A poet was reading the local newspaper over breakfast one morning when an advertisement caught his eye. The old man who lived over on the top of the hill was going away for the week and needed someone to house sit for him. Thinking he could use the spare cash (because he was a poet) the man decided to answer the ad.
He walked up the hill that same afternoon and knocked three times on the large wooden front door. The old man answered immediately. He was dressed in his pyjamas and looked very happy to see the poet.
"I'm here about the house sitting job", said the poet.
"Thank god," the man exclaimed. "I'm just about to leave - my bags are packed and everything - but I still need a house sitter."
He beckoned the poet inside and closed the heavy door behind him. Then he set about explaining himself. As it turned out, all he needed was someone to make sure his cat stayed fed and to keep his antiques collection safe.
"I'm awfully afraid of being robbed," he said. "Those youths downtown keep trying to make off with all my expensive stuff. But my biggest concern is the cat."
"Why?" asked the poet.
"He's a very special animal," the old man explained. "He must never be allowed outside."
The poet shrugged. "Okay."
The old man grabbed him by the shoulders and gazed deep into his eyes. "Promise me you will not let the cat out!"
The poet suddenly felt uneasy. "Okay," he said. "I won't let the cat out."
The old man became cheerfully once again and his attention turned to the other rules of the house. What could be used and how to use it; what was to be kept clean and what was not to be touched at all. After that the poet helped him put his bags in the back of his car and just before he left he handed him a key.
"Make sure the house stays locked," he said.
That night the poet fed the cat, locked all the doors and sat down next to the old man's antique gramophone with a glass of wine from his cellar. The old man didn't have any modern music in the house so the poet had no choice but to listen to old jazz records. Eventually he went to sleep. He woke up later to the sound of the cat's wailing. When he got up it was scratching at the door and begging to be let out. Remembering what the old man had said he shooed it away and went upstairs to the guest room where he slept soundly for the rest of the night.
The next morning the cat was at the door wailing again. The poet fed it and and this occupied it for a while. But when it was finished it returned to the door and resumed its begging. The poet ignored it and went upstairs to write poems.
When he returned in the evening the cat was still wailing. By now the bottom of the door was covered in scratches and the cat was mewing louder than ever. He had changed its litter tray that morning but it hadn't been used since. Clearly it didn't need to do its business. The poet wondered why it was so desperate.
"You can't go out," he told it. "Stop asking."
The wailing kept him up all through the evening. He covered his ears with the pillow but it didn't seem to help. At this point he was so fed up he considered just letting it go outside to do whatever it wanted to do. But then he remembered the look in the old man's eyes when he said it must not be let out and decided against it.
When he woke up the next morning it was still by the door, screeching at the top of its lungs. The poet, tired and driven almost insane, tried to shoo it away but it wouldn't leave. The door was now badly damaged, and the poet thought at this rate it would probably be able to dig its way out. He put his hand on the knob, wrestling with temptation as the cat looked on impatiently. The old man's deadly serious face came to him again, but he pushed it out of his mind and finally gave in, throwing the door open and watching the cat flee into the daylight.
"I hope you're happy!" he shouted after it. "Don't come back!"
He went to close the door again but a strange, distant noise stopped him and he looked up at the sky. At that moment a solar flare, a hundred times more powerful than any other in history, bombarded the Earth. It burned away the ozone layer in an instant and pummelled the planet's surface with a heat so intense that every living thing was instantly incinerated. Trees and other plant life was reduced to ash as the oceans and seas boiled away. The moon exploded.
And that is why you can't let the old man's cat out.
The end.
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