Ask any racer. Any real racer. They’ll tell you it doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile; winning’s winning. And on the streets of Metropurrlis? At a certain time of night, on certain streets? Well, that’s where the winning happens.

Life’s simple. You make choices and you don’t look back. We choose to live, breathe, face, and race in our karts. We choose this life — or maybe the life chooses you. But once you step paw into a kart… it becomes your world.

I found my way into the life early. I’d never even had my first glass of milk when I saw a hard cat with a gleam in his eye come to a screeching stop in front of me. He leapt out of the kart like his tail was on fire and dashed into a rundown tenement building that stuck into the sky like a broken tooth from a mangy maw. The kart was just sitting there, keys still in the ignition. Well — if they’re gonna make it easy for you. It’s almost more of a crime not to, isn’t it?

Getting that kart opened a whole new world. Suddenly I could go places I’d never been allowed. Streets barred to paw traffic opened in front of me like the forests of Kittenheim opened to explorers of old. As soon as I sat down in that kart, I wondered how that old cat ever stepped out of it. I knew I never would — I was part of the kart and the kart was part of me. And as I became part of this new world, it became even more true. Sure, I could leave the karts, leave the city, go take a boat ride up the coast to Catagonia. But leaving the kart meant leaving my home, and I always came back.

Without my kart I was adrift. Without my kart, I was without my crew.

Who you choose to be around lets you know who you are, and my Kitties are the best of the best. I made a big stink my first race, planning never to lose and shouting it to the smog-tinted sky, all the while barely knowing my shift from my excelerator. Dale Earnhardt won the race, paws-down, but instead of taking my car they just smiled and winked, curled dali mustache bobbing in the breeze. “That’s too much chrome for me, anyways,” they meowed, and that was that. I was in.

The most important thing in my life will always be the Kitties right here, right now, on this starting line. They lift me up, give me a purpose. When the engine purrs even louder than I do, that’s when I’m in the zone. I live my life a quarter mile at a time and for those ten seconds or less — I’m free.

Drifting.