Riffraff

Dominic Viti

Winner of the 2026 Penn Review Prize in Prose

I got Riffraff when I was ten from Ricky Nelson, the poorest kid in town. His cat had a litter of four kittens. Ricky sold me one for lunch money. The little thing fit in my hand. His coat had more patches than Ricky’s. His meow was more of a wheeze, like he was a smoker. His color was ashy. He was cross-eyed. If anyone got in his way, he’d hiss at you. Dad said, “He’s a Nelson all right. Pretty soon he’ll be gambling on horses and getting in bar fights.”

Riff didn’t care much for Dad. Or Mom. Not that they were my mom and dad. I just called them that. I missed Ms. Hadley. She took me in after my real parents drove us into a lake when I was six. Besides her, Riff was the only one to care for me, and only me. 

From day one he’d attack you. He’d jump off a shelf and go crazy on your head. When he got bigger, he’d leap from the carpet and claw your face, slap you around with his tail. He was good at it. Even my brother Mitch, who didn’t talk trash about anyone, said my cat was trash. He never did anything bad to me, though. He only headbutted me for affection. He’d lay with me on the couch and knead my belly and bring me gifts: Dad’s socks, Mom’s jewelry. The occasional Ring Pop. Mitch said it didn’t mean jack, because I was the one who fed him. I said nuh-uh. Riff fed himself. He took care of our mice problem. Pigeons. And in the beginning when our sister fed him, he hated her guts too. Kibble had nothing to do with it. 

In the morning Riff would want to come to school with me. I’d make him stay back so we wouldn’t get detention. Mom had to keep him on a leash or he’d follow me. 

She’d kick him out of the house while I was gone. We had a chain-link fence around the yard. Dad put it up for our dog who jumped it and got run over by the school bus. All the girls screamed. The bus’s hiss disguised Riff’s. Sometimes, when I’d come home, I’d catch him crouched and hiding up in our tree, waiting to pounce on some dork with a dumb backpack. Fat kids were his bread and butter. Bigger landing pad, I guess. Slow to run away. 

But the second he saw me, he’d purr gently and throw up his white-tipped tail like a flag for truce. I understood those purrs. Riff would tell me about all the rich assholes who lived on our street and all the rich assholes who lived in our house, who had everything money could buy and didn’t appreciate any of it, how they complained all the time and talked down to you. It got on his nerves. They never asked how his day was or took interest in his hobbies. They didn’t see him as family. He was afraid to bring his friends home, friends like Ricky, because of how they’d treat them. At night he could hear his parents talking about giving him up. Dad would say, “We should call the adoption agency.” Riff wondered which one of us he was talking about.

We found out. Riff bit my sister’s earring off. My parents had to take her to the hospital for stitches. Her earrings were teardrops. 

The minute they got home, Dad took Riff in the car. I knew they weren’t going golfing. I’d seen my dad’s golfing buddies, and never once did he pick one up by the neck and throw him in the trunk. I started to cry, so Mom told Dad, “Come on, David, let it go. It’s the kid’s cat. Look at how upset he is.” Dad didn’t say anything, just told my big brother to come with him. “I need him too,” Mom tried, “he keeps me company while you’re at work.” Dad stopped short before he slammed the door. “Is that why you lock him out of the house? Company?” 

He threw Riff out the window off a bridge, and stopped to hear him hit the water. I know because Mitch told me. I didn’t tell anyone about it.  

Three days later, Riff showed up at my window. Tapping. He was dirty and smelly, so not much had changed. He’d lost some weight, but he had eight lives left. It was smart of him to come straight to my bedroom. If he’d gone to the yard, Dad might have seen him and reached for his nine iron. But I could only hide him in my room for so long. Mom went to clean it while I was at school and nearly had a heart attack. Riff did the crazy thing on her head and she broke a lamp swinging the broom. As soon as Dad got home he wanted to get rid of him. I think it was because Mom told him as soon as he got through the door. If moms would just wait until dads took their shoes off and had dinner, they might take bad news easier. 

Dad chased Riff around the house, calling him a little shit. Dad couldn’t catch him. He was basically a fat dork who outgrew the backpack. He threw his briefcase at the cat, then he got the broom and went to town. Eventually he tired himself out, wheezing. He was a smoker. I wanted to tell him he had more in common with Riff than he thought. Instead I told him Riff had learned his lesson. Dad said, “I don’t doubt he’s been studying more than you. Your grades are unacceptable. I know you don’t have my genes, but you’re a White now, and Whites go to college. I want all As or Nelson is gone.” I said, “I’m only in fifth grade.” And Dad said, “You’re going to stay there if you don’t wise up.”

Riff didn’t learn a thing. Every day, when I got home from school, I’d see him attacking whoever happened to be walking by. He went after joggers, people on bicycles. Watching anyone in spandex get ambushed by anything is funny. It was funnier to watch a jogger keep jogging while trying to kick off a cross-eyed felon. The guy looked like he was dancing to the ice cream truck song. I let Riff take a lick from my cone. That calmed him down almost. 

Neighbors started coming to the door, covered in Band-Aids. Others called the police. Dad said, “I’ve had enough. We owned a Rottweiler and never had complaints.”

One day, I came home and Riff wasn’t there, and neither was Dad. Mom said they’d just come from lunch with a friend from college who worked in advertising and was looking for a feisty feline to star in a Meow Mix commercial about cats who get cranky when they’re hungry. I pretended to believe her. That night Dad came back with the car, Mom whispered something in his ear, and he shook his head. “Wow, that’s great,” she said. “Hollywood.”

He’d driven twenty miles this time, to another bridge, and looked over the ledge to make sure my cat washed downriver. Mitch told me. Tears so big Sis could’ve worn them. 

Twenty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it feels like forever, especially for a cat, whose step is like a tenth of a human’s. I don’t know if that’s true. I failed biology, and math. But two weeks later, Riff was back, waiting for me at my bedroom window. I could maybe understand a dog finding its way home, given their sense of smell. This was something else. Somehow he’d gained weight. He must have eaten a fish or squirrel or something. I brought him some milk and he didn’t touch it. When Dad saw him, I thought he was going to faint. “A curse, that’s what this cat is.” I let him stay in my bed. He fell asleep before me, on his back, and all night long he was pawing the air, swimming to shore in his dream. That or punching. 

It was Grandma he went after next, on Christmas of all nights. He didn’t even bite her. Just jumped on her and knocked her over. She got a bad bump on her head, her wig came off, the tree went down. It was a whole thing. Everyone helped her up, and she started wailing. “Put me down,” she cried. “My hip. My hip.” She kept saying that. While Mom called an ambulance and Sis brought her a glass of water, like that was going to help her hip, Dad was already dragging my cat out by the tail. We knew he had it coming. But when he asked Mitch to get his gun, I grabbed the baseball bat from the wrapping paper and went to hit him on the arm. Sis yelled, “Dad, look out” at the last second, and as he turned around I smashed him in the face. 

I don’t know how to describe sounds, I also failed English, but I heard something give in his cheek. The blood came from his mouth. The same color as the ornaments. Dad touched a finger to his lip, looked at it, and slapped me so hard that a white light went on behind my eyes. I woke up on the floor. My brother, who was sixteen and on the wrestling team, was holding him back. Dad was screaming down on me. “I’ll fucking kill you,” he said, spit flying everywhere. “You’re not mine, you little shit. You never were.” 

At this point I don’t remember who was screaming and who was crying, it may have even been me, I just know that there was so much of it that it became everything, the center that we all moved around, like a Christmas tree, except it was darker than any dark I’d ever known, darker than the backseat as water filled the car, darker than my first night in the orphanage when the lights went out, pulling the comforter up over my chest, still feeling the seatbelt, then feeling totally alone, thinking I had to get the hell out of this place. 

Still dizzy, I got up and ran out the back door. Riff followed me and got between my feet and made me fall onto the patio. Outside was a different kind of dark, just enough moonlight to see the fence. I climbed it, hearing Mitch go, “Dad no,” and the shot rang out. 

I didn’t hear the bell on his collar, no paws behind me on the pavement. He’ll catch up with me, I thought, running down the block, he loves chasing runners. But he never did. And I never stopped running, because I only had one life. I ran down our street, listening to sirens in the distance, not knowing if it was the police or ambulance, cutting through yards with fake icicles dripping from the gutters, Santa pulling reindeer on the roof. I followed the silver tinseled lightposts for miles, what felt like more than twenty, something close to forever, until the sirens died out and I ran out of breath. I’d gone too far to go back to Ricky’s house. I wouldn’t be able to look at his cats. It was too close to home. I couldn’t get Riffraff out of my mind, and I kept trying to imagine he was with me. When I got to the orphanage, I waited to see if he’d come back to me, but he never did. I just stood outside of Ms. Hadley’s window, tapping.

Dominic Viti has written short stories for Chorus (Simon & Schuster), Harvard Review, and Beloit Fiction Journal. His debut collection, Broken, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. He works in advertising as an award-winning creative director.