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I'm looking for a short story I read a couple of years back. It was told from the point of view of an old cat, who has spent his life fighting demons[?] that try to come through weak places in reality. The demons need to possess a living being in order to do any damage, so places high in the sky used to be no danger but now are sometimes enclosed in sky scrapers. The cat is gearing up for his last fight, to protect the child of his humans.

It ends with something about the child playing with/learning from the cat's spirit in a mote of sunlight.

It is definitely not the Neil Gaiman story about the demon fighting cat. At first I thought it was in the anthology Magicats!, but I checked today, and it definitely is not. I think I first read it some time in the early '00s, but it had the feel of something that could have been written quite a while earlier.

Any guesses are much appreciated!

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    Hi Welcome to Sci-Fi.SE... Good description, and good amount of detail to go off. Good luck!
    – Möoz
    Aug 29, 2014 at 3:35
  • NOW I am interested. :p
    – Andrew P.
    Aug 29, 2014 at 9:27
  • Maybe it could be Varjak Paw? Some things definitely match it but others not so much.
    – Ender Delat
    Oct 1, 2014 at 7:56
  • You need to look in other SE sites, as this work is obviously non-fiction.
    – Oldcat
    Oct 18, 2014 at 0:24
  • It sounds a little like the third story in the 1985 Stephen King movie Cat's Eye.
    – 2540625
    Oct 19, 2014 at 1:34

2 Answers 2

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Some of the details are similar to "The Book of Night With Moon" by Diane Duane, specifically the old cat teaching a young cat and the walls between worlds being in the sky, but that was a novel and not a short story.

I suspect it's a combination of that and "The Dreaming Kind" by C. S. Freidman, which was collected in Andre Norton's "Catfantastic", a collection very similar to "Magicats" that came out around the same time (1989). The story features a genetically engineered cat that can see extradimensional creatures it's owner/scientist is unwittingly setting loose in the world. There's also a feral kitten, possibly the cat's own son, who can also see and fight the invisible creatures.

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There are some overlaps in your description with the Fritz Leiber story Space-Time for Springers, but it is definitely not a 100% match.

Hits: Cat protecting the child of his humans, demonic enemy, cat's spirit plays a role

Misses: Skyscrapers not a factor, mote of light scene not present.

The story can be read online here; it is worth your time to read even if it is not the answer.

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