He sighs, rubs his temples. "Yep. She's a cat lady."

"Then let's just hope she's alive in there," Harriet says, and she starts walking to the front porch. Frankie stops her, grabbing her shoulder; he's one of maybe two people in the world who is allowed to do that without ending up dead.

"Wait. What does that mean?"

"I never told you about the Cat Lady of Brookard Street?"

His eyes widen. "No."

Harriet's mouth tightens. "When I was a little girl, we had a cat lady in town. We called her Mad Maggie, though I don't know that Maggie was her name. She had a great many cats, dozens upon dozens, and she kept getting more. She'd take in strays. She'd go to the shelters and take the ones marked for death. Rumor suggests she even stole cats from other people to add to her collection."

"Oh, fuck. I hate cats. I don't want to hear the rest of this story."

"The woman was very, very old. My mother said that when she was a child, Mad Maggie was an old lady even then. She had her routines: come out, get the mail, get the paper, water the mostly dead flowers that grew up out of a spare tire planter by her mailbox, repeat. Most hours of the day, she'd stare out the window. Then one day, we didn't see her anymore."

"Christ. Is this going where I think it's going?"

"Soon a smell emerged. It wafted from the house when the wind blew. Sickly sweet, like spoiled meat."

"Great. She died. Probably from catching cat AIDS or something. Let's go inside."

"That's not the end of the story. Yes, she died, and no, I don't know from what. But the story is her body sat there for days. She had no family. Nobody came to check on her. And more important, nobody took care of the cats. They started at her extremities – fingers, nose, eyes – and then moved inward. The muscles. The organs. Everything."

"I am gonna puke."

"The cats bred, too. Even after people found the body, nobody dealt with the cats. They multiplied until they became a colony. A hundred feral cats, maybe more. The walls and floors were spackled with feces and ammonia, a home to parasites and disease. Someone did the merciful thing and burned the place down a year or so after." Harriet stares off in the distance. "I still remember the sound of fire crackling and cats wailing as they burned."

Harriet walks off, up to the porch. Frankie trails.

"You're one broken cookie," he says.

"Knock on the door."

"You said parasites. What kind of parasites?"

"Toxoplasma gondii – causes toxoplasmosis. Cat feces have it. Gets on people's hands. Or in raw meat. Often survives the cooking process. It messes with dopamine levels. It changes the brain chemistry of the host. Some speculate that the parasite is the very reason for 'cat lady syndrome,' as it rewires the brain so that the person loves cats, going so far as to hoard them. There may also be a link between it and schizophrenia. Now knock on the door."