Cat Autobiography, Chapter One

        It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling…No, it wasn’t…Well, it could have been…But it wasn’t.

         Sigh…Now I gotta start over…listening to them homosapiens…and their stories.

         I came into this world one sunny Sunday, April the second, the 3rd of 6 littermates.  I don’t remember anything from that day, seeing as I was still a newborn at the time, but my mother, Gem, once told me that I was a well-mannered kitten from the beginning, even moving so that one of my siblings could have a teat. I admit that I find that part hard to believe, as Ellie is one of my sisters and I wouldn’t give her so much as a rotten egg today. But I digress.

         That I can remember, I was a happy kitten, frolicking and playing with my siblings, as felines are wont to do. I especially excelled at stalking and still love it to this day (but please don’t call the animal warden; it’s not that kind of stalking, though Morris does make my fur dance). Then one day, everything changed.

         I was overjoyed at having killed my first mouse (after 15 minutes of playing with it) and was finishing off my impromptu snack, when my brother, Stinky, bounded into the basement.

         “Bitsy,” he squeaked, “guess what I just – EEW! Is that a mouse in your mouth?! Yu-uck!”

         I slurped the tail into my mouth and mumbled, “yeah.”

         “Eeeeeewwww,” he repeated, louder, “where’d you get that?”

         “In the corner, over by the water heater. And what do you mean ‘Ew’? You’re a cat and cats eat mice, du-uh!…or are you a pu-”

         “Don’t you dare say that! That’s a bad word!”

         “Or are you scared of mice? Is Stinky a big ole ‘fraidy cat? ‘Fraidy cat, ‘fraidy cat, Stinky’s a smelly ‘fraidy cat!”

         “Am not!”

         “Are too!”

         “Am not!” Stinky swatted me and I batted back at him with my front, right paw, connecting with the white fur under his chin, the only light patch in a sea of dark brown fur.  His eyes glazed over and I knew I was about to take a tumble. Sure enough, he leaped on me, causing me to fall onto my back. A sharp pain went through me and as tears filled my kitty blues, I looked up at Stinky and saw some of my beautiful gray fur in his mouth.

         “Stinky!” I howled, “what did you do?!”

         Jumping back, my brother started tiptoeing backwards. “I…I didn’t mean to, Bitsy, I was just playin’!”

         Before I could respond, I felt myself being picked up by the scruff of my neck. As I went limp, I realized that the scent of my carrier was unfamiliar. I became filled with a sense of fear and tried to fight but was unable to.

         Suddenly, I saw a pair of human eyes staring at me. Wha-? My human’s eyes weren’t shaped like that! As I felt myself being moved backwards, I was able to see more of the face. It belonged to a female human child. She had long hair framing her elfin face and she was smiling broadly, showing several gaps where teeth should have been. She looked friendly enough, but who was she?

         “Daddy! I want this one!” she squealed.

         “Are you sure, honey? That’s the first one you looked at.”

         As I tried to twist to see the source of the male voice and new scent, I found myself being repositioned so that I was being cradled like a human baby. From the new position, I was able to see the father of the little girl.

         He was not much taller than the girl and he was very thin without being reedy. He looked bemusedly at his daughter, who had started rocking me back-and-forth.

         “I’m sure, daddy! He’s so cute! I’ll call him,  um…” Her oval eyes peered at me again, then she made her pronouncement. “Washington!”

         Washington? My nose twitched. That was even worse than Bitsy, which I was no big fan of.

        Fortunately, Miss Kate, my human, had appeared. “Sweetheart,” she said as she approached the girl, “Washington is a great name, but this kitty is a girl.”

         Washington is a boy’s name, I thought. Lucky for me!

         “Oooh!” the child squealed again, causing me to jump. “So then she can have kitties someday! Right, daddy?”

         “She could, sweetie, but we’ll have her fixed.”

         I didn’t know what he meant by “fixed”, but I didn’t like the sound of it. Again, I tried to escape, just to be squeezed harder.

         “Aw, daddy, do we have to?”

         Now I definitely did not like the sound of being “fixed”.

         “Yes, we do, but it won’t hurt much.”

         At the word “hurt”, I was off like a shot, diving out of the child’s arms and into my favorite hiding spot, a hole in the wall. Unfortunately, Miss Kate was onto my spot. A broom handle invaded my place and I was forced to exit lest I get jabbed. As I came out, I scampered along the wall, furtively looking for a friendly face. Where had Stinky run off to? Where was my mommy? Not even nosy Rosie, who always came around when something was afoot, was in attendance.

         Before I could get very far, the girl had swooped over and picked me back up. I fought until she put my paws together so then I tried biting, but she wouldn’t let any of her skin get close enough to my teeth.

         “Ma’am, I believe your ad said something about a bag of treats and a toy,” the father said to Miss Kate.

         “Oh! Yes,” she answered, “if you will just follow me back upstairs…”

         As we headed to the upper floor, my carrier continued petting me. Funny, she didn’t even seem to notice my missing patch of fur.

         When we reached the kitchen, I saw why my mother had not been about. She was in a contraption I later learned is a “carrier”. The nonhuman kind. As I fought again to escape the arms encircling me, I called to her. “Mom! What’s happening? Why are you in that thing?”

         “Oh, my baby! All of you are being taken from me!” She started crying, which really frightened me. Never in my nine weeks of life had I ever seen her cry and now she was bordering on bawling. As I looked at her closer, I could see blood on her lips and front paws. What the -?

         “What do you mean ‘taken’ from you? And why are you bloody?”

         “I’m bloody from fighting this cage and by ‘taken’, I mean that you’re going to a new home. All of you are!” By now, my mother was sobbing so hard, I could barely make out her next words. “Rosie…and Bobby…and Ellie…and now you! Only Stinky and Trixie are left…they’re hiding somewhere, but it’ll do no good…they’ll be found, too!”

         I started bawling, too. Leave? The only home I’ve ever known? Mommy! And my brothers and sisters! Nooooo! I fought with all my might, but the child had learned her lesson, and she had a super-tight grip on me.

         “Thank you so much, Mrs. Howell,” I heard the man say, and then I was being carried out into the sunlight. It felt good on my fur, but now was not the time to enjoy the heat; I was being catnapped!

         “Go on and put her in the carrier, hon,” the man addressed his daughter when we reached the car, and I was suddenly flung – flung! – into a box like the one my mother was in.

         After I caught my breath, I started wailing again and was promptly rewarded with a face full of water. Where’d that bottle come from? Deciding to try a different tactic, I started mewing softly.

         “Shut up, fur face,” the girl snarled. Oh! Where went the sweet child I had met earlier? “Don’t nobody want to hear your racket!” She held up the bottle again and I simmered down. The girl watched me for a while then, satisfied that I was going to stay quiet, she picked up a book and started reading.

         A little while later, I started feeling queasy because the father was driving fast and erratically, forgetting there was a helpless kitten, unused to riding in cars, aboard. After what seemed an eternity, I couldn’t hold it any longer and I vomited. Exhausted, missing my mother, and still feeling ill, I fell asleep in my prison, keeping as far from the vomit as I could. I don’t know if I dreamed any, but, little did I know, a real-life nightmare was just beginning.