Chapter 1.

The Cat peered out one round hole in the side of the cardboard carrier, then another. The car jerked out of the driveway. He tried to dig his claws into the slick cardboard to keep his balance. A piercing meow caused his heart to beat faster, even though he was making the sound himself.

It wasn’t riding in the car that panicked the Cat. He often rode along when the Man drove, for instance to pick up pizza. He liked to stretch out on the shelf behind the back seat, the highest perch in the car, with an ever-changing view. He also rode with the oldest child on her bike, sitting in the basket as she pedaled up and down the cul-de-sac.

The Girl was the one who’d named him “Batman.” It was on her bed that he slept at night, in between stints of mouse patrol. But last night, when he’d padded up the stairs for his midnight nap, her bedroom door was shut.

That was not right. The Cat meowed and scratched. Finally he pounded on the door with his front paws, making a racket that even hearing-deficient humans would notice.

The Cat’s pounding did wake up the Girl, who woke up the Man and the Woman. There was crying and arguing. But the upshot was not the obvious one, to let the Cat into the Girl’s room. Instead, the Man had picked up the Cat and shut him in the laundry room for the night. So the Cat had missed out on not only his nightly naps with the Girl, but also his pre-dawn rounds of the household.

This morning, after the Man and the children had left the house, the Cat jumped onto the sill of the sunny living room window. Licking his white bib while keeping an eye on the fluttering finches at the bird feeder, he purred praises to the Great Cat. Surely he was one of her favored worshippers, for he had lived since kittenhood in this ideal home.

Well—ideal until yesterday. Even before the disturbance last night, there had been an upset involving the Girl. He’d been sitting on her lap, purring as she stroked him and bent down to whisper to him, her breath tickling the long hairs on the inside of his ear.

Then—the Girl’s soft, regular breath halted. She made a strangled noise. He glanced up. She began wheezing and choking, and he jumped off her lap in alarm. The Woman came running. She hustled the Girl out of the house and into the car. They were gone until after dark.

This morning the Woman had forgotten, as she sometimes did, to feed the Cat right away. After he groomed himself, he was going to have to annoy her until she remembered.

The Cat heard the Woman’s footsteps behind him, but he thought she was coming to water the geraniums at the window. Instead, she grabbed the Cat and stuffed him into the carrier. “I’m sorry, kitty, but my children come first.”

The Cat bunched his haunch muscles to leap out, but she shoved the flaps down against the top of his head. As the carrier lifted and swung sickeningly, he lurched from side to side.

Now, in the car, the Cat strained to see, pressing his face against one hole in the cardboard after the other, but the little round openings showed only patches of car upholstery. He poked at the holes with his paws to enlarge them, but the cardboard was too sturdy. He hated not being able to see out the window.

Was the Woman taking him to the vet’s? That had been the destination, the other times he’d been crammed into the carrier. The thought of that chemical-smelling place, the cold steel table where he was prodded and stuck, made him yowl again. After the last visit to the vet, the Cat had come home with an unexplained wound in his groin, and it had taken several days to heal.

“It’s okay, kitty,” the Woman called from the driver’s seat. He yowled louder. She turned on the radio, adding a yammer of voices over the Cat’s cries.

The Cat was tempted to call on the Great Cat to save him from the vet’s. He had learned as a kitten that if a cat was in truly desperate straits, and called upon Her with a pure heart, the Great Cat might come to his rescue. However, the deity should not be bothered for minor problems. As his mother had told him and his litter-mates on the day she weaned them, the Great Cat had more important things to do. Besides, She needed Her sleep.

The Woman’s phone rang, and she turned down the radio to answer it. “Hi, Mom. . . . Emma’s fine now. She went back to day camp. . . . No, she was fine, as soon as” [yowl] “they gave her the epinephrine, even before we left the emergency room. . . . Yes. I’m on my way to the Mattakiset Animal Shelter right now. . . . I didn’t” [yowl] “ask Scott. If he thinks we can keep a cat in the same house with an allergic child, he’s insane. . . .”

The Cat was panting between yowls now. Would they drive on forever, turning corner after corner, his paws slipping as the carrier slid from side to side on the backseat? But no—with one more turn, the car slowed and came to a stop.

From the feeling of the car wheels, this was not the vet’s stone parking lot. It was smooth pavement, like the family’s driveway. The Cat started to calm down. Maybe the Woman had driven around aimlessly and finally come back home? Humans did stranger things than that.

As the driver’s door opened, an overpowering smell rushed into the Cat’s nostrils: the reek of dozens of lonely, frightened animals. The air rang with compulsive barking, pierced by yowls.

The back door of the car opened.

The Cat was too horrified to yowl. This was a place much worse than the vet’s. A place where animals without patrons sank into despair.

O Great Cat! Save me!

The Woman lifted the carrier out and set it down on the pavement while she locked the car, still talking on the phone. “Look, I’ll have Emma call you after her gymnastics class, okay? Gotta go.”

O Great Cat, I beg you, help!

The Cat seemed to feel a warm breath on the top of his head. Blue sky appeared between the handles at the top of the carrier. He lunged upward. Great Cat, give me strength.

“Damn!” exclaimed the Woman, grabbing at the loose handles. But the Cat’s head and shoulders were already out. She tried to push him back down. He raked her arm with his claws. “Damn!”

Cats are small, and humans, even female ones, are large, but the power of the Great Cat was with him. Writhing and scratching, the Cat tumbled onto the pavement. He found his footing and streaked for the trees at the edge of the parking lot.

A throaty voice, like his memory of his mother’s purr, only more so, spoke in his ear: This is the end of your first life.

 

 

 

 

It was a doggy-dog world.

Eighth-grade essay on the Dark Ages