The Yule Cat Saga

December 20th, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland, a town outside of Reykjavík, Feral cat survey

“Hey Sid! Help me get this cat off my ass!”

I looked over at Gunnar and chuckled. One of the feral cats we were studying had decided to clomp its jaws onto the lower backside of Gunnar’s sweater and in the process, realized it was now stuck despite its whirl of flailing claws. Given that it was a bright red sweater and the now loose yarn everywhere, it looked like the cat had sprung an artery.

Gunnar had invited me to help him with the survey because of my background as a mammalian physiologist. While my profession typically involved what goes on in the inside of a mammal, I always welcomed the opportunity to learn what happens from the outside. Since Icelandic cats had arrived with the original Viking explorers, they had had a chance to evolve almost exclusively among themselves.

I grabbed the cat by the scruff of his neck, causing it to go limp. I then extricated its jaws and claws from the mess of red yarn. Once it was loose, the cat unexpectedly calmed down and began to purr in my arms. The cat looked like an attempt at a calico, but had lost enthusiasm half-way through the process as the front half was calico colored while the back half was a uniform black to the tip of its tail.

“Oh man, this was my favorite sweater,” Sid complained as he peered around his backside to study the splatter like mess. “Helga knitted it for me five years ago. She’s going to be pissed.”

“Kind of serves you right for turning your back on this one,” I offered weakly while holding the cat. “The cat probably thought you would be an easy next meal.”

“Not helping,” Gunnar grunted.

“You know they have a hunter’s instinct to go after the soft parts.”

“Really not helping,” Gunnar scowled at both me and the cat as he picked up the red mass of loose yarn.

“If nothing else, better the sweater than your actual buttock. Given the nature of these guys, you’d probably need an IV drip loaded with antibiotics if it had actually sunk in its teeth.”

I opened a tin of pickled herrings and gained a new best friend. After the cat demolished the herrings, it refused to leave my side for anything…all the way to Helga and Gunnar’s house. To spite Gunnar, I named the cat “Peysueyðandi”, or Icelandic for “sweater destroyer”. He wasn‘t happy but grudgingly called the cat Peysuey.

As Gunnar explained the mess of his sweater to Helga, Peysuey purred triumphantly, exploring each corner and shadow of their house while I followed him around to make sure he didn‘t destroy anything else. Overall, he seemed content to spread his scent around the house by means of brushing his hindquarters and tail against the household impediments that stood in his way, rather than the more traditional way of peeing on it.

While Helga was initially annoyed, after hearing Peysuey purr in my lap while we enjoyed steaming cups of tea in their living room, she allowed herself to smile at the cat.

“You know you’re bringing it back to Minnesota with you, don’t you?” she asked, or more by her tone, ordered.

“I’ll make the arrangements with the airline. It’s about a nine hour flight. I’ll ask the vet to make up some knock-out juice to keep it sedated in the cabin.”

“I spent a year making that sweater for Gunnar,” Helga’s face shifted slightly. While it appeared she was still smiling with her teeth, she was no longer smiling with her eyes. It reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s smile when he played the Joker in the first Batman movie.

“When I was knitting the part of the sweater that cat destroyed, I was enjoying watching Lisbeth Salander take people down in the ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ movies. I found the emotional upheavals of her character to be a suitable motivation as I continuously stabbed myself with the knitting needles while finishing that section of his sweater.”

Thinking about it, I asked, “Continuously? You make it sound intentional rather than accidental.”

Her eyes flared to fully reveal icy blue irises.

“Oh, silly me,” she shrugged, as she began twirling a single knitting needle in her fingers, still parading the same Jack Nicholson smile.

She then stabbed the knitting needle into the coffee table before her, making it stick straight up while rattling the cups on the table. Peysuey’s ears perked up a bit, but he continued to purr contentedly in my lap.

“I guess I’m a bit attached to my efforts,” she said as she picked up the empty cups before departing into the kitchen.

Before she left the room, she gave me a glance that withered me down to listless sinews, and then she gave an even worse one to the cat.

I rubbed my finger under Peysuey’s purring chin while I dug out my phone and started to make arrangements to bring him back to Minnesota.

*

December 23rd, late evening, over Greenland

After an astonishingly high veterinarian bill, two days of bickering with the airline, and encountering at least 20 more knitting needles sticking up menacingly from various surfaces in Helga and Gunnar’s house, Peysuey and I were on a flight back from Reykjavik to Minnesota. Peysuey slept the entire time while I found myself unable to sleep, being disturbed by nightmares of ill-natured knitting needles.

I was also reminded of how close knit the general population of Iceland is, as I became cognizant of the popularity of knitting and glaring at me between the flight attendants, all using the same color of bright red yarn as what had been Gunnar’s sweater. By the time the flight was done, the flight attendants gifted me with an eight foot long scarf that featured a surprisingly detailed image of Peysuey chomping one of Gunnar’s buttock arteries, with the blood spraying out becoming the tail end of the scarf. As I left the plane, all the flight attendants and the pilots were giving me the same Jack Nicholson smile as a few of them tightened my scarf around my neck, albeit not too tightly.

When the flight was over, I called Gunnar to make sure he was still among the living. He wished me the best of luck with Peysuey before informing me of all the sordid details of Helga’s worldwide knitting consortium. I shuddered involuntarily listening to all of Gunnar’s laments as I hung up the call a half hour later.

I then called Rachel, my girlfriend, to inform her of my arrival. It was Christmas Eve morning.

“I want to hear Peysuey’s purr,” she demanded, as she picked us up outside the airport while wrapping her arms around me.

“You can’t now, he’s still sleeping,” I replied, indicating the covered cat carrier. “Would it be possible for us to stop at Petsmart on the way home to pick up some kitty supplies?”

“Of course!” she smiled a genuine smile, then took a step back to look me over. “Hey, where did you get the new scarf?”

I explained the generosity of the flight attendants and the community of Icelandic knitters, apparently headed by Helga.

She wrapped her hands around the back of my neck to pull me in for a kiss, then leaped back.

“Yeouch!” she yipped, holding up her hand to check it and then showing me the drop of blood on the end of her finger. “Sid, it’s bleeding!”

I examined her hand quickly, and then felt along the back of my neck and discovered a knitting needle with an extra sharp tip. I pulled it out carefully and then pulled off the scarf to examine it for the other half of its pair. I found it hidden amongst the wash of red yarn in the tail of the scarf.

“Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said, holding up the scarf to check if there were any other surprises in it. “The flight attendants just kind of wrapped it around my neck as I was leaving the aircraft.”

“Huh,” she snorted. “I guess that means you weren’t flirting with them like you usually do.”

She shifted her attention to examine the image on the scarf, addinng, “I guess she must have really loved that sweater.”

“She and the rest of Iceland, apparently.”

“Or at least the Icelandic Knitting Consortium,” she paused. “Was she at least nice?”

“Not really.”

“So I gathered.”

*

December 24th, morning, St. Paul, Mac-Groveland neighborhood

We got to my apartment and I opened the door on Peysuey’s carrier. He cautiously crept out and sniffed around while I set up his litter box and food and water bowls. To my surprise and relief, he immediately used the litter box as soon as he saw it. Then he went over to his food bowl and looked up expectantly at me.

I had brought several boxes of pickled herring along with me and as soon as I started to open one of the tins he immediately began rubbing furiously against my leg in anticipation. He wolfed down the entire tin within under a minute and then fell asleep still splayed out in his food bowl.

Rachel had been watching all of this display of affection with tepid amusement.

“Looks like you’ve got a friend for life,” she smiled.

“He was the same way when I plied him off Gunnar’s butt,” I stated. “As soon as I opened a can of pickled herring for him, he decided to stop being a terror.”

“It’s hard to imagine him as a terror. He seems so sweet now.”

“Just picture a blur-shaped version of him with claws, fangs, and red yarn whizzing everywhere.”

“Oof. Point taken.”

I began to unpack the rest of my stuff. Not too surprisingly, I discovered Helga had snuck two knitting needles and a sizable ball of red yarn, the same shade of red as Gunnar’s sweater and the tail end of my scarf, in my suitcase when I wasn’t looking.

“I guess Helga wants you to replace Gunnar’s sweater,” Rachel offered, picking up the yarn and needles to examine them.

“Or she was trying to scare me from ever returning to Iceland.”

We both heard a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by the crack of wood snapping into pieces. I ran out to the kitchen to discover a car-sized hole on the side of my apartment, letting the cold air inside. On the outside of the building we saw Helga and 13 other women, many of them flight attendants from my Iceland Air flight, all armed with knitting needles, yarn, and Jack Nicholson smiles. They were all standing outside my building staring at an indentation in the snow.

I walked over to discover an enormous paw print, followed by an additional one about ten feet away, and more going off into the distance.

Helga gave me a rib-crushing hug and seemed to be genuinely concerned as she let me go, at least with regard to her teeth.

“I’m sorry I was so distant to you, Sid,” she apologized, finally ditching the Jack Nicholson smile for the first time since I had seen her at their house.

“Well, you weren’t distant so much as subtly threatening, with all your needles sticking everywhere in my path in your house.”

“I was mad at Peysuey! Not you!” she pleaded. “But I should have known better than that. I should have known he was the Yule Cat and had picked you to be one of his keepers.”

“Yule Cat?” I asked. “Keepers?”

“You have to understand,” she said as she gestured one of the other women to bring forth a small outdoor table and chairs while several other women had a tea service ready with cups of steaming tea. She then motioned Rachel and I to sit down while she sat opposite us.

“We never would have expected the Yule Cat to pick someone who wasn’t Icelandic to be one of its keepers.”

She then took a long sip of tea and indicated that both of us should do the same. We did, reluctantly.

“The Yule Cat is an unfortunate reality we have to deal with every year in Iceland, particularly near Reykjavik. It’s linked to a troll family and their modern descendants, which include me and these lovely ladies.”

All the ladies save one gave a slight head nod, while the last one gave a curtsy.

“Show off,” another of them hissed.

“In Iceland, the Yule Cat shows up on Christmas day and eats anyone who doesn’t wear the clothing they received during the gift giving part of Christmas, which occurs on Christmas Eve,” Helga continued.

“That’s why we knit constantly,” one of them squealed. “We supply the children with clothes to protect them from the Yule Cat.”

“It’s horrible when the Yule Cat actually eats someone,” another one said.

“Happened last year to Elnar’s cousin’s kid,” a third one offered.

“Oh, but that wasn’t that horrible, was it? He was kind of a brat,” a fourth one affirmed.

“Oh yes, yes, yes he was,” they all collectively clucked.

Helga scowled at all of them, ending the clucking, except for the show-off who decided to curtsy.

“Anyway,” she growled, silencing everyone. “On the evening of Christmas day, the Yule Cat goes around to everyone’s houses and peeks in their windows at dinner. If he sees someone not wearing their new clothing, he eats their dinner and then eats them.”

“He’s quite large,” one of them offered.

“Obviously, if he did that,” another one pointed at the car-sized hole on the side of my apartment.

At that point, both Rachel and I looked over at my apartment building and then where my apartment now had a section of wall missing. It didn’t occur to me that the wall of the apartment had expanded outward, rather than inward, indicating that the force that had destroyed the wall had come from inside rather than outside.

“Peysuey did that?” I gulped, pointing at the wrecked wall.

“Oh, you got off easy,” one of them cajoled. “Anna’s house was uninhabitable after the Jolakotturinn scented it.”

“Jolakotturinn?” Rachel asked.

“Icelandic for Yule Cat,” another one hissed, adding under her breath. “Show off.”

“So what do we have to do?” I asked. “We’ve got less than 24 hours before all hell breaks loose in my nice, quiet neighborhood.”

I looked with affection at my Mac-Groveland neighborhood in Saint Paul. Rachel took my hand and led me to a giant paw print in the snow. I thought of Peysuey: alone, shivering, and now a brat-savoring monster.

“I guess you’ll be shacking up at my place,” she said as she gave my hand a squeeze.

“Looks that way,” I said, bringing her face towards mine to kiss her.

She started to lean in to the kiss, then paused. Her eyes lit up in anticipation of an idea.

“Is there a way we could confuse the cat? Maybe if we gave it a big enough knitted collar or cat sweater?” Rachel suggested as she broke away from the kiss.

Helga looked taken aback at first, then she thought about it more and smiled.

“Hmm,” she contemplated. “I think that might actually work. Usually we just let him at the total brats though.”

“The world’s better off without them,” one of the ladies quipped.

She was shushed by everyone.

*

December 24th, early afternoon, tracking Peysuey in St. Paul

Since Peysuey liked me best, I was chosen to track it. Rachel, who knew how to knit, hung back with the ladies at her apartment and helped prepare a loose-fitting, gargantuan-knitted collar for the Yule Cat. I had bought a six foot diameter plastic wading pool from Menard’s and tied it to the roof of my car, thereafter opening up tin after tin of pickled herring and dumping them in the pool. I then began tracking him, while encouraging every cat within a six block circumference to attempt to chase me down to get at the herring.

I noticed the cat had gone towards downtown St. Paul. I thought of the sunniest spots that would be appealing to a cat and realized there were two that came to mind: one was the back of the downtown library and the other was the outdoor part of the Science Museum. I ended up spotting Peysuey, at least twenty-five feet long from head to tail and at least ten feet tall at the shoulder, perched on the tugboat at the Science Museum, soaking up the sun with a pile of what remained of 50 or more sea gulls that had been stacked on or around the tug boat.

For his part, Peysuey looked reasonably content and drowsy. There were a few kids near him inside the tug boat but they were largely ignoring each other. As an additional sea gull flew overhead Peysuey took a leap and snatched it out of the sky, twisting himself around in midair to aid his gently landing back on the boat. He munched a few times and then spit out a mess of feathers and bones, getting drowsy again.

I called Rachel and let the knitters know where I had found Peysuey. The knitters all collectively cooed except for the one who asked if he had found any brats yet. To my surprise, Rachel announced that they were almost done putting together a thick, knitted collar for him. We then coordinated and figured out the best way to draw him down from the tugboat to my car, where we would be able to outfit him with a collar.

I called up a friend of mine who was good with drones and explained our situation. He agreed he would help out as best he was able. In the meantime, I went to a local yarn shop and bought about half a mile of yarn, fitting the mass of 300 yarn rolls in my car, along with a ladder from my garage, and headed back to the Science Museum to meet everyone near the lizard statue at the base of the museum.

My friend had gathered several of his drone buddies and rigged a harness between them all, giving them that much more lifting power. They then lifted a yarn bird about the same size of a sea gull, knitted by the ladies, that was tied to a single piece of yarn that hung from the drones. With the wind catching it, it was largely indistinguishable from a sea gull in how it caught the breeze and dangled. The drones then began a flight up to the tugboat level of the Science Museum from the mini-golf course on the ground level, all the while hauling up the remaining line of yarn up about 6 stories.

Peysuey’s attention was fixed on the yarn bird from the moment it came within visual range. The bird dangled and bucked against the wind about fifty feet below the drones, and the bright red yarn it was tied to entranced the Yule Cat all the more. As it got closer, we all watched him rev up his hind legs in anticipation for the kill shot. Then we pulled the yarn bird back a bit, over the lower levels of the museum. Peysuey followed the bird down, his eyes fixed like a laser on the yarn bird. We gently coaxed him down, bit by bit, until he was within smelling distance of the mass of pickled herring on the roof of my car.

As soon as he was able to smell it, he immediately leaped up in joy and landed within inches of my car, burying his face into the pickled herring.

While he was eating, I brought out the ladder and fitted the giant knitted collar around his neck. As soon as the collar was clasped, he shuddered, shaking the earth in the immediate area, but then continued to slop up the herring with his foot-long sandpaper tongue.

Right before he finished the herring, Peysuey looked like he was about to crash for a contented nap. But then he saw a couple of Goth teenagers wearing t-shirts from the 80s and gave a subseismic growl. He began to rev his hind legs up in anticipation for the kill…

…and he noticed the collar around him and then freaked out.

He became a whirl of yarn, claws, fangs, drones, sea gull feathers, and my car, all of which transformed into a self-generating mass of static electricity which attracted lightning strikes from the nearby high intensity power lines and caused a small explosion in the parking lot. I was blown back about twenty feet and knocked out unconscious.

When I came to, Rachel was standing over me holding a purring Peysuey in her arms while extending her hand to me.

And my car was on fire.

I ignored it as I sat up and reached for Rachel’s outstretched hand.

All the knitters had since gotten into arguments with the drone pilots over whether the desserts were better at Cosetta’s or in Iceland, with the drone pilots all gradually coaxing the knitters into Cosetta’s, including Helga.

The mayor had made an appearance, looked over the situation, and gave me a thumbs up.

I brushed myself off, and limped over to help clean up the mess.