The Cat in Quarantine

As I run I think I can hear Dorothy crying, but perhaps I’m only imagining that.

“Go!” yells Dorothy. I let my natural fear and caution take over. I run. For safety. I sprint out into the woods.

Dorothy swings again and I’m too overwhelmed to move. I’m struck in the back and flung out into the gravel.

Dorothy finds a wooden broom and swipes at me. I dart away on instinct and find that I’m outside.

I don’t like the outside. I’m not for the outside. I’m for the inside. I only think otherwise because I’ve been cooped up for so long.

The door is sometimes open at our house, the one I share with Her and the man. The man who’s never come to visit. A house with a yard. A sliding door. She beckons me out sometimes – out onto the grass. I wander a bit, looking, considering. But I don’t really like it.

I stopped in the space between my cage and the open door. The air was chillier than before. Still warm, but crisp.

I came out. Slowly. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll say that woman let you out. The one from before. It’s okay.”

No. I don’t know what it means. She opened the big door and then she opened my door. I thought it was a mistake. I stayed. Sat in the litter box. Waited for her to realize. But instead she beckoned me out of the cage. Waved her hands and said tst tst.

My door is also open. The door to my cage. Dorothy opened it. She was crying. She said, “She’s not coming” and I almost believed I knew what she meant. “She’s not coming.”

The big door to the outside is open. It is warm and sunny. Leaves dance across the ground.

I don’t notice when they leave, but they close the other door and the lights go out.

I go the other side of my cage. The big door is closed, but I stare at it anyway. I imagine it’s open. I imagine grass. I imagine leaving.

I rub against the bars of my cage. I purr. They don’t notice me. Except they do – they keep looking at me as they argue. The Man in the White Coat points at me sometimes. Dorothy gestures with her whole hand, makes her hand slash through the air and then leaves it hanging there, pointing at me.

Dorothy and the Man in the White Coat are arguing. They are standing outside my cage, in this otherwise empty room, talking loudly and angrily at one another. I am sitting in my litter box, staring out the open door, hoping for it to end so I can go back to sleep.

How would I know? Who would ever tell me?

And She hasn’t come back in such a long time I’m beginning to worry. At first I worried about myself, but now I worry about Her. Maybe something has gone wrong. Maybe She’s terribly hurt. Maybe She’s just gone.

Dorothy and the woman with the knotty red hair seemed upset, but there was very little else to it. The body disappeared. My room was empty again, except for just me.

The whole experience was deeply underwhelming. It did nothing. It got slightly better. It died.

She wouldn’t touch me for three days afterwards. I didn’t understand why at the time.

I picked up the dead bird and placed it at the foot of the door, then returned to my warm shadow and waited. She came soon, opening the door and stepping on the bird. She cursed, wobbling sideways, then looked down. Then She screamed. She dove inside through the open door. I picked up the now crushed bird and followed Her inside. She screamed more.

That was it. We were together on the ground beside the chair. It was dead and I was proud. Very proud. It felt like a good thing that I had done. It felt right. Above me another bird alighted on the railing and chirped once. I missed that one. But that was okay. I had done something very good.

I don’t really know what happened in the moment that followed. I struck the bird. It died. Not immediately, of course. I tore at it with my teeth and in the end it was dead. I don’t know when exactly it died.

I crossed out around the leg of the chair to put myself in line with the bird. It hopped on the arm. Bounced, but didn’t leave. Just chirped. Looked. Waited. I jumped.

I was born indoors. I have never been hungry. Not really. And I don’t think the idea of eating the bird really ever crossed my mind. I never had before. Why should I now? But I had to hunt it. Had to. I had to best it. Beat it. Be superior to it. And, in doing so, I would kill it. That’s what happens.

But this bird – the one I killed, the first one – it was resting on the arm of the chair and looking out, out on to the sky and trees and everything. It chirped. Trilled, I guess. Its head twitched. Right, left, down, right. I stood up in my shadow. The bird didn’t seem to notice. But then, they always don’t seem to notice and still manage to fly off when you really try to get them. So I was quiet and slow. And it didn’t notice or it didn’t care. Just chirped. Trilled. Waited. I wondered what it was saying. To whom it was calling.

I have killed four birds in my life. The first I remember. The others I do not. The first was gray and blue and perched on the arm of a chair She kept out on the balcony. I had been sleeping below the window, in a warm, black shadow, so it must not have seen me. Or it did and didn’t care. I don’t understand birds. I don’t suppose I understand anything much other than myself, but birds in particular I do not understand. They seem arrogant to me. And stupid. But then, they can fly. And I suppose if I had that I might become arrogant and stupid as well.

I don’t even know what type of bird it is, simply that it has parts I identify with birds – feathers, claws, and what I presume to be a beak. It hasn’t come out of the crate yet. I’ve been limited to partial glimpses.

The woman has reddish knots of hair and wears a blue jacket that whispers with every movement she makes. She has a large, shapeless bag, which she shuffles through often, looking for what I wouldn’t know. I gather that she’s looking for things to offer to the bird – food perhaps, but I don’t really know.

It says nothing. I wouldn’t understand it if it did, but all the same it’s odd that it doesn’t make any noise.

A woman is here. Someone I don’t know. I believe she brought the blue crate yesterday, but I’m not sure. When she arrived she set the crate on the ground and opened the latch. She stared inside, cooing and tsk’ing. The thing inside shifted. Fluttered. Moved into view.

She never did come to visit that day.

The cat was dead. It lay like a matted toy, still and quiet and dead. And then it was out of the room and I was alone.

The Man in the White Coat left. Then the woman left. Then Long Hair pushed the metal table slowly out of the room.

They talked a bit, all three, but not the cat. The cat was silent.

Drawers opened and closed. That brief buzzing sound. Moaning. Crying. A quick suck of air. And then a stillness much too deep.

She’ll sit right here, in front of me, and rub. First my head and then my neck and then my back, but not too low…

And the cat began to moan. They were all crowded together, hovering over the metal table. The woman was crying and the cat was moaning. The shrill, hysterical pleading and screaming was gone. Now just a low, throaty moan. A dull wailing with the woman’s soft sobs on top of it.

I thought to myself Good. Now She can come and sit and pet me.

“She’s fine,” said the Man in the White Coat. The cat took labored swings with her limply hanging limbs, but could hardly reach anything. Long Hair led the way out of my little corner. They didn’t close the curtain this time.

“No,” said Long Hair. He glanced at me, scratching at my bars, and then looked across to the cabinet. He pushed the cabinet door all the way open. The natty old cat shot out, but it hadn’t had to run in a long, long time and Long Hair was quick. He snatched the cat by the scruff of its neck.

I made a noise. Long Hair looked up at me. I scratched at the bars of my cage, the ones that faced the cabinet.

The cat made a disgusted noise and disappeared into the cabinet. I began to worry if She would be able to visit me in the midst of all this fuss. Would they stop Her if this old, natty cat was still running around? Keep Her from coming to see me?

Meanwhile, the old, sandy-haired cat was crouched inside a partially open cabinet staring out at me.

“Just keep her away from that sick cat,” said the woman. Long Hair sighed and bent down to look under a wooden box of some sort. The Man in the White Coat moved to the opposite door, leaving Long Hair to do all the looking.

“Besides, Margie’s not…” began Long Hair before trailing off. “Stay on this side of the curtain, Mrs. Dressen. In case Margie comes back out this way.”

“It’s a precautionary quarantine,” said the Man in the White Coat. “Unvaccinated animal. Came into contact with a wild animal. It’s a state law.”

“Quarantine?” The woman put a hand up to her chest. “What is it? Is it contagious? What about Margie?”

“Margie?” said the woman, a small thing with fluffy silver hair and a heavy sweater that reminded me of a blanket She had kept at the end of the bed. “Who’s that?” The woman pointed at me.

The curtain opened and all three were there in the room with me.

And then I presume the carrier came open somehow, because Long Hair grunted, something banged, the woman cried out, and the blue curtain shifted suddenly as an old cat with long, sand-colored hair slipped into my side of the room. It darted silently into the corner, knocking over a heavy bag filled with something I took to be a sort of wooden litter.

The cat continued to howl and scream and hiss. The woman continue to sniffle. The Man in the White Coat muttered lowly, to whom I don’t know.

“Can you get her out?” asked the Man in the White Coat.

The cat hissed and screamed. I could hear a small metal cage door clang as it swung open and cracked into something metal.

“I just wanted to get her shots,” said the woman in-between sniffles. “She just needed her shots.”

“A lot of pain,” said the Man in the White Coat. “It’s a good thing you came in today, Mrs. Dressen.”

“You think I know?” she snapped. “Help me! I want to go home!”

The other cat’s wailing broke for only a moment. “Hello? Make them stop! Can you hear me? Make them stop! Let me go home! Home!”

I hadn’t heard another cat since they’d put me in the room. “Hello?” I said. “Who’s that?”

Somewhere amongst them was a cat. An old cat. And she talked the most.

I didn’t see anything. They had the good sense to draw the blue curtain tight across the opening. But I heard. It had been quiet and then suddenly it wasn’t anymore. The door on the other side of the curtain opened and three people entered the room: Long Hair, the Man in the White Coat, and someone else. In her voice she sounded like the Mother, maybe older. The Man in the White Coat did most of the talking. The woman sniffled and occasionally sobbed.

It was in the beginning, somewhere in those first few days. At the time I thought it a grotesque novelty…a horror I would never see again. But of course I was quite wrong about that.

I do not know how many things I have heard or seen die in this room. But I do remember the first.

I have been watching the crate for a very long time. I consider addressing the creature within. I wonder if it can even speak at all. If it is unwell. If it is dying.

I do not know who is in the crate. I am very curious. Whatever it is it does not talk. It does not cry or complain. It only breathes. Quick, short breaths. It cannot be big, because the crate is not big. That is all I know.

Someone I do not know, or do not remember knowing, came into the room this morning. The curtain was open though they never came to my side of the room. They carried a blue crate, which they left on one of the chairs. They fussed about the crate and about the room, and mumbled and muttered. Dorothy came at some point to help with the fussing. She spent a long time looking into the blue crate. She also mumbled and muttered. The crate was moved and then moved again. It ended up back on the chair. After a time everyone left and the door was closed. No one acknowledged me in anyway.

I do not see him again for the rest of the day.

“I’m tired,” I say. “Goodbye.” I cannot see past the rim of the litter box, so I cannot see the squirrel, but I know he is still there. He does not say anything. Maybe I’ve offended him. I have no idea how this creature thinks. But there is no sound, no response. Still, I’m sure he’s still there. I think I can hear his breath or his heart. Maybe I’m imagining that. The wind blows softly and there are birds out there screaming at each other. I’m not sure I’m really hearing anything at all. I decide to raise my head to look. The squirrel is standing inside the door, so close he is nearly touching my cage. He squeaks at the sudden appearance of my head and runs away.

My head sinks low in the litter box. This squirrel is it. He is the only one who will talk to me. It is somehow worse than before.

“Ay’up.” He nods towards the west. I don’t know what’s over there, never having been out of the room.

I am certain there is something very wrong with this squirrel. That he is willing to talk to me at all makes me think that he is damaged in some way, but the suggestion that he feels sorry for me is almost impossible for me to comprehend. I wonder if he is an outcast.

“No, I am never outside. I am only ever in this one room, and usually only in this small cage.”

“Do I like it here?” I consider the question. In a way I find myself perversely pleased just to be asked. Maybe this squirrel is as mad as that raccoon, but it’s nice to be engaged. I suppose if another cat or a human were watching this I would be mortified, but we are alone. “No,” I say at last. “I don’t think I do.”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him that.” I’ve asked myself that question more than once. Maybe he was mad. Maybe he was starving. I can only guess.

“No, I was in my home. The raccoon came in through the window.”

“Out? Was I outside when it happened, do you mean?”

“Well.” I settle back down, this time facing out the door. It isn’t long before the squirrel returns.

I’m lying in the litter box again. I was asleep just a moment ago, facing the other way. I don’t want to turn around, because I think this gives the squirrel and his attention more due than is warranted, but it isn’t easy having a conversation with my head crooked just so. I stand and stretch. The squirrel darts away.

“Nutzin.” The squirrel stands stock still holding his hands over his face. Only the tail twitches. “Howzit?”

“What’s it?” says the squirrel in that strange chirping, clucking dialect of theirs. “Cage z’ight?”

A squirrel stops in the brush outside the door. They do that sometimes, most often to taunt. I am guarded to this one’s intentions.

The crying goes on and does not stop until they are taken from the room.

“It’s alright,” I murmur, stupidly. Even if they understood, what would that mean? “You’ll be fine.”

“We’ll put them in the clinic,” says Long Hair. Dorothy starts to say something. “Separately,” he adds, cutting her off. This assuages her. They leave together, taking the mother with them. I am now alone with four small kittens. Once there were five. One of them cries, weakly, half-heartedly.

Long Hair appears. I wasn’t aware that Dorothy had left. Apparently there are remains, something she hesitates to touch. Or maybe it’s the cat that she won’t touch. The mother. Long Hair has a carrier and when he opens the cage she does not wait to be asked or coaxed. She darts in – without looking back to her children.

“I miss my brothers…sisters,” sighs the mother cat. “I miss my fathers…mothers…I don’t like it here. I wish I could put them all back, all my balls of honey. Put them right back inside and take them away. Put them back and go and see my brothers and fathers. Sweet little balls of honey.”

Dorothy comes eventually. Then I have to listen to her sounds. Breath quickly drawn. Small squawk of dismay. She stands at the door, hesitates. She doesn’t know what to do.

I don’t know what those noises are. I’m in my litter box, staring at the closed door. There’s nothing I can do to make the noises go away. The little one makes terrible noises. Cries. Gasps. Cries.

She strikes it down. Hisses. Raises the claw again and brings it down again.

They mew and cry and stumble, just like kittens should. But there’s one, one lying by the water bowl. That one kicks and cries, but can’t seem to stand up. Can’t seem to do anything.

“I do,” she says. “I know all my little balls of honey.”

I press against my bars and count again. There are five – five kittens. “Why don’t you count them all?” I ask. Why does her miscounting make me so unhappy? Why does it make me feel ill?

“Soft little balls of honey.” She murmurs and whispers. In a rare moment of clarity, she told me that she had lived with more than twenty other cats, all related. That seems to be too many. I’m unable to fathom how that many cats lived together peacefully. “We didn’t,” she says, and she makes a sound like a laugh. I have never heard a cat laugh. I don’t believe it is a noise that’s meant to be.

They came today, all of them. Long Hair built their cage, pressed together the black wire frame, added two interior shelves, laid out some blankets, a square of carpet, two bowls of water, the litter box, a plate of wet food, a plate of dry. Some woman I do not know brought them in a blue carrier. I heard the little ones, but all I could see, pressed hard against the carrier door, was the mother. She stared out, blankly, eyes batting, flickering. When the door opened she dove into the cage. She did not look back. She looked out the other end. She looked at me. She looked at my door, my door that leads to the outside. She did not watch the little ones as they crawled slowly from the carrier and into the cage. One butted into her. She flinched.

“One ball of honey. Two balls of honey. Three. Four.” She growls, claws at her cage door and starts again. “One ball of honey.”

She mutters to herself. She has lost her mind. There are five kittens in the cage with her. She only counts four. I don’t know why this is making me so upset.

I almost ask myself what I am waiting for, but I don’t.

At some point I will go home and resume waiting there.

Before that I waited with Her in an even smaller room. I hardly remember that, though.

I’m not sure how or why this occurs to me, but as soon as I think it I realize it’s true. I have waited here 49 days, but before that I waited ten years. I waited in the house with the man and Her. Before that I waited in the little room high off the ground with Her and the silly, little dog – a shaggy thing with long, silky hair and ears that dragged along the ground; ears that filled with dirt and infection and smelled like rot. The dog was respectful enough, but I couldn’t stand the smell. I stayed in high places – shelves, cabinets, the backs of chairs – just to not smell that smell. Then one day there was another smell. There was something growing in the dog’s stomach. He knew it and so did I. She did not. He lost control of himself and made messes he was ashamed to make. She did not understand. The dog’s smell mattered less then. We slept together on the mat in the bathroom. We waited together. Then he died.

A squirrel passes the open door. I turn around to see him. He runs away. He doesn’t know I couldn’t catch him if I wanted to. And I don’t. I just want to see him. But he’s gone. Off frame. I watch and wait. Maybe he’ll come back. I watch and wait.

Dorothy moves around the room, sweeping, tidying, picking things up and putting them somewhere else. I press my paw across the cage door. Nothing is different. I am still trapped inside.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She leaves the room, but comes right back. She’s got something small and silver. It’s a little square with a half circle of metal at the top. She slips the half circle into the cage, around the corner of the door, then pushes the half circle back into the square. It clicks. “There. That’s better.” She seems satisfied.

I’m in a crouch. Dorothy puts a hand toward me. I flinch away. The woman almost touched me. I don’t want to be touched.

The woman nods, leaves. Dorothy kneels down next to my cage. “Are you alright Smoke?”

Dorothy shrugs. “They could have put him down. He’s ten. That alone no one would have said much. Fact is he isn’t here for free. They’re paying to board him here. $10 a day.”

“He got into a fight with a raccoon. He wasn’t vaccinated for rabies. State law says he has to be in quarantine for twelve months.”

“Oh.” The woman pushes a hand into her wild, wire hair. “I didn’t know.” She wanders towards the door. “But…what did he do?”

“Not this cat,” says Dorothy. “There’s a reason he’s back here and not up with the others. He’s not for adoption.” She stands to face the woman. “I’m sorry. You really can’t be back here.”

“I saw the cat. You can pet the other cats…”

Dorothy moves to my cage. She closes the door, slides the two bars. “This cat is in quarantine. And you’re not allowed back here.”

I do not want her to touch me.

I will cut her hand. If she touches me I will gouge her open palm.

With a low moan she drops to one knee, her hand snaking forward into my cage. “Don’t worry. Don’t be scared.” I hiss. My back arches. I want this woman to go away. “Poor thing. Poor thing.”

I press into the back of my cage. I do not like this woman.

A woman I do not know crouches in front of my now open door. Her hair is wiry, gray, and wild. She is licking her lips and snapping her fingers.

I awaken to the sound of my cage door opening. I can see the sun slanting through the trees outside the door. It is hot. It is somewhere past midday. This shouldn’t be happening.

She says things to me. Says my name. Asks questions. Leans back and stares at the ceiling. The hand that rubs me slowly slides off my back. She gets up and leaves.

She visited every day at first. I assumed that’s what this would be. I had no idea for how long, but I thought I would be here and She would be here as often as She could and then we would leave. Back before, sometimes She would take me places like this – metal table places, all jars and locked cabinets and girls in matching suits in grass green colors. She would be with me in those places and then She would not, but ultimately She always came back and then we left. I thought that’s what this was. Together, then separate, then together again. But it’s different. And now She’s hardly ever here at all.

And I’m not sure that She’s happy to see me, either. Her brown hair is wild, tangled. She is tired. She sits cross-legged in front of my cage, cooing and kneading the flesh at the base of my neck. Dorothy has left the room. She’s usually here with us. There were times, in the early days, when Dorothy would open my cage and then stand at the door in a stooped posture while She cradled me in her arms and scratched my chin. But that doesn’t happen anymore. A lot of what happened in the early days doesn’t happen anymore.

But I won’t. Because I’m not sure that I am happy to see Her.

I want to purr. To sing. To tell Her how happy I am to see Her.

I can hear the mice, somewhere in the walls, moving, talking. But they aren’t coming out, not now. Nothing is happening now.

Long Hair and the Tall Man push the metal table out of the room. The door closes behind them. I am alone again. This time, however, there is no open door. There is no outside. I look at the floor where the dog’s giant head lay not so long ago. The streak of spittle left by his lolling tongue is drying, shrinking. Soon it will be gone. His final trace, taken by the air, and if the air is too slow, then by Dorothy’s mop. However it goes, it will go. Just like the dog itself.

And then the Man in the White Coat leaves. This is all I know of him. He comes to this room to deal death. Then he leaves.

The Man in the White Coat presses his hand over the dog’s heart. He pulls open the dog’s eyelid and pokes the dog in the eye.

The Man in the White Coat takes something small and blue out of his pocket. Long Hair squeezes the dog’s naked leg, while the Man in the White Coat leans down. I don’t see what he does.

Long Hair pulls something black out of a cabinet. It has a long cord which he connects to the wall. Whatever it is it whines and buzzes. It’s like a little version of the thing outside that makes the grass shorter. And just when I think this, Long Hair pushes it across the inside of the dog’s back leg and a clump of brown fur falls away. Long Hair sweeps aside the loose hair with his hand and puts the black thing down. He finds a tall bottle and sprays something over the bare leg. It looks like water but it isn’t. I can smell it. Chemical and sharp.

Long Hair and the Tall Man stand on either side of the unconscious dog. They grunt and moan and lift the dog off the floor. They drop him on a metal table. His great, square head is still pointing at me.

The Man in the White Coat enters the room. He shakes hands with the Tall Man.

I watch the dog sleep. His body twitches. His tongue is pinned between his jaw and the floor. I don’t want to see the next part. It’s bad enough hearing it. I hope they pull the dog away. I hope they close the curtain. I hope they remember I’m here.

I look down at the litter and my paws. “And what did you do?”

“Do? Nuthin’! I’m a good boy! Very good. Very good.” His tongue begins to creep out of the side of his mouth. His breaths are short.

I’m still lying in my litter box, flexing my paws. “Not sure,” I say. “What did you do?”

Long Hair and the Tall Man step away from the curtain, leaving me with the drowsy dog. He has an enormous, square head, all black and tan with a line of white running up and down between his eyes. His mouth is wide and jowly, his fur short and soft.

The other one looks through the curtain. He’s tall and thin and wears a dark uniform. At least now I know what he looks like. “He out?”

The dog falls and sighs. Only his head is through. Long Hair pushes back the curtain a little. “Oh. Did you guys want to talk?”

“Careful, Cesar. Just lie down, buddy. Just lie down.” The dog takes uneven steps – I can hear the rhythm of his paws and nails clattering on the concrete floor. Quick quick – sloooow. Quick quick quick –slooow sloooooow.

“Alright.” The dog continues to wander and smell. The two men talk to each other. They laugh. The curtain pulls taut where the dog suddenly falls against it.

“I don’t think so. We can but he’s pretty trusting. If yer quick he probably won’t even notice.”

Someone whistles. The dog is clomping around, sniffing, mumbling to himself. This room is terrible for dogs. There’s too much to take in, too many old smells, too many strange ones. I’m used to it.

I hear the door open. There’s voices, Long Hair and someone else. I’ve heard this other one before, but never seen him. I smell the dog, then hear his footsteps, his heavy breathing. He must be big. He’s absolutely rank – very nervous, I’d guess. The curtain billows inward. I can see the shape of the dog’s snout as he snuffles at the fabric.

Long Hair bangs around, straightening, preparing, doing…whatever it is he does every time this happens. Then he leaves, closing the door and it’s quiet. I sit in my litter box and flex my paws. My claws score the gray sand. I wonder.

I hate that. Not because I want to see, but because it always means the same thing.

The inside door opens. The one with the long hair comes in. I’ve never figured out his name. He sweeps past me, closing the outside door. The sounds all fall away with a slam. The birds are gone. The wind is gone. The grass machine is…still there, but not as loud. Long Hair pulls the curtain closed.

Something roars just outside the door and I jump, bang into the top of my cage and land in my water bowl, which flips on to its side. It’s just that machine, I realize belatedly. The one that makes the grass smaller. I’ve seen it and heard it twice before. It really shouldn’t startle me so much. And now I have no water for the rest of the day. Maybe Dorothy will notice. Probably she won’t.

I haven’t thought about the raccoon for quite some time. He used to be all I thought about. I’d never really considered the dearth of subjects occupying my mind before the raccoon came along, but I can see very clearly now that my life had become far too simple. I understand why the raccoon became the only thing I thought about those first few weeks – there was nothing else. There had been nothing else. Now there’s nothing else again, but I won’t let myself fall back on despair and anger. Ultimately the raccoon had done nothing other than be a raccoon and do what he felt he needed to do. The taunting, though…

Then again, I suppose sometimes it gets you here.

Two birds tweet back and forth from someplace off and away. Someplace I can’t see. A squirrel shuffles across a distant branch. I used to try calling to them – to any of them. It didn’t matter. I just wanted someone to come close. I wanted someone to talk to. But it’s natural not to trust. It’s how they live out there. I used to feel the same way, but I had to adapt. You have to trust to live inside. It falls apart if you can’t manage that.

Dorothy closes the wire door and slides the two bars. I eat my food. “Beautiful day out there!” She opens the other door, the one that leads out into the sky and the grass and the woods. She kicks at a rock until it wedges into place. “Fresh air.”

Dorothy pushes aside a blue comforter. “There you are!” I stand up and stretch, then hop quickly off the pile and make my way to my cage. The alternative is being picked up. I don’t like being carried. I haven't been carried in a long time.

I know she’s calling to me. She’ll have to find me. And she will. There’s really no place to hide here, no place good. I managed to use a bucket to get up on a second shelf once. I hid behind a bag of wood shavings. That’s the only time I’ve ever even gotten her to start to think I’d actually gotten away. But she never left the room. Never opened the door. Just looked and looked and looked. Eventually I got tired of waiting and just went to my cage. I was hungry.

“There’s a girl in the cat room I wish you could meet,” says Dorothy. “She’s all black and she loves tuna fish. Her name is Midnight. Just got here yesterday. She reminds me of you. I wish you could stay up in the cat room with the rest. Smoke? Smoke? Where’d you go this time?”

I crawl in amongst the blankets and lie down. I sit perfectly still and wait. I realize I’m hiding again. I know it doesn’t work. I’ve no idea what else to do with myself. So I sit and wait.

I stick my head in between the bags of dog food. There are mice here, but they usually only move around at night, when I’m in the cage. They know I’m here. They know I can’t do anything to them…most of the time. But I caught a straggler two weeks ago. He was resting under the pallets that hold up the big bags of kitty litter. I didn’t play with him. Dorothy saw, though, and she took it away. I think she burned it. She was upset. Because of death? How could she be? With everything she sees here…

I slink slowly out of my cage, pausing as she runs a hand gently down my back. I purr, because I think it’s rude not to, then move away from the cage. I don’t like to watch her clean my mess.

“Well, come on,” she says as she opens the door to my cage. “Stretch out while I clean this up.”

Dorothy opens the door and turns on the lights. “Rise and shine, handsome boy.” I have been sleeping in my litter box again. I don’t know how I got there. I stand and stretch as Dorothy carefully closes and locks the door. “Did you have sweet dreams?” I sit next to the door of my cage and watch her move around the room. She’s always talking to me. Sometimes I feel embarrassed that I can’t understand her. By the force of sheer repetition alone I believe I ought to understand at least the common phrases, but no. I understand moods and how they are communicated through sound and body language. That’s the best I can do.

“Smoke!” says one. The other races to the window. The raccoon’s gone. “Smoke,” they say. “Smoke. What happened? Smoke, are you okay? Did he get you, Smoke? Did he get you?”

The lights come on. Neither of us heard them coming. They both stand in the open door.

“You shouldn’t’ve,” smiles the raccoon, swaying back and forth in the moonlight. “Act like a dog, get a dog’s death.”

The raccoon is smiling at me. He’s standing on the windowsill leering at me. The moon is at his back and all I can see is white teeth and flashing black eyes. I’m panting. I’ve too little breath to hiss. All I can do is growl softly. The wind rolls through the open window and I can feel the three long gashes in my left side. They tingle and sting.

Day 82…still

I ran, even though I didn’t want to. Even though I don’t like to. I would sprint when I was younger. All over, when the mood struck me. Run nearly up the walls.

She had a…something back then. A little device. A creature of pure, red light lived inside. The creature came out sometimes and I would be mad for it. Crazed. I chased after it. Up, over, and under furniture. Through doors and into closets. Clipping across carpet. Sliding across that white, slick floor.

I don’t why. I don’t know what that little creature of red light meant to me. I suppose it was only that I could never catch it. It was galling. Infuriating. I could catch everything else. Eventually everything else came to heel. The light made me question myself. My power. My ability. It made me feel slow. I hated it. I chased it with malice.

But there was never any resolution. One day was the last day I ever saw the light, though I had no way of knowing that at the time. And then I became a cat who didn’t want to run.

But here I am now, running. At first I ran because Dorothy had struck me. But then I ran because I didn’t know where or when to stop. Every place I arrived was equally wrong. Equally dirty and wild and sharp.

I stop occasionally to catch my breath, but fear grips me when I am still. The strangeness is suffocating.

The world grows dim.

I run.

Day 83

I became exhausted. Eventually I could no longer run. In the dark and alone, I slept fitfully in the crook of a thin tree. The night was wild with hoots and caws and the skittering crunch of night things roaming. I thought at times that it might have been a bad dream.

But then I woke and I am very much here, in the wild. Under a tree. Alone.

I still don’t understand. Why was Dorothy angry with me? What had I done?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

But humans are like that. Even She would sometimes behave in ways that I could not fathom. She would yell at me, with no warning or provocation. I would nestle on her stomach as she lay in bed, changing my grip ever so slightly in search for a better spot, and suddenly she would buck and shout and toss me aside like I’d done her harm. Some foods I could take. Some would raise her ire. Some things were play. Some things were not.

It’s hard to find true balance around humans.

Especially the strange ones. The ones you don’t know at all. Like the man. And the one before. It was almost impossible to tell what would upset them or please them. I made it a point to attempt to do neither.

But now I am walking. I have no direction. I sense I may be able to get back to Dorothy if I wished, but that’s not where I want to be. I want to be home. Could I find home on my own? I don’t believe I could. I think I should go back and wait for Her, but would Dorothy attack me again? Will She know where I am?

I have to get home. I suppose if I walk long enough, I may find myself somewhere familiar.

“’at? ‘at? ‘ey ‘at!”

There is a voice – small and reedy – coming from somewhere up above. It is somehow familiar.

“’eh ‘at! ‘ou out? Out? Huh?”

I look up and around and do not see the source. But then something moves, twitches, on a branch up above and I can see the face - but mostly the tail - of a squirrel.

“Are you the squirrel I met before?” I ask, sitting back peaceably on my haunches.

“Ob’v,” says the squirrel, jittering further down the branch so I can see all of him. “No ‘ember?”

“Well now, yes,” I say. “Though squirrels mostly look alike to me.”

“Ah,” says the squirrel, creeping ever nearer. “’ember you. Big gray. ‘ou out? ‘ow out?”

“They set me free,” I lie. Or is it a lie? “I’m going home now.”

“’ood,” says the squirrel. “Where zat?”

“Somewhere. I’ll find it. Don’t worry.”

“No worry. Find ‘coon? Get ‘em, eh?”

“The raccoon…” I haven’t considered that. “It seems unlikely that we’ll meet.”

The squirrel blinks rapidly. “Okay. ‘ood luck! Find fam’ee!” It races away into the tree cover. I remember now that it doesn’t have a family. I suppose I should have said more then. Too late.

And besides, the squirrel has reminded me of that night with the raccoon and what it feels like to be cut and cut back. How it hurts. And how I survived it.

I flex my paws. My claws are long – almost uncomfortably so. Dorothy did not care for me in all the correct ways. That’s fine. Here, in the wild, that’s good.

It’s natural to be scared. Normal and good. But I have power of my own.

I walk slower now, with more confidence. When the leaves rattle, I look sharply, almost eagerly.

I will not be intimidated by this world I do not understand. Instead, I will tame it.

But for now…I’m hungry. I must focus on myself and my needs if I’m going to make it home...

Day 86

How did I become this? Where is my pride? Where is my strength?

I’m lost. I have been lost, the entire time, but the forest only seems to tighten its grip on me, inch by inch. Yesterday, at night, in the deepest dark, I found a clearing, which became a road. I followed it for a distance, until a bright, yellow light appeared in the distance, growing ever closer. There was a sound there, as well – a grinding, roaring shout that followed the lights towards me. I felt I should know what they meant – what it all meant. But I was dumb with fear. Or simply dumb. I froze, froze until it was nearly on me…and then I fled. Back into the darkness. Racing. Breathless. Brainless.

Hopeless.

I still haven’t eaten since the morning Dorothy chased me away. I thought it would be easy. I thought I had, hidden away within me, the instincts of a hunter. I caught that mouse, after all. But I was wrong. I can seemingly do no more than wander and sniff and waste away.

Now it’s morning and I’m back to the road and there is something laying in the middle of the surface. An ugly thing, with a long, pink tail and oblong face. I sit in the dirt a long time looking at it. It must be dead. Perhaps I was right to run away last night.

And now I wonder if it’s edible. If it was, could I eat it? Is that what’s become of me?

I take a cautious step and then a great, roaring machine appears in the distance, racing down the road. She had something like that. She made me ride in it sometimes. I rode in it that last time, after the raccoon…

The machine passes and the creature in the road makes no attempt to move. It is dead. I feel compelled to inspect the carcass. My hunger guides me.

Cautious and slow, I make my way across the road, looking back and forth, anticipating another roaring machine. None appears. I step to the side of the carcass. The thing is even uglier up close. Larger, too, now that I see it better. A rodent’s face. I see no wound, however. There is no gore and no…

“Step away!” I nearly shriek, leaping away as the creature rights itself suddenly. “What’s the game?” yells the creature, gathering itself up, baring down towards me. “What were you plannin’, huh? Bite me? Eat me?”

“You were dead!” I say, which is an impossibly stupid thing to say.

“Just playin’,” says the creature, backing down a bit. “That’s what I do. It’s a strategy.”

“Strategy for what?”

“It’s a life-savin’ strategy,” says the creature. “They think you’re dead, they leave you alone.”

“You’re in the middle of the road,” I say. “The fact you aren’t dead is entirely luck.”

The creature seems a little perplexed by the logic of this. “No. I’m not dead. So it’s a good strategy.”

“Well I’m also not dead and I don’t go around laying perfectly still in dangerous places.” In the distance, another one of those machines begins to approach. The creature notices and flops to the ground. “You have to be kidding me.”

The creature is silent. I prod it with an outstretched claw.

“Go away,” it mumbles. “Strategy.”

I try grabbing at the scruff of its neck. I remember my mother doing that to me when I was very small. Even She would do something similar when She wanted to move me from one place to another against my will. But the creature is heavy – possibly even heavier than me.

“Knock it off,” it hisses. “Strategy.”

The machine is coming closer. I try once more. I can’t budge it. I dart away, back to the woods. Behind me I hear a horrible squeal and an even worse squelch and crunch. The machine passes on. I wait a moment in the woods, listening, not daring to go back. But the road is silent. Utterly silent.

There seems to be no escape from the madness of the wild.

Day 87

I do not know what dying feels like. Even having seen it happen with my own eyes, I have no sense of what it feels like. So perhaps I am dying. I don’t know. I can’t imagine what else it might feel like, though.

I’m weak. And I’m very tired. It is a chore to move now. I don’t even remember falling asleep last night. I was walking and then I was waking, pressed against damp stone. That seems to be happening often now. Moments simply…vanish.

I suspect it’s because I haven’t eaten. That must be the cause of all things. Food. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time when I turned my nose up to food, but a good human makes it easy to be picky. She always found Her way back to my preferred foods, even if it took a few days of ignored bowls or spat out treats. Why She ever thought to change things I never knew. I like what I like. I don’t think things are all that complicated.

But now there’s no choice. No food at all. Just the wind and the grass and the gibbering chirp of birds. Distressed birds, crying loudly. Curious, I move toward the sound. There’s a nest up high in one of the branches. I can just make it out. They’re being especially noisy today. But, oh…

There, at the foot of the tree. There’s a small bird. Half-formed. Nearly nude and crying weakly. No one comes for it. No one does anything.

It’s just a baby bird, lying on the ground.

My mouth moistens. It’s strange and involuntary. My stomach twists and pulses.

The little bird exhausts itself, crying out, flapping small, useless wings. I step closer.

From up above, another bird darts down, nipping and piercing the back of my neck with the point of its beak. The mother? It swoops again and I swipe at it, entirely on instinct. A pair of feathers float down. The bird returns to the higher branches, chirping madly, but staying away.

I examine the fallen baby bird. Bat it gently with my paw. Its cry grows weaker and weaker.

I’ve never been so hungry.

I put my mouth to its chest and bite. The crying rises up, then dies away. The baby bird is silent. The birds up above are silent. Soon, the only thing I can hear is the sound of small bones grinding and snapping inside my mouth.

I leave nothing edible behind.

Day 89

I have left the woods. I found a place that reminds me a little of where I live – of where She lives. But only a little. None of the smells are right. The details are similar, but different. There are houses here. Rows of them. The roads are busy. Roaring machines start and stop and fly in every direction. I have to be cautious.

I found a pile of soggy food beside the stairs of one house. It smelled a bit like the food She gives me. I wouldn’t have eaten food like that before – food that had been out, that had gotten wet. But I’m still so hungry. I ate some, but then a child suddenly appeared at the door of the house and I got scared and ran. Since then I have wandered, examining.

There are many quiet, dark places here. I find many places to sleep, though I don’t sleep well anywhere. I wait out the heat of the day beneath a crooked plank of wood and bags of debris. There are other wild creatures here, though they are just as secretive and stealthy as I am. I see squirrels shimmy up and down poles. I wonder if any are the one I met before. There are other cats here, too, though I have no desire to make their acquaintance. At least not yet. I need to recover my strength.

How far away am I from my home, I wonder? Am I heading in the right direction? Perhaps not, but the further I go the more likely I am to see something I recognize, yes? The world is not so big that I cannot find what I want as long as I look long and hard enough. And I have to assume She is looking for me, too. Maybe we’ll met in the middle? I’m sure we will.

Eventually I sleep. When I wake it is dark and cool, almost cold. I feel dirty and sore. And I itch – badly. Just a little while ago I felt something like a little bug crawling across my shoulder, but it jumped away before I could catch it.

There are great lights up and down the road, similar to the ones I could see out of the window of my home at night. The world is a strange purple color, and quiet. Some houses are lit bright, and others are dark. I set out down the road, examining, moving slowly. I can hear things moving about in the shadows. I try not to jump at every strange sound.

There!

I had thought it might be… There is another pile of food set out in front of one of the houses. I quicken my pace, refusing to run. When I reach the pile there is no one else. It is fresh. Very similar to what I eat at home. I dive into it. I gorge, half-choking on unchewed morsels.

As I am eating as quickly as I have ever eaten, another cat sidles up. They don’t say anything. They just calmly, coolly slink up to the pile and begin to eat.

I hiss. I’m very hungry. I don’t want to share.

The other cat ignores me completely. It is orange and white and does not even acknowledge me.

“I found it!” I cry. “Go away!”

It just eats.

Suddenly there is another cat. It is black and white. It helps itself to the food. It also ignores me.

“It’s mine!” I say, shouldering up against the orange cat. “Go away.”

But they don’t care. Perhaps they can tell that I’m weak. Is it so obvious that I cannot fight back? Soon the food is gone. I could have eaten more, but for now I’m satisfied.

The black cat and the orange cat go their separate ways, neither having said a word to me. I didn’t want to talk to them anyway. Not really. What would I even have to say?

From a distance, though, I watch them stalk away, into the deeper darkness. They are both so sure of themselves. They look strong and well fed. Perhaps they are the sorts who have homes but choose to wander? I met one like that once. It lay on the fence of our yard from time to time. One day when I was outside I walked up to it and asked who they were and what they were doing.

“Whoever I want to be and whatever I want,” they said, which still sounds like a silly answer to my ears. They told me a bit about the cats that live outside and the cats that live inside (like me) and the third brand, which did both. They could be inside when they wanted and outside when they wanted. The cat on the fence had a perfectly good home not far from my own. He just liked to explore and talk to the neighborhood cats. He was never hungry, never in want, and never confined. “No offense,” he’d said, single paw drooping down, “but your type is the worst kind of cat there is. How can you be satisfied, living like a pet? Haven’t you any pride at all?”

She came out to collect me about then, shooing him away – that cat that lived between two worlds. Perhaps these are like him. Cats without want of any kind.

I follow the orange one, though I don’t know to what purpose. I suppose I must continue on my way soon, but there is something comforting and less hostile about this place. It’s familiar and quiet. I can see myself living as an outside cat, at least for a time; and when I go home, perhaps I’ll become that third brand, too rough and seasoned to live entirely indoors.

As I follow the orange cat, I see the lid of a nearby bin shift and clatter to the ground. There is a creature there, hovering at the mouth of the bin, glaring down at me, dark bands shrouding its eyes in the deepest shadows.

A raccoon.

It leans forward, teeth barred, hissing. I arch and recoil. My claws scrape and click across the hard ground.

“Mine,” it murmurs. “Don’t. Come. Near.”

Black lips quiver. White teeth flash purple in those strange lights. I feel transported. Back, back to that night. The monster that slipped in through an open window. A window I could have come and gone through, were I that kind of cat. The raccoon that cut me. The one that started all this.

What could I have done better? How could I have changed things?

Could I stand to let something like that happen again?

Its mouth is wet and dripping. It stinks of rotten food. I back away. I back away slowly. I back away.

It watches my every step. Only the eyes move. It watches as I stumble sideways and turn and run.

I’m running again.

I run out of the light and out of the street and out of that row of houses. I run to the darkness.

I feel I can hear it breathing behind me. But it’s only my breath. Coming in gasps. As if I’m chasing myself.

I come to my senses and slow down. Lost again. There’s no use for it. I’m back in the woods. I find a small nook between two trees and settle down to wait for morning.

I needed to move on anyway. I’m getting closer to home. I’m sure of it.

Day 98

My days have settled into a rhythm. Sleep. Exploration. Scavenging. Hiding. Sleep.

There have been days of solitude and days of terror. There are more creatures out here roaming the wild than I ever would have imagined. They are all strange and single-minded in their own ways. I have been chased by dogs, attacked by birds, and ever set upon by some unseen enemy that bites at my flesh and drives me half-insane with discomfort. Hostility from my fellow wandering cats has been rare, but so too has been kindness. I am on my own, at least until I get home and return to Her.

I admit, though, that some days I forget where I am going and what I am striving for. I get so consumed in simply living that I forget my purpose. Never for long, but it does happen with unsettling frequency. I’ve begun to wonder whether or not I should simply wait for Her to find me? If She is looking, how much harder am I making things by moving all the time?

The thought gnaws at me.

And now there is this…

I have found a strange place. Again, it is similar to home, but different, in many key ways. It is enormous, to begin, and surrounded all over in a sort of tall, metal fence. The fence is no trouble for me, but it gave me pause at first. That’s what fences are supposed to do, after all – keep you to one side. But I saw a white cat scale the fence with little effort. Later, I saw another orange cat climb underneath the fence at a certain place. All day long, the fence was bypassed, by humans and cats, and humans with dogs, and always by squirrels. In and out. Curiosity got the best of me. I went in.

It was stranger still on the inside. The houses were gargantuan, stretching off for great lengths, dotted repeatedly with many doors and windows. More like a hive than a house. There were rows of those roaring machines, all silent and still. Small wooden fences here and there. Stairs all over. Little lawns, reeking of dog urine, and patchy flower beds filled with drooping perennials. Like a city unto itself. A small, isolated version of the world I had been lost and wandering across these last few days.

It is thick with cats, napping on step rungs and lazing on the tops of those tiny fences. Some wear collars like I once did. These ones seem civil enough, if not a bit haughty and distant. Then there the others, who have never been collared and never could be. There is a natural sort of madness in their eyes. They are free – perhaps too free. Guided by instinct. They can be shy and strange, but rarely unkind. All, every stripe, seem wary of me, though I suppose that may be because I am wary of them.

The humans here pay us little mind. Just this morning, I happened to be standing outside one of seemingly infinite doors, when it flew open quite suddenly. I froze. The human that came out looked down at me, said something – neither a shout nor a silly coo – then shut the door and walked past. It’s almost as if I were expected to be here.

As noted, this place is also rife with squirrels. None are as strange and talkative as the one I once knew, but they are also much fatter and stupider than I am accustomed to. It makes little sense to me. There are so many cats here and so many squirrels, and while they are not allies, it would be inaccurate to call them enemies. I have seen very little bloodshed in my time here, but more, I have seen very little effort to that end. These cats simply don’t seem to care.

No one seems to care. This is a quiet place, seemingly free of danger. It’s easy to find food, as long as you aren’t picky. There are places you can go and places you cannot go – places where humans are less welcoming and cats have created personal territories. But those places are rare. For the most part, this is the safest I have felt since that day I met the raccoon. I don’t know how long I should stay here, but for now it seems there is no better place for me. I’ll wait for Her here. And if She doesn’t find me, I’ll go out again and find a better place to wait.

Day 149

It’s hard to fathom how quickly the days pass. Have I really been here so long?

I haven’t left this place – this strange maze of endless, multifaceted homes. And now it seems it’s too late. The days grew colder and colder and then suddenly it was snowing and it has become all I can do to simply take care of myself. I have seen the snow many times in my life, but I’ve never before experienced it like this. There is no comfort to be found anywhere now. The best one can hope for is a brief respite from the fiercest sorts of winds and chills and collected snowfall.

So life is frozen, and so is my progress. I have not forgotten about Her. I assume She has not forgotten about me. But there is no hope of my finding Her in these conditions. So I wait until it is warmer and easier.

While I am still safe and relatively well, it must be said that this place is not the sanctuary it once appeared. Death still finds a way. Some time ago, before the worst of the cold had set in, I was seated in the shadows below a stairwell, watching a fat, black cat lay at the bottom of a small, solitary tree, and gaze up at something I could not see – something high up in the branches. It seemed to be playing at hunter, though it didn’t quite look the part. For me, it was nothing more than a mildly entertaining diversion. But then a dog I had not seen broke loose from its owner’s chains and flew across the space in no more than three steps, grabbing the fat, black cat up in its jaws, biting and shaking. It was the shaking that did all that needed to be done. I could hear the black cat fall apart in a thousand places, one after another. And still the dog shook and shook. The cat didn’t even cry. It hadn’t the time or the breath.

In the end, all was done in only a handful of heartbeats. The human arrived, screaming, swatting at the dog until it dropped the fat, black cat’s wet, limp body onto the grass. Then the human dragged the dog away. It didn’t come back for the black cat. No one did. The cat, who I had never known, lay in the grass for a day or maybe two. Eventually someone retrieved it. Maybe a human. Maybe something else.

As far as I could ever tell, there was nothing at the top of that tree.

There was another, though that was an old, old cat. It had hid itself away in the corner of a shed, below a metal barrel, and then lost the strength to move again. It cried out for help. It cried out for food or water. But there was nothing to be done. And even if there were, there was no desire to do it. There are friendships here. There are hierarchies, clans, and even things that may pass for family. But all of those are secondary to survival. That is the first order, every day, for everyone.

And so the old cat was left to die. As the end came clear, I made a point to avoid his shed. So I’ve no idea when he died or if he was ever found. But I assume he was alone. That seems to be the way of it.

I am alone, mostly. I say mostly, because while I prefer to keep to myself, lately I have gained an unwanted companion.

She is as white as the snow that continues to fall even now, though she is sticky and clumpy in places. Her white coloring makes her indifference to cleanliness all the more apparent. She is the wild, instinctive sort of cat, having been born here not so long ago. She speaks fondly of her mother, though she does not know what has happened to her. She knows nothing else about her origins.

She is a simpleton and not at all the companion I would have chosen. As it is, neither of us chose the other. I had found a nice sheltered spot behind one of those smaller fences and underneath a very shabby sort of couch. Pressed up against the building’s wall, I found a little warmth and a break from the snow. And that is where I’ve stayed. I spend most of the day and just about all of the night in this spot during this cold time. And I was alone in this spot until recently, when I awoke to discover a strange cat pressed up against me.

“Cold, in’it?” she chattered, breathing out white steam.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “This is my spot.”

“An’ it’s a good one!” she purred. “Ooooh, it’s bad out. Warmer here, though.”

“That’s because you’re dug into my side.”

“Yeah.”

I’ve had some experience with these kinds of cats now. They aren’t easy to reason with because they don’t abide by the same social rules as the rest of us. And some are even more instinctual than others.

“Bah!” I shouted, suddenly and forcefully. I have found that some can be dislodged by loud, unexpected noises.

“Oh!” she gasped. “You got me! Okay, don’t pay attention. I’ll do it to you.”

“I’d rather you just…”

“BAH!” She put her paws out. “D’it work? D’I get ya?”

“Please go away.”

“It’s very cold out,” she replied, as if there was nothing else that needed to said. And I suppose there wasn’t. Because it was cold and I’m not entirely heartless. Plus, warmth is warmth. I let her stay, thinking she was the sort that wandered and would disappear of her own accord. When I woke up next, she was gone.

“That’s better,” I said to no one at all. But when I woke up the next time she was there again. This time she was chewing on something small and black.

“Caught one!” she said. “Have some.”

It was a mouse. Very small, very dead, and very mangled. I hadn’t eaten in ages then. I ate what was left.

The white cat stuck around.

“You remind me of my mother,” she said once. “So kind and grumpy. Same color, too.”

“I can assure you, I’m nothing like your mother.”

“Maybe,” she said, sounding almost sad. “But no. You’re just like her!”

I’m still uncertain how I feel about this cat and her company. But the cold season is long and I must do whatever it takes to make it through. When the cold breaks and the snow melts…that’s when I’ll be on my way.

Day 191

I sit on the top of the fence looking down at the white cat as she cries and writhes and whimpers. I understand what’s happening. I understand there’s nothing I can do to help.

Even before the cold had fully snapped, they had begun coming around, marking territory, and hissing nonsense in the middle of the night. All shape and size and age of male cat. They caught her scent and apparently, somehow, she was ready. I don’t fully understand it. I know there is some key difference with me. I could sense the change coming over the white cat, but I felt no part of it. There was no urge to participate and there never has been. I know I’m not alone. Other cats are like that, but never the wild ones. Never the ones that are forever outside, living and dying on instinct. And these were those sorts. Ragged and mean things. They made me uneasy.

But the white cat felt her own urges. She followed her own instructions. There’s no way to know which one caused this. It makes no difference anyhow.

They aren’t around now, of course. I’m the only one left. And I’m useless. She cries out. Her eyes are shining bright. There is wetness all around her.

And now it has begun to rain.

“How many do you think?” she whispers up to me between gasps of pain. “It’s so many…”

I don’t reply. I rarely ever do, I realize. I appreciate now that she still talks to me anyway. I have not appreciated the sound of her voice before. I haven’t appreciated not being alone.

“How many?” she croaks. Her body is changing, down there in the dark and the wet. It looks a blur to me, but I can see the shape changing. Melting, almost. Bits breaking off.

“One at least,” I whisper down.

“More than that!” she half-laughs, half-shrieks. “More more than that!”

She falls further apart. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

And how her cries are small, surrounded on all sides by cries that are smaller still. Infant voices. Instinct beyond instinct. Dark shapes stumbling in the rain. Turning over. Laying still.

“How many?” she whispers. I see seven in the darkness. But not all seven move, and not all seven make sound.

“Four that I can see,” I reply. I’m not sure how I’ve come to that number. She sputters and hacks. Her cries are gone. The only sound she makes are deep, wheezing breaths.

“No more?” she sighs. A few of the little ones wriggle and writhe their way nearer to their mother. She tries to corral them with an aimless, dragging paw. Some find her. Others roll farther away. “There must be so many…”

There is a light. In the moment it flashes, I think it must be the sky, and the way it sometimes roars and cuts that electric blue. But the light comes from inside the house. From the other side of window here. There is a face, looking down on us. Another flash. And another. I wonder what that means or if someone is coming. But no one comes.

The white cat has stopped crying. Stopping moving. There is no movement. Not even breath.

The small, dark shapes draw closer. Burrow into her, as best they can. Except for some, which don’t move at all. Many don’t move at all.

“Are they dead?”

I turn, startled, and find a heavy, pale orange cat sitting at the base of the fence. “Are they?” it says, staring up at me. “Or do you think you can claim them, just like that?”

“Go away,” I say, inching forward to the edge of the beam. I don’t want to think about why he’s asking or what he wants. I don’t want to think about any of this.

“No,” he says simply. There are notches in his ears and over his eyes. He’s that sort of cat. The kind that does not simply threaten.

There are little cries behind me. Weak, little cries. I know there aren’t that many, but to my ears it sounds like multitudes.

“Go away,” I say once more.

“You are him, then,” says the pale orange cat. “The one that hardly talks. Was she yours? Are they yours?”

“Go away.” I’m leaning forward. There’s a strange part of me that wants this coming violence, even though there is no chance of it going well for me. I don’t understand this desire. I don’t understand why I’m so unwilling to let this cat do whatever it is he wants to do, but I absolutely will not allow it.

“Step aside and let me…” I move first. It’s madness, I realize. It’s also likely my only chance.

The pale orange cat rears back as I descend, moving fast, but not fast enough to avoid my weight as I crash down on top. My claws slip through the skin at his shoulders. My teeth reach out and find only air as the larger cat rolls and bucks, sending me into the damp dirt.

He’s hardly hurt. I’ve squandered my only advantage.

Now he dashes forward and I move vertically, lengthening, holding out my arms and claws and daring him to come inside. I don’t know where these ideas come from. This is nothing I was ever taught. He takes the challenge and bulls inside. I bring my claws down, but already he’s got a hold of my soft stomach, pushing me backwards, onto my back, slashing with every available claw. I slash back, with noticeably less power. I find an ear and bite. He shucks me away and in that moment of breath I can feel the scratches across my belly come to life. It’s just like then. All over again. The raccoon in the moonlight.

When he comes forward again, I swipe high. It’s not a conscious thought, but I realize as it happens that I’m aiming for his eye. I strike the ridge of his brow as he make contact once more, barreling into me, dropping me with ease.

But my strike counted. He doesn’t capitalize, but instead howls and dashes away. Off into the rain and the dark.

I lay panting in a growing puddle. The cuts sting more and more as time goes by. I want to lick them, but I also don’t want to move. I haven’t fought like that in ages. And I’m older now. Older than I’ve ever been. I feel half-dead. Perhaps I am.

I am there, in the lapping puddle, for I don’t know how long, when I hear a slamming sound. A door closing. The sound comes from the other side of the fence.

It takes three tries to make it to the top of the fence. Looking across, I see blinds twist and close and I realize that the glass wall was a door the whole time. Someone was there the whole time.

It’s quiet. I look down and she’s still there. The white cat makes no sound and takes no breath. She’s gone. And all alone. But where are the little ones?

I drop down to the ground and there are signs everywhere. Signs and scents, strong even in the rain. But only the white cat remains. Only the mother. Where did they go?

I remember the slamming sound. Perhaps…I allow myself a moment to imagine that they have become the indoor sort of cat. Cats with collars and food bowls that never run empty. I think their mother would be pleased by that. I don’t know if it’s true, but I don’t know any better.

And then…there. The smallest cry. It comes from just below her still body.

I push at the white cat. She weighs hardly anything. There was one more. One more below, gray as a worm. It crawls back towards its still mother. Looking for food, perhaps. Looking for warmth.

It hurts to walk. I step to the glass wall and tap with my paw. They missed one, I think. Come back for the last. But no one comes. I don’t consider the possibility that there had never been humans. That’s the story now. That someone came for the little ones. They’re indoor cats now.

I pick up the last kitten and drag it under the damp, shabby couch. I hold it against my body. It cries and squirms and reaches out for its mother.

I’m tired and sore. The blood is matting along my underside. It hurts to stand, to sit, to lay, to breathe. I can feel myself falling asleep. I can’t do anymore for anyone.

I’m resigned to the fact that when morning comes there may be two dead bodies with me in this narrow space. Or there may be three. That’s still to be decided and I’m too tired to have a say.

Day 213

The kitten is white and wild and dumb as a dog. He listens to about a third of what I tell him.

“Stay out of the road!” I dart out as he wobbles along the edge of the curb, looking at bushes and talking about a squirrel he saw the day before. There is another one of those roaring machines, poking carefully along the road. I snatch him by the scruff and drag him back into the shadows.

“Is that a human?” he asks.

“No,” I reply. “Not everything big is a human.”

“How about that?”

“That’s a building.”

“Oh.”

He survived. I can still hardly believe it, to be honest.

He survived the first night, which meant he was stronger than he looked, but that only seemed to beg a slower death. I’ve little experience with kittens, but I know they can’t eat the same food as the rest of us. They need their mother, and his was not available. I was frantic at the start, seeing only the ways in which things would come to a grim end. But then I turned my desperation outward. I picked the little kitten up and began to carry him.

She hadn’t been alone, his mother. Kittens were not rare here. It was a natural occurrence. The trouble was I rarely ever left my small corner. I had no idea what was possible in this enormous hive. So I took the kitten and went out in search of a mother. I asked around. I looked into every shadow and cool corner. I went places where I was not welcome. And I found mothers. Most wanted nothing to do with me and this kitten that was not theirs. I understood that. But still, I pressed on, pleading, wandering, hoping.

The one I found had no kittens. They had been taken away.

“I heard that happens sometimes,” she whispered, stretched out in the remains of a bowed cardboard box, wedged below a stairwell. “And some are happy – some of the mothers. Because they don’t feel anything towards them. They don’t want them around. But not me. I…I liked them. I liked having them…”

She was gray, like me, though spotted white. The white connected her to the kitten. “Maybe there’s something shared there,” she said. I nudged the kitten forward. It could still hardly walk. Still, it found its way. The mother lay back and closed her eyes. I stood outside the box and waited. I considered leaving. It felt like I had done my part. But when I went back into the box, I found the mother had turned her back to the kitten. He writhed aimlessly in the center of the box.

“Do you…will you raise him?” I asked.

The mother cat didn’t turn around. “I’ll feed him. He isn’t mine, though. I don’t want him.”

She was true to her word, on both accounts. She fed him for a good time, and that was all she was willing to give, though now she can give nothing.

“It doesn’t last forever,” she told me, the last time we visited. “He isn’t mine and…anyway, it doesn’t last forever. Good luck.”

“Is that a human?”

We’re outside the big fence. I almost never come this way, but I’ve heard there’s a place further down where someone leaves whole cans of food out in the morning. The creamy, meaty kind I hardly ever had back home.

Back home…the cold is gone, isn’t it? I suppose I’ll be back on the trail soon, once I’ve sorted out this idiot kitten.

“No, that’s not a human, it’s a…” I pause. He’s talking about a dark lump in the middle of the road. Red and disintegrated. Dusted in a small swarm of flies. It looks orange, perhaps. Pale orange. But it’s too far gone to be certain.

It’s not safe out here, is it? Not for any of us.

“It’s a pile of dirt,” I say. “Now come on.”

It takes some looking, but we finally find the place. There are two cans of cat food, both licked clean.

“I’m hungry,” says the kitten.

“You? What a shock.”

“I am, though.”

“Right,” I sigh. “I know.” Perhaps we should wait here, somewhere near. I wonder if there’s a competition for the food they lay out. Will I have to fight? The gouges on my belly still sting and run hot at all times. I have to sleep on my side.

“Oh my god!” I jump at the sound of a human child shouting. But I don’t run. Curiously enough, my instinct is to place myself between the kitten and the source of the noise. I suppose this what living in the wild will do to you.

The voice belongs to girl, who drops to her knees and scoots tentatively forward. “Little fluffy kitty,” she coos. “Are you mama?”

I pull back, holding up a paw, flashing my claws. I growl as well. The girl stops, but doesn’t leave.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, softer than before. She relaxes on her knees, dropping her hands to the ground. “That was too fast. I’m sorry. You’re both very pretty. I got excited.”

I don’t know what she’s saying, but her behavior reminds me of Her – back at the beginning, when I young and scared and didn’t know humans could be good. She was patient. She spoke softly. She made me feel okay.

“Are you guys hungry? Did they eat all the food already?”

She rises, slowly this time, and disappears around the corner. I stay tense for a time, but nothing happens.

“Was that a human?” says the kitten.

“Yes,” I concede. “That was a human.”

“Was it nice?”

“I don’t know.”

We both relax. The kitten begins to explore, and then suddenly she’s back. She has an open tin in her hand. She sits down on the ground a good distance away. I recognize the smell coming from the can. I recognize it very much.

“I don’t have a cat, so I don’t have cat food,” she says, laying the can on the ground in front of her. “I hope you two like tuna fish.”

“Is it food?” asks the kitten.

“Yeah. Let me go look.” I approach slowly, ready to bolt at the slightest flinch. But she is still and calm. She smiles, rest her hands in her lap as I move closer.

“It’s not expired or anything. In case that’s a concern.” She cocks her head to the side. “You two don’t look very similar. Not that that means anything.”

The smell almost hurts, it’s so enticing. My face is over the rim. The girl is still as stone. My tongue flicks out for a taste. And it’s just as wonderful as I remember. More than wonderful. I bite into a flaky hunk of meat. It tastes good. So good.

“Okay,” I say to the kitten. I hope he can eat it. But if he can’t I’m certain I can eat the whole thing on my own.

I step back to let the kitten take a bite. The girl says, “Oooooh,” and seems to sink just a little. Together we finish the can, licking the metal ridges clean.

That’s when I notice the girl putting the tips of her fingers along the kitten’s neck and spine. She rubs gently.

“I like it,” says the kitten, dumb and sweet. “I really like it.”

I sit back and watch. Maybe this is his chance, I realize. Perhaps she’ll take him indoors. Perhaps she’ll give him a collar. Perhaps she’ll take some of the wildness out of him – enough to keep him safe.

She picks him up. I flinch, but don’t make a move. She watches me out of the corner of her eye as she presses him gently in her hands.

“Take him,” I say, though I know she can’t understand me. “Please take him inside.”

“You want your baby back?” she says, looking down at me.

“Take him with you,” I shout.

“What?” says the kitten.

“You don’t want to be separated, do you?” says the girl. She puts the kitten down at my side. He’s beaming up at her.

“I liked that,” he cries out. “I really liked that!”

“Okay,” she says, slowly climbing up to her feet. “Be good.” And then she leaves.

She didn’t take him.

“Do you think she’s getting us some more?” says the kitten, face hovering over the lip of the empty can.

“I don’t know,” I reply. Another cat appears as if from nowhere, nudging the kitten aside to inspect the empty can.

“All gone?” he asks.

“All gone,” I reply.

“Well…” The cat wanders away.

“How many cats are there?” asks the kitten, stumbling into a bed of weeds, swiping awkwardly at a buzzing fly.

“Here?”

“Anywhere.”

“Too many to count.”

“Are there more cats than anything else?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s only as many cats as the world allows.”

“Is that a lot?” asks the kitten.

“It’s enough,” I say.

“What’s next?” says the kitten, head poking through a row of dusty gray stems.

It’s quiet again. I can hear a door close somewhere far away. Muffled voices. A cat howl. A dog bark.

“The same,” I say, crawling into the bushes next to the kitten. “More of the same.”

We’ll stay here for now. There’s no better place to be. I press up against the kitten and feel his strange jitteriness slow to sleepiness

The day grows dim.

There are footsteps. I assume they will pass by and so hardly raise my head.

“Look! They’re still here.”

It’s the girl and another, older woman. The girl kneels down in front of us. The kitten hops back to his feet.

“She’s back!” he shouts. “More food? Huh? Did you bring more?”

“Isn’t it cute?” says the girl.

“Uh huh,” says the older woman, leaning down herself. “The mother looks like she’s had a tough time. Is she skittish?”

“Not really,” says the girl, putting out a hand and scooping up the kitten.

They came back.

I don’t bother saying anything this time. I just watch.

“We can keep them, right?” says the girl.

“I like this!” cries the kitten as she nuzzles him into her face. “I like this a lot!”

“Yeah,” says the older woman. “Let’s give them a bath, though. And then the vet first thing in the morning. I can see their fleas from here.”

“Yay!” says the girl, holding the kitten aloft.

“Too high! But I still like it!” says the kitten. The girl starts to walk away.

Please don’t just take him, I think. Take him and keep him. Don’t pretend this time.

“And you,” says the older woman, leaning closer and closer to me. “What sort of cat are you? Will you come, too?”

I’m not afraid. Whatever she’s saying, and whatever comes next, I’m not afraid. Because they’re taking him. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I believe. They’re taking him. Giving him food. Giving him a collar. Giving him high shelves and a dry bed and red, dancing dots of light.

I hardly remember the time when I wasn’t always tired and sore and hungry.

She can do what she wants. Whatever she wants.

“Well, you’re either half dead or a very passive kitty,” says the woman, wrapping his hands around my limp body. The scratches on my stomach ache at the touch, but I don’t show it. I keep it to myself. “I’m also starting to suspect you’re no one’s mother, either. But oh well. Kittens are for kids. I think you may be more my style of cat.” She cradles me in her arms. I remember being held like this. I remember being carried.

She even bobs a bit as she walks.

I remember that, too.

“Oooh, now that’s a good purr,” she says, walking back along the path, following the girl and her kitten home. “I think I know exactly the kind of cat you are. Yes, I think I’ve got you pegged.”

Her words are gibberish in my ears. I hope she never stops talking.

Day XX

He grew up to be just as fluffy and white and strange as his mother. They call him Marty. They call me Doc. It’s not my name, but I come when they call it.

Marty and the girl are fast friends. She twirls a piece of ribbon tied to a stick. It’s Marty’s greatest obsession. He sleeps on her pillow at night, at her feet at dinner, and on her desk during the day. There is a boy here, too, though he’s older and spends his time in a very loud room with the door closed.

I keep to myself mostly. It can be very loud here, and chaotic. I don’t have the patience for that. There’s a space on one of the higher shelves, in behind a row of stacked books, where I can be alone and comfortable. One day I found a blanket laid out on just that spot. I think I know where it came from.

Because at night, when the house grows quieter, she’ll be the only one left awake. The older woman. The mother, I believe. She sits on the couch, all alone in the flickering light. That’s when I come out of my quiet corners and hop up onto the couch with what remains of my nimbleness. She holds up her hands and lets me settle into her lap. Then she scratches me, just so. Behind the ears. Down my neck, and then my back, lower and lower, but not too low. Never too low.

I sit like that for ages. And sometimes, in those moments, I remember. I remember the old house. The older house. Even the one before. The dog I once knew. Dorothy. I remember the man who never really liked me and the raccoon that smiled down on me from his perch on the windowsill.

I remember Her. Of course, I remember Her. All the good things She was. How She loved me and how I loved Her.

She never found me. And I stopped looking. I feel guilty, somedays. I wonder what’s become of Her. Did She find another cat? Does She miss me even now?

But the scratching goes on. I purr and drool, just a little. She talks to me as we sit there, though I’ll never know what she’s saying. Still, I do my best to let her know that I hear her, and that I agree with her, and that I’ll go on listening for as long as I’m able.

How long that will be is a mystery, but I hope it’s long enough.