‘That serene individual was going berserk’ – an interesting phrase, and our writing prompt at Weymouth Writing Matters this week. Several of the resulting stories made reference to the religious life, and several involved cats. I managed to do both!


The brindled cat stared through the window, all insouciance. Mother Mary-Mercy looked up from her work, raised an eyebrow and then frowned in a most uncharacteristic way. Of all the Sisters she was the one least given to foolish outbursts, ridiculous fears, unlikely visions, loud talking or any other form of unseemly behaviour. Oh, to be sure, there were some of the Sisters, who shall remain nameless, who drew attention to themselves from time to time in this way, believing it showed clear evidence of their vocation. Mother Mary-Mercy was swift to put down these outbreaks, making it very clear nothing of this sort would be tolerated in this house. And she led by example, too, keeping herself under perfect control at all times. An iron fist in a velvet glove, the other Sisters whispered, that’s Mother Mary-Mercy.
And that is why she felt so distressed by her reaction to the nonchalant cat.
“It is only a cat, after all,” she said aloud, “but there is something in its green eye that makes me want to…” She hardly knew what.
Half an hour later, the Sisters were astonished by a most arresting sight. “Oh, come and see! Come and see what Mother Mary-Mercy is doing!”
She was in fact pursuing the brindled cat around the kitchen garden, howling like a banshee, and wielding a broom with clear intent to do murder. “I’ll teach you to stare at me through windows, you devil-incarnate!” she screeched. Mother Mary-Mercy, that personification of calm, that serene individual, was going berserk. Some said she was possessed.
When she had been apprehended and the broom removed from her grasp and soothing words spoken to her, she had been taken to the infirmary and dosed with a soothing posset by Sister Bernadette. Mother Mary-Mercy slept peacefully.
As Sister Bernadette observed, “Even the most composed of us is entitled to run a little amok now and then.”
The brindled cat, meanwhile, stared through the infirmary window with a new look of respect in its green eye.

My new short story collection, Mr Muggington’s Discovery and Other Stories is out now http://tinyurl.com/hec25gr. For further gentle humour: The Larus Trilogy – Isle of Larus myBook.to/MyAmazonLinks , Sea of Clouds myBook.to/MyAmazonBooks and All the Wild Weather (to be published later this year).