Late and Stuck

I was writing the story below for "The Rule Everyone Knows" challenge and felt I was stuck. I published it in the Critique community as it was at the moment, asking for the readers' input:

There was once a town full of black cats. No one knows how it happened, but all the cats in the town were black. Not white, gray, brown or calico. All perfectly black, with no spots. Every household, if they had a cat, had a black cat. All the stray cats were black as well.

No one in the town knew or remembered why all the cats were black. The town residents of course knew of the existence of other colors in cats, they just never saw them in their town. To be more precise, there were several occasions when a different color cat appeared in the town, for a day at the most, making a talk of the town and attracting a lot of attention. But then it would quickly disappear, never to be seen again. No one knew where and why, but other color cats just didn’t stay in the town.

The black cats roamed the town free and seemed to be revered. They lazily allowed people to pet them by rubbing on their feet. Whenever that happened in the town streets, the person the cat rubbed against would pet the cat until it got tired and decided to leave. Which could take a lot of time, depending on how friendly the cat was or how diligent and skillful the petter was.

And then the person would stand in the same spot for at least 10 minutes after the cat left. Sometimes even more, because they’d be glued to their phone or lost in a book. Many of the town residents seemed to be carrying a book with them just for the cat petting occasion. People probably thought that since they had to stay in place after the petted cat leaves anyway, why not read a book or scroll through the reels in their phone, right? Or maybe they didn’t think about it at all because that was their life. Everyone did it, no questions asked.

Whenever a black cat crossed a road, all those who needed to cross the cat’s path would simply turn right or left instead of going straight. They then would go around, finding a street where there were no black cats crossing the road. It could take them a lot of time to find a route like that because, again, the town had a lot of free roaming black cats.

Most of the commenters on that story wanted me to put a sinister spin on it, and I was struggling with it to the extent that I missed the deadline to submit it to the challenge. I had several ideas, one of which was to reveal that the cats were indeed ruling the town through the top hat man who was nothing but their puppet. Or flip it and make the man the true master of the town, with a really mean streak. But I couldn't decide which way to go and never finished the story for the challenge.

And then my academic life took over and the story has been just sitting in my drafts. I don't know if I will ever finish it but I am grateful for the challenge where I can submit it. Even in a half-baked form.