a hat that spelled out CAT.

It's a well-written fun little story.

The Value of Light Stories

When I chose where to place this story, I put it between the hardcore violence of Pool Sharks and Hemmingson's zombie detective novella. That was on violence. Consider it an aperitif between meaty gristle and a four course meal. A reader needs comedic relief after a story about a guy getting beat up in an Irish bar.

Often critics and serious literary types ignore light stories. They don't recommend them. They don't put them on their class syllabi. No one puts them in the Best Of anthologies. Yet, a well-written light story is almost always appreciated. It's not going to haunt you for years like “The Yellow Wallpaper” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth” but that's the key to its charm. Who doesn't like to read a nice little story and think “oh that's cute” and then go on with their lives.

Light movies tend to get more love. Nine times out of ten, a viewer scrolling through movies on Prime or Netflix will bypass all the Kubrick and Tarkovsky movies in order to rewatch Money Train or the latest romantic comedy. Some days, you just want to be entertained.

Axl Rose is a Cat

This is a one joke story, but it's a funny joke. I've used it frequently. Since I named my cats after the Bronte sisters, I tend to lean heavily on it for Facebook updates. I take a Target bag out and find out that Emily or Charlotte has pissed on it, the reader knows what I'm not saying that the authors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre rose from the dead, broke into my apartment and pissed on my shopping bag, but that image is in their head regardless.

Frequently, I add “Emily is a cat” to my Facebook posts. Example: Emily just crawled on top of me and forced me to scratch her head. Now she's licking her butt...Emily is a cat.

Which brings us to Axl Rose. Currently, Axl Rose is a pleasantly fat dude who is always late, because he seems like he'd be happiest sitting on the couch while someone scratches him behind the ears. Contrast that to the Axl Rose from the 1980s and 1990s who was an adorable little psychopath. He was young and skinny and cute and jumping off the walls. Young Axl Rose was fucking crazy. Let that Axl Rose stay over for a few days and he'd scratch up the furniture; puke on the carpet before he goes back to screaming.

In this story, Tom is more like an older fat Axl Rose. Perhaps Garry will write a kitten human story. Granted, we still have all of those Axl Rose articles from the 1990s.

Furries: Not Just a Sex Thing

We probably shouldn't laugh at furries. Yes, they are funny, but most of them are sweet people who like to dress up like cute animals. Almost everyone has a ridiculous hobby. If you don't have a ridiculous hobby, then you are boring. More importantly, only a small minority of furries cut holes in their costumes so they can have sex. Yes, some furries are Nazis and some furries actually believe that they are part animal, but every group attracts sad creeps.

Garry Kilworth is well known in furry circles for novels like Hunter's Moon and Frost Dancers, about foxes and hares respectively. He also has an entire series called Welkin Weasels where his anthropomorphic weasels go on sea journeys. Go to wikifur and you'll find many books about animals having adventures, from real animals with human brains (like Watership Down) and “rabbits in waistcoats” books. If you wanted to only read furry literature, you could do it.

This story isn't necessarily furry in the classical sense. The main character is a human with a cat brain. Perhaps it's a reverse furry. I'm sure that when academics finally take furry literature seriously they will propose better terms.

The Problem with Neo-Noir

Classic Noir has a wide variety of doomed characters including insurance agents, ex-boxers, guys just trying to make it to California, detectives, schmucks and manipulative women. Even within the femme fatale framework, the women were often compelling interesting characters.

Neo-Noir tends to follow the Frank Miller cliches of either hookers or gangsters. In Classic Noir, no one is innocent. In Neo-Noir, we are living vicariously through criminals. Even the detectives are criminals.

This story definitely falls into that category. Beyond poor Tom, the man with the cat brain, every character is either a gangster or a hooker. While, we may like gangsters and hookers, the characters have been done so often that writers rarely use their real world equivalents. There are still great gangster and hooker characters out there but most writers tend to rely on the tropes.

Granted, this story is a lightweight story about a cat-man in a cathouse so the gangsters and hooker don't necessarily need to be three dimensional.

Garry Kilworth

If you like this story and want to read more Garry Kilworth, he's been writing for decades. You have a great deal to catch up on. He's written dozens of books and short stories, often involving weird human animal tropes. In “Hogfoot Right and Bird Hands,” a woman cuts off her foot and turns it into a pet hog. Sadly, “hogfoot” is not nearly as affection as her poor departed cat, so she cuts off more body parts in search of a decent pet.

Ellen Datlow recently published “Flaming Teeth” in the 2024 Best Horror of the Year anthology. It's about an uncharted island and explorers having a bad time. His 1995 story “The House That Jack Built” concerns a man wandering into a haunted house that needs a new servant.

In essence, Garry Kilworth is one of those writers that should be much more famous than he is. He has certainly put the work in.

Again, please feel free to buy BADASS HORROR and read along.

I also published other books through Dybbuk Press including The Big Bow Mystery.

If you want to donate tzeddaka before Rosh Hashana (or whatever holiday is coming up in your non-Jewish faith), please consider donating to my Gofundme.