Toulouse, From Feral to Fabulous Part One

Everything had been dark for so long. Warm fur and milk and darkness were all I could remember when the world began to creep in. It came in through my sticky new eyes in shards of light. I felt her sandpaper tongue cleaning my milky face, and I was able to peer into her yellow moon eyes for the first time. She was a vision of confidence in the home she had made for us, nestled in the leaves and tall grass and brambles in the garden of an old man. I slept for eons in the cradle of my siblings’ wriggling bodies.

It’s hard to remember that time now, like trying to make out a shape in fog. I have a new home and new sisters and brothers. But I remember our garden home, the old man’s tools leaning against his brick house grown up with weeds. When it rained or when the old man’s dachshund broke free from his feeble hands, we would follow mother under the house and wait.

One day, the old man stopped leaving food for mother. He stopped walking his dachshund, and we didn’t hear his slippers moving around inside the house. Mother’s water bowl became dirty and sour. She grew lean, but she didn’t worry. She was a huntress. She taught us to be fierce.

The man had been gone a long time when mother disappeared. We cried for her for days, and sometimes we thought we heard her calling back, but she never came. A few of my braver siblings left the garden in search of her. They never came back either.

The sky was slate colored from rain when the big black nose intruded into our home, snuffling loudly. The nose quivered excitedly and a mouth emerged behind it, followed by two wide brown eyes and two dangling ears…the dachshund.  My brother stiffened and began to howl while my sister and I inched under the house, afraid. A woman’s hand pushed the intruding nose and mouth and eyes and ears out of the way and parted the leaves. When she saw us, she made the softest sounds, but she couldn’t touch us. Brother was too afraid. He spat and jumped and screamed at her to go away. And so she did.

It wasn’t long after that when another lady arrived. She made the same soft sounds, and we smelled the most delicious thing. The smell was coming from a little can down a long metal tunnel. We hadn’t eaten anything but spiders and grass for days. Sister crept bravely in, and I followed her, our paws confused against the cold metal bars. Brother hesitated, but he was so hungry. Something slammed behind him as he walked in after me, and we all stiffened and cried. There was no way out. We were lifting off the ground, our feet slipping on the smooth metal.

The lady took us to a big brick building. There were lots of other cats and dogs there, and it was so loud it hurt our ears. Brother spat and screamed and clawed at the bars, but it was no use. We were trapped.

The lady opened the trap and we ran as fast as we could from it only to find ourselves trapped again, this time in a tall metal cave. There was a soft towel on the floor, a bowl full of sand, and a silver cup of water. We were so frightened. Everything was different. There was no grass. There were no garden tools. The sunlight was fake. There was still no mother.