Have you ever seen your cat lash out, attacking some unseen creature that's always just out of reach? Have you seen them panic and dash across the floor only to turn tail and run back to their original spot, pouncing? Have you ever seen them stare so intently at a spot on the wall, you think they might just be seeing something you don’t? Your cat has been hunting greebles.
Most people think that when cats were first domesticated, humans wanted them to keep the rodent population in check around our stored food. This might hold a grain of truth, but the main reason was much more desperate: our reality was being attacked by horrific creatures from Beyond the Gate, and cats were among the only beings that could see them. We hunted with them, and together, we pushed the greebles back.
For a while, the world was safe, and humans developed while cats domesticated themselves. Tales of the horrific creatures turned to legends of monsters, which were in turn swallowed into myth. There were sometimes minor breaches of reality every once in a while, but our cats remembered how to keep us safe by passing down the ancient, magical traditions they first discovered with our ancestors.
Humans, for the most part, forgot. Sarah Styles, at least, did not have any idea what a greeble was. She had not heard of the Gate. She hadn’t even heard of the Signs or The Covenant that was about to save her life. She knew that her cat, Salem, definitely loved her, but she had no idea how far he would go to keep her safe.