Memoirs of a Feral Cat

17 hairy ones, bald ones, long droopy ears, wide butterfly-ears, long snouts and shoved-in faces. Their noises matched their looks: snorts, howls, trills, yips, barks, and deep woofs. Yet they all had one thing in common. They served the two-legger. A shiver trickled down my spine. Come on, Molly , I thought. Don’t waste precious daylight thinking about slobbery beasts. Not when a long trailing plant snaking beyond a front garden held all sorts of possibilities. I dug through it, burrowing deeper and deeper, following the lure of a mouse. “I know you’re in there,” I mewed, sticking my nose in. I was getting closer. My body stiffened, in spite of the big plant burying my top half. My whiskers twitched at a tension in the air behind me. “Shabby ferals shouldn’t be allowed in nice areas like this. You ruin the look of the place.” I smelled a molly. Idle talk didn’t threaten me, and I continued with my digging. “Typical low-life feral. Always scrounging,” I heard. I let her stare at my tail until I was good and ready to grant an audience. After raking the dirt a few times, I eased out ever so slowly. When my head emerged into the fresh air, I sat, inspected my paws, gave one ear a scratch, and finally locked eyes on her. Blazin’ Bastet, if that wasn’t the oddest feline I had ever seen. Her front half was white and her back half was covered in swirls of black and gray. But those ears had my eyes bugging out. They weren’t aiming straight towards the sky like a normal cat’s, but folded back, pointing towards her tail and tufts of hair stuck out all around them. “Do you sleep on your head?” I was curious. She slitted her eyes and looked down her nose at me. “Are you really that stupid? I am the perfect example of a cat. My humans show me off, so others can see what a true feline looks like.”