Just another lazy day in my bed with the sun shining brightly off the white slates of the kitchen floor. I could hear the fridge humming quietly and the water running through the radiator behind me. A lady would walk past every so often, sometimes with a raised voice yelling at the smaller people around her to collect things from the whirring machines all around and sometimes muttering to herself. She would bend down and stroke the top of my head gently as I lay in my warm, cosy brown basket. A girl came and sat next to me. I knew who she was. She smelt like a faint burning and her wrist made a strange ticking noise from inside a small black box on it. She stroked my head lovingly and made a noise-like that of horse's hooves as it clipped down the road-and when I looked up she smiled dreamily at me and kissed my nose. A boy walked past, walking with huge, lumbering steps-almost as if he was wearing long wooden blocks on his feet and couldn't walk gracefully on them. A few mi nutes later and the whole house went silent.

Eventually though, I heard the turning of a key in the doors lock. It swung open and the girl reappeared in her black coverings. It was like fur but not as soft and I doubted as warm, yet she came straight over to me and kissed the top of my head. I was shocked, I admit, but it felt nice to feel something else on me instead of just the usual feel of cold flooring or warm soft basket. Her finger tips seemed to emit a sort of energy and as I concentrated more it was as if she was trying to put energy into me.

For a while I'd been finding it hard to breathe and I felt weak and slow and heavy all the time even though I knew I was too thin. It was strange how I would feel so hungry. I'd walk slowly to the food bowl and try and eat but that journey alone left the air stuck in my lungs and I couldn't breathe easily. It was torture. The noise hurt my ears sometimes but I didn't want to be on my own. I could feel myself fading fast.

All of a sudden, a man had come and lifted me and my comfy basket into a large, green plastic tub. It smelt like paper and rain and maybe even snow. Whatever it was it was rather uncomfortable. I tried to jump but looking down I didn't like the height. The man placed a rough towel around me and held onto the front. It felt nice to have his soft fingers against my fur. It reminded me of all the times when the girl had crawled into my basket with me and my sister, Dale, when she was a tiny baby.

Then we were outside. I was in a box, too, so I knew that was a bad sign. Every time I've gone out of the house in a box I've ended up in a foul smelling place with a strange lady injecting me with a sharp needle. I hated being outside. I could sense all the other creatures around me and I could smell loads of weird smells: fire or burning, smoke, chemicals and birds. Worse of them all was the smell of cats and dogs' that reeked around the bumpy roads. The girl sat down and I was placed on her lap. I was scared. So scared I felt like I would never be able to breathe again. The stress didn't help my breathing as I was struggling even more for my breath to come to me. It hurt so much.

The car started to move. All of sudden all these different colours were swirling past me. I thought I'd been sucked into one of those strange screens that the people always sit in front of on a Friday night. It was mesmerising. I stared at all the different colours, feeling the car moving jerkily over bumps and turning abruptly. I could hear the girl and the man talking to each other. Why were they talking? Could they not see all these beautiful colours jet past them like those silly birds I would watch from my hole outside in the green gardens? I looked up at the girl with huge amazed eyes, still fighting for my breath but those colours...they were.amazingly spectacular. She giggled softly and stroked my ears gently, the way she used to when we would sit and watch that big screen in the dark.

The car stopped all too soon and I was jerked back to reality. Why have we stopped? I tried to ask with my eyes but they didn't see me. I felt a pang of dread as I saw faintly the outline of a building. Once in the door I recognised the smell straight away. I didn't want to have a needle in me again so why were they walking me towards more deranged people? The girl's hand on me head was the only reassurance I had that I would be alright. I couldn't understand her but I knew she would never let anything bad happen to me. I could smell the smells of other frightened animals: dogs and cats and even a brightly coloured bird. I wanted to get away from it all. I wanted to be back in my cold floored white paved room by the radiator with the girl stroking my head as she whispered gibberish to me.

Thankfully the man carried me into a small room. It smelt the same but I couldn't smell any other animals. Was I safe at last? I tried to make a run for it, but with lack of breathe I didn't have the courage to fight against the strength of the mans' hand.

About five minutes later, I was carried into a white room. I thought I was in heaven all of a sudden. Or home in my basket where I wanted to be so much. A new pair of hands picked me up and placed me on a horrible green table, the coldness of the plastic or metal seeped through the bottom of my feet and I wanted to get off it. It smelt too strange and I could smell death. It was too horrid for me to bear. The new hands lifted my top half off my feet and then the man hands were there, holding me softly but firmly. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't he see that I was in pain? That I had to fight for every breath that I needed? I wanted down. I squirmed and fought for every breath and tried to bite those hands that I had always looked for comfort in. Slowly he lowered me down but I had no energy to move. The pain was so sore and I couldn't even stand up. I lay across the cold feeling of the table and tried to save my life with each intake of air. The girls hand was on me, stroking m e in soft relaxing ways. It was funny how even though I was weak I felt so at peace lying there with her hand on my fur. It felt like those days when I had been huge and fat and happy and lying on the floor of the carpet with that big colourful screen flashing strange pictures across it.

Then the girls hand started to shake. Not with fright but more with sadness than anything and when I saw her, her eyes were exploding with water. She brushed them away furiously but they kept coming back. I thought she was dying the way she looked so distressed. Then that thin hand of someone else started to cut away bits of my fur. I'd stopped fighting now. The last attempt had left me so exhausted with breathe that I couldn't even think about trying it again. I wished they would hear me and let me be at peace. It just didn't seem worth it. Then came the needle. The coldness of it hurt but the girl was still in my sight.

Whatever was in that needle left me feeling groggy and tired. I could feel myself fading fast and I felt numb all over. I think someone must of moved my back legs because soon I was laying flat on the table and I remembered the feel of my basket on those cold nights where I would just lay in my basket, Dale fast asleep next to me, and I could still feel everyone's presence. The girl made a muffled kind of retch and I she choked more and more and I could almost feel the coldness of that water exploding from her eyes. The man put his hand on my fur and his hand emitted another blast of energy through them-like sadness but not as strong as the girls had been. I remembered all those times I'd watched them eat their dinners, how I had walked up to the seats and glanced up at them with my huge green eyes and begged them to let me have a small piece of that food, that food that smelt so much nicer than the sloppy yet tasty stuff they left me to eat. The food was so good, and so muc h more inviting, and it became a craving of mine to eat their food rather than my own.

I didn't want to leave.

"Look at the girl!" I meowed pathetically and moved to see her. She didn't want me to go. The man did but his opinion was not important to me. The girl was the one who had cuddled me all day, the one who had fed me and watered me when I was thirsty and when no one else would listen to me. She was the one who had fought for my safety, the one who had confided more in me than in her own species. I knew that the girl was the one who was drowning in her own sadness, the one who was dying inside the further away I drifted. She almost blew me away with her sense of being torn in half: I could almost hear herself tearing in two. She wasn't whole, like a cat without a tail or a fish without water.

There was nothing I could do to stop my mind, engulfed in small, vague images of my past, from falling into the deepest sleep that I'd ever been in. The weird sense of numbness swept my body and relaxed me the way the girls hand had relaxed me before. As quickly as I could I made a silent promise to watch her all the time to make sure she was alright and that she moved on with her life. I didn't want her eyes to explode ever again. Nthen all of a sudden breathing was no longer forced and for once that pang of pain in my lungs was stopped. It was so peaceful and I wanted to stay there forever.

Thankfully I did stay in that sleep forever. The pain was gone forever and I felt at peace for the first time in a while, the way I'd felt at peace when I would hear those people rushing about as I slept in my lovely, brilliant basket and known that the only thing I had to worry about was when to get up and have a quick snack. I felt at peace, the way I had then.

It was perfect.

Taylor
Age 15

Print

Email this