There is a house along one of the routes Jeff and use to walk the dogs; we call it the "cat house." That's because there are always multiple cats in the front yard. We've made a habit of counting them as we pass, and we've seen up to eight or nine cats at a time perched in various spots. One of them is almost always sitting in a wrought iron bench near the front patio; this is obviously a coveted position occupied by the more dominant felines. You can usually spot another cat on the doorstep and one or two in the driveway. The others, when they are out in full force, take up posts on the lawn and sidewalk.

If you have ever spent much time around cats, you probably know how unsettling it can be when they stare at you. More than once, I've woken up to find my own little Leo looking at me intently. "Stop it, Mister Kitty," I tell him. He never listens. He just keeps on staring until I either feed him or kick him off the bed.

When you have half a dozen or more cats staring at you all at once, tracking you as you walk past their territory, the effect can be rather sobering. Repeat this experience enough times, and you will perhaps understand why Jeff and I have come to see these cats not as pets, but as sentries--especially since the guards' posts are never occupied by people. Human activity just doesn't seem to take place at that house. The lawn is a bit straggly, with weeds creeping their way onto the nearby pavement. There are no noises or open windows. We've never seen any evidence of departures or arrivals; there is a trailer in the driveway, but it doesn't seem to have been moved any time recently.

In our neighborhood, the mail is typically delivered through a slot in the front door. It is probably a good thing that I am not employed as a letter carrier, because there's no way you could talk me into reaching towards the mail slot in the cat house's door. "That's how they get you," I once told Jeff. "They pull you in through the slot, and then they surround you. Everything goes black. When you wake up, you are one of them."

Given my views on this garrison for felines, you'd think it might be a relief to discover that I've been wrong about the place--that there is an actual person living there. A person with two legs and no visible tail.

Under different circumstances, you might be right. Yesterday, as we came within view of the cat house, we saw a human in front. It was a little girl, perhaps six or seven years old. She was blonde, and she wore a pink shift dress. It was a warm day, and many of the neighborhood kids were out playing: they tossed balls to each other, teetered along the sidewalk on bicycles with training wheels, and pulled plastic wagons filled with toys and younger siblings.

The little girl in the pink shift dress wasn't playing. She was sitting on the wrought iron bench near the front patio, with her knees pressed together and ankles crossed beneath her. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and she was staring. She watched us as we walked, turning her head slowly to follow our movements. That's all she did.

I audibly let out my breath after we passed the house and were out of earshot, and I looked at Jeff, raising my eyebrows. He nodded. We had reached the only conclusion it was possible to reach: the girl in the pink dress was a shape-shifter, a cat in human form. Oh, sure, I suppose there is some possibility that I just watched a little too much X-Files back in the day, but if you come walk my dogs with me, perhaps you'll see the cat child, too.

And you'll never go anywhere near that house's mail slot.