Cats with Wings, Dead Things, and even Deader Badgers

There are some stories that I find fascinating: where the fantastical sits right at home with the mundane. It's not exactly fantasy nor science-fiction. Neither is it slipstream despite the fact that it's about the "fiction of strangeness" (too much strangeness maybe?).

I suppose this is always something I target in my own writing. Which is why I found this story about the growing popularity of faery cats in Strange Horizons quite... 'refreshing' in its strangeness. I don't know: maybe it's the almost semi-factual approach used by the writer, Lucy Snyder?

Salinas says that faery cats—scientifically classified in the genus Felis fae—were created in Europe and Asia around 300 B.C. The cats thrived in Europe until the Dark Ages.

I was reminded me of a story with a similar approach and checked their archives. True enough, Snyder had another story done in a similar way on the topic of cybermancy, something I had found both funny and creepy at the same time.

Winkler says that within a week, issues with their new Ichornet arose. "Our help desk staff told us users were complaining that their computers were possessed by evil spirits. But the secretaries have always said that about our Windows machines, so we blew it off.

Yes, there's something to be said about an article arguing the pros and cons between raising the dead and calling up the Old Ones. (Similarly, Snyder also did an amusing resurrection piece on how to install Linux on a dead badger.)

But I suppose it helps that the artist, D.E. Christman, aptly puts into mind when we read the term "cats with wings"!

Maybe I should go vote for these stories in Strange Horizons...