Hi, I'm Laura Promen, Editor of Catscast, the monthly feel-in-fiction podcast that actually

exists. You may be familiar with the April Fools versions of Catscast that have come

out over the last two years, but this is no joke. Starting in April will be putting

at an episode every month for the next year, at least. If you're an escape artist supporter

on Patreon, the best way to listen to Catscast is on the escape artist's premium content

podcast feed. If you don't already have that in your podcast, you can find it under the

My Membership tab at the EA Patreon. If you're not an EA patron, you can listen on our

public feed, but we're only sharing half the episodes there. You can find more details

at EscapeArtist.net slash Catscast. Now here's a preview of episode one, The Cat Lady

in the Petitioner by Jennifer Houdak, which will go live everywhere on April 1st.

The fact that Bob can speak is strange, but now that Laura is standing at the top of

the playground structure, she begins to realize that there are far more unsettling things

in the universe. The whole leading to nothing, for example, that's right behind Bob. It's

not really a whole. Laura's mind labels it as such, because when faced with something

which defies all description, the mind will force it to fit somewhere. Whole is as close

when analog as Laura's mind can come up with. What it is, in fact, is a loosening, a thin

place in the membrane between universes, where the fabric is worn like jeans of her kneecaps

and the threads weaving everything together have begun to pull apart.

Laura could not possibly know this, but The Cat Lady does. Her house sits upon one of

those thin places. It's been her job, through each of her nine lives, to guard it, hers

and the cats.

A long time ago when she was young and frisky and new, it was a dangerous place, with universes

...