Catastrophe

Today I wonder where it all went wrong, as the acrid smell of urine clogs my pores. I don’t know how it happened, how the world seemed to flip upside down in a tailspin.

My fingers come up for what seems the millionth time to move my long, unkempt hair out of my eyes. As my hand travels back to the floor to support me, it passes my collar and a bell jingles throughout the small space.

The movement brings out a derisive laugh from somewhere deep within, as my attention is brought to the heart shaped locket that rests at my collarbone. She said it was because she loved me.

I sigh and fold inward on myself, my hands touching my feet, my back arched to make myself as small as possible. Taking up space and resting on the metal hurts my joints.

These days are the hardest. The ones where I try to reason and make sense of it all. I much prefer the days where I give in. Give in and play the role they want me to play.

Voices start to echo down the hall, along with the gagging aroma of old, dead fish. Every muscle in my body begins to clench, on high alert as my heart plummets and unbidden tears cascade down my face.

She said she loved me. She said I was the most beautiful girl. She said I was perfect.

I have to remember that.

“Oh honeyyyy, I’m home. I’m sorry you’ve been cooped up so long. I can’t wait to cuddle you.”

If I play along, if I act happy to see her, she’ll probably pamper me. Two pointy, furry ears round the corner, glowing eyes, whiskers. A paw reaches for the light, and the hellfire holes on her face disappear. I manage a meek grin.

“Oh baby, I’m so excited to see you! I missed you so much! I can’t believe I’ve been away three whole days. I miss my little girl.”

Very quickly, the lock to my cage is undone, the door springs open, spraying my litter in all directions, and before I can take a breath of free air, I’m five feet up and smothered by a very hot and sweaty wall of fur. I haven’t yet processed the change from my three day prison before I’m dropped into the claws of a baby kitten.

Her jagged, shark-like teeth are all that I can see as she rakes her pointed talons across my exposed back. She begins to purr, and exclaims, “I just love your pet human, aunty!”

“Aw, thanks hun. I love her too. I’m so lucky to have her - even though she can be a mess.” Although I’m still being mauled by the kitten’s claws facing the wall, I can still imagine my owner’s curled up face as she thinks about the small cage I have been stuck in for the last few days.

“You really are. There are so few of them left nowadays,” growls the kitten’s mother, “How did you even manage to keep her?”

A wicked grin is almost palpable across the room as my prisoner responds, “I was hers, back in the day.”

Gasps.

No.

Praise the nip.

“Those damn humans. They really did a number huh? Such a plague. Tsk. At least it all turned out for the better. Now, they pretty much killed themselves off. The ones that are left are taken care of, and the Earth is a much better place.”

“Oh nooo, not in front of the child. You’ll scare her.”

“Don’t worry, honey. The humans can’t hurt us - they’re damn near extinct. You know, the ones who are left are our babies. They only have us to take care of them. And aren’t they so adorable?”

The attention is brought to me again, and the kitten squeezes all the air left inside of my lungs, “Yours is SO cute, aunty!”

This is too much. I’m not horrible. I’m not a plague. We couldn’t help the mutation that made us smaller, weaker, and them so much larger, more intelligent. I was lucky to survive. Or was I?

“Oh I have something for you sweetie,” says one of the aunts to the kitten, “Let me go get it”.

Once again all my muscles tighten, my heart races. I can hear my pulse up in my ears. But it was for a different reason than fear.

The kitten drops me to the floor in her excitement, and as all attention moves to the aunt, I slide around the furniture and follow behind her unseen. The door opens and after the aunt takes two steps I’m out like a bat out of hell. They definitely weren’t expecting that, and none of them even realized I was gone for at least a full two minutes.

I knew the moment they did, because that’s when the yowls started. Shaking the very Earth around me, the screaming grew and grew in a loud cacophony, alerting every household in the neighborhood, following me as I ran as fast as my hurt and malnourished body could carry me. I heard screams distantly from my prison, “Human! Human outside! Human escaped!”

But I was lucky. My prison was right on the outskirts to the woods, and I knew that salvation like the back of my hand. My lungs on fire, sweat dripping to the ground, I made it. With nothing left inside me, my world swayed, my vision blurred. The trees and leaves began to spin around me. But I knew where I needed to be. Two more steps. Hands, then feet, hands, then feet. Ugh.

Something was poking me. Maybe if I continued to pretend to be asleep, or even dead, my owner would give up and leave me alone for a second. But she didn’t. The poking continued.

I open my eyes slowly, trying to ready myself for invasion, but instead there are two large eyes staring in my face. Human eyes.

They move away from my face and pick up a sign. My face had been hastily drawn on a piece of cardboard. ‘Human girl,’ it read, ‘Heart shaped locket on collar with bell’.

The other human pointed at the sign, and then at me, grunting. This is definitely one of those times where I wish they hadn't taken our tongues. I nodded my head, and he gestured for me to follow.

I took a deep breath, and willed myself with every ounce of adrenaline that I may have left in my body to get up. The human led me through the woods to a large oak tree. Touching one of its knots, a hidden hole came to sight. We walked through, down a tunnel that went seemingly endlessly deeper and deeper into the ground.

After what seemed to me like hours, we finally stopped. There were six other humans there. A young girl, maybe ten, was one of them. My mind ran rampant trying to comprehend that this might be the only life she knew. Two other women, three men, including the one who found me.

A whiff of air hits my face and I look up to find a network of pipes above our heads, some of them dripping water.

I don’t know what to feel - excited, ecstatic, afraid? All I know is that my skin won’t be torn to shreds each day; they won’t lick those open wounds with their sandpaper tongues to clean up the blood; old, raw, decrepit fish won’t be forced down my throat; and I won’t be stuck in a cage smaller than me, full of my own excrement, for days on end. They’ll come looking for me, and they might find me. For all I know, these are the last free humans on the planet. But at least for now - maybe I'm free.