Lock Away Your Cats

Mentone is a small unincorporated area next to Redlands. Redlands is known for its churches and its rich population. I like to describe Mentone as a place where redneck meets gangster. Lots of poor people in Mentone. Redlands also has a dark past. And lots of haunted places for such a small town. There is a park where there is a south facing pentagram of palm trees in Redlands. The grass is worn in the pentagram shape between the trees, showing it is walked often.

This happened in around 94. I was 15 at the time. It was close to Halloween. Around this time of year, everyone locked up their black cats inside. I was always told to do this. At the time, I didn’t know about all the dark practices that happened in the area.

I was watching the neighbors’ kids, two of them. They were 9 and 6ish. I can’t exactly remember. It was a nice fall afternoon, so we decided to take my dog for a walk. They didn’t have a dog and mine was super friendly. As we were walking, we saw a white car (in very good shape, in a poor area) stop in the middle of the road. Two women got out. Opened the trunk. They carried something between them, and placed it in the middle of the road. They got back in the car and drove away.

We stopped a distance away. I was unsure of what was in the road. I handed the leash of my dog to one of the kids, and told them to wait here.

I then inspected what the women had left. It was a black and white cat. It has been gutted. It was a ritualistic looking cut. There was little to no blood. I ran back to the kids. They asked what it was. I changed the subject, said we should hurry home for dinner

The sight of that cat still haunts me. I think they were hoping the body would get run over to cover what they did to it. Every year after that my cats were indoor cats around Halloween.

I’m glad I moved from that area. I’ll take bigfoot over cults any day.

I have more stories from Redlands that I will share. I’m a skeptic about the supernatural. But there are somethings I can’t explain.