Birdie the Dragon Cat

Birdie the Dragon Cat was not particularly keen on hatching dragons. She’d rarely been around any save for her own mirrored reflections, and even that wasn’t very enticing. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t like the rest, who were more dragon than not. Whose bright idea was it anyways to mix the two? Her puffy, face with its pesky whiskers, short stout legs and rosy paws confused all the others from the litter. Others for whom had fewer feline qualities with catlike faces and portly dragon bodies. Some even sprouted wings and breathed fire if they were lucky. They didn’t know what to do with the tiny dragon cat who was more cat than dragon. In fact, the only thing dragon-like about Birdie the Dragon Cat was a small patch of emerald green scales along the tip of her spine and a spiky tail, but even those were covered in patches of silver fur.

Birdie the Dragon Cat was quite unassuming over-all. The runt of the bunch, and most unlikely to hatch a dragon of her own—but this didn’t stop her from trying.

“Oh, my dearest little Bird,” cooed Marna, the eldest of the Dragon Cats. It was her day to watch the group of six other feral beasts and her favorite was, by far, Birdie.

“You never cause me any bother when you are around. It’s good to be unlike the others, helps you to stand out. You will hatch your own little dragon one day, and they will too be fierce.”

Birdie eyed her own wilted tail. The spikes had yet to fully come in and they still held her back some when she walked, dragging behind her from all the weight. She wished she was able to move more freely like the others.

“Look at Josephine, her paws are too big, they flop when she walks, causing her to trip. Be lucky yours is just your tail. There, look, Nova has too many toes, Luca is top-heavy, Jonah has an underbite, and Faye can’t swim. You are perfectly how you are supposed to be, always remember that.”

Birdie the Dragon Cat smiled, a sly, shy little smile. She knew there was a lot for her to be thankful for. Her catlike reflexes were unmatched, her tiny body allowed her to scale heights others could only dream of—and she didn’t need wings to get her there. Birdie was unstoppable.

“You’re just a Cat Dragon, a measly little house-cat. Never going to do anything other than stalk the mice,” Luca droned, his shoulders were anvils of two largely oversized boulders that pulled him from side to side when he walked. It didn’t help that he had a pair of the tiniest wings any dragon cat had ever inherited—and yet he stood tall and confident as the other five dragon cats huddled around. Birdie wondered how he got anything done with a body like that.

Birdie ignored his dribble, eyeing something small, smaller than a pea-sized pebble. It shimmered under the cabinet nearest the door.

“It’s just a stupid rock,” Nova hissed, licking an earlier wound from the inside of her paw. It was true—Nova had fifteen toes on each foot—which made it nearly impossible for her to walk correctly. She was just as useful as a batting hat, whatever that was. Nova almost always flew everywhere she went as her paws were always red-hot and irritated. She wasn’t able to ward off an attack, but she seemed to do just fine with hatching dragon-eggs. The weight of which seemed to keep her from flying much as of late and made her more prone to chiming in on Birdie’s plight.

Birdie clenched her paws together in strict defiance. This wasn’t any old ordinary rock, no. Birdie had discovered something great, something fantastic, something extra-ordinary—but what was it? The urge to ignore this shiny specimen like the other dragon-cats in the litter had done was nothing short of miraculous. She couldn’t, not now, not until she knew what it was.

This rock was something more, something special—Birdie whispered, wiggling herself into the prone attack position as she lined herself up with the cabinets. It was just a few hops and a skip-leap away. She could get there before any of the other dragon-cats even knew what hit them.

Birdie was nearly obsessed, her silvery-blue eyes fixated on this mystery rock as she began tactfully creeping closer and closer over the pebbled floor of the dusty kitchen. Her tail no longer felt lifeless and heavy, instead, it swirled around behind her like a puffer-snake about to attack. Tufts of fur-lined dust had stopped the rock from sinking further into oblivion under the cabinet. Within half-an-hour Birdie had cornered this shiny object, and stuffed it into her mouth for safe-keeping until she could get back to her watering bowl to inspect her latest find.

“What are you doing Bird, what do you have in your mouth,” Marna cooed curiously from her perch in the corner, too unbothered to move. She spent most the afternoon napping and failed to notice the ensuing drama unfolding with the rock—which was both rather unfortunate and tragically uneventful. Birdie had expected the rock to taste better, or wake up—but the thing lay cold and unmoving under her tongue.

Without answering Birdie carried it over to the water and dropped it in, staring at it as the sparkling rock floated for a few seconds before sinking to the bottom of the bowl with a clanking sound. She sat watching, waiting for it to hatch into some sort of jeweled dragon but nothing ever happened.

“Bird…that’s not a dragon-cat egg,” Jonah huffed, his underbite swallowing the words. “That isn’t even how you would hatch one…”

Faye just smiled, her signature cat-like smile and inched further from the bowl, eyeing the jeweled specimen with a mix of disdain and hunger.

“I’m not touching that thing until it comes out from the bowl.” Faye pawed suspiciously at the glass bowl, sloshing the water, spilling some onto the floor—sending her scuttling behind Luca’s massive shadow.

Her aversion to water was uncanny—just like most cats—but the draw of the shiny new rock had all the dragon-cats mewing, swirling the bowl, ready to pounce.

“There, there,” Marna whispered, her voice a little headier than usual. “You all need to calm down, you are going to spook the dust diamonds, can’t have that.”

“Dust diamonds?” Birdie mused, her head contorting into the most at unnatural of angles as she examined the shimmering rock closer. Somehow in all the hubbub, it had managed to inch its way to the side of the bowl where it undoubtedly hoped to stay until the other dragon cats got bored enough to forget—and hopefully allow it enough grace to scurry back to the underside of the cabinet where it belonged.

“Yes, dreadfully annoying things. They roll around, get caught in the ‘in-between’ of your paws and cast brilliant rays of light that reflect off the sun-gods themselves, blinding you if you look too closely. Sometimes, if you catch it just at the right time, dozens of little rainbows dot the walls and are fun to chase. Otherwise, they are pesky little buggers, causing nothing but headaches and problems.”

Marna, it seemed, scoffed at the idea of having a dust diamond around, but Birdie rejoiced. She finally felt the little warm fuzzies growing up from her stomach and for the first time, this was something she could do. She no longer worried about the idea of hatching a dragon-cat. Now she wanted to see where the rest of these curiously beautiful creatures were off hiding, and if any of them wanted to be friends.