For a long time we waited in that cage.
Many people in blue shirts came to talk to us and feed us from the delicious
smelling cans. It was good to eat, but brother scared them all away. He hated
them for making us all so afraid. Sister nursed on the towel all day and night,
never moving.
They turned the lights off sometimes,
and everything was still and quiet for a while. But when the lights came on in
the mornings, all of the dogs would start to talk and rattle their gates. Other
cats were put in the metal caves across from us. Most of them were angry and
afraid too. A few of them were serene—they rubbed their faces against the
people in blue shirts. The cats that weren’t afraid got to leave. The people
would gather them up in their arms and carry them away. The cats that were
afraid stayed in their caves, sulking and crying.
I don’t know how long we’d been there
when she showed up. She flipped the lights on and walked past us. We watched
her grey shoes as the passed back and forth. She was cleaning the cats’
sandboxes and changing their towels for new ones. She talked to them quietly as
she worked. Her laces dragged on the floor, and I reached my claws out to grab
them like I used to do with the blades of tall, bitter grass. She stopped and
began to lower herself down to see me. I ran to the back of the cage and hid
behind brother. He was fierce, and she leaned away. Like the rest, she
whispered at us and then moved on. I didn’t expect to see her again—like the
rest of the kind blue shirts.
When I opened my eyes much later, she
was staring at us. Brother was yowling, every hair on end, claws at attention,
mouth wide and panting with fear. Her hand was floating over his face, and he
sunk to the ground, absolutely insane with terror. She hovered there, her blue
eyes rarely blinking. And then she had him in her hands. He screamed and
twisted and tried to escape, but she had him. She wrapped him quickly in a
small towel and held him to her chest, kissing his forehead as he snapped at
her fingers. They disappeared.
Moments later, her hand was back—hovering
over sister’s face. She was cooing as sister hissed and spat. It was quicker
this time.
She picked me up last. She laughed when
I didn’t howl and fight her. I didn’t even run. When she wrapped me up in that
towel with sister, my body went limp. She pressed me close to her cheek and
talked to me as we left the silver cave, and it almost felt like being pressed
up next to my mother again, warm and soft.
I talked back when she spoke to me. I
told her how sad I’d been, how much I missed my mother, how worried I was about
my other three siblings. She listened while she arranged our new home with her
other hand. She made us a new, bigger cave with soft blankets. She put a towel
over the front too so brother would be less afraid. He had barely slept in
days, and as soon as the cave went dark, shielded by the towel, he drooped over
and snored softly.
I heard her outside, talking to a man
and another blue shirt girl. They talked loudly to each other, discussing our
fate. When she left with the man later that day, she took us with her.
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