by Wolf Shadowstalker » Tue Dec 06, 2016 11:06 am
Username;;
Wolf Shadowstalker
Paeus name;;
Kitten, or Kit for short
Where do they live?;;
His earliest memory is of the only mother he ever knew. Someone safe and warm that let him curl into her bony torso while she lulled Kitten into slumber with her rough tongue and broken purr as the sounds of the city echoed through the alleyways.
Life with Mother was harsh. They could not venture safely around the city without encroaching upon another cat's territory. Mother had to teach him how to best maneuver through the nooks and crannies of they alleyways to avoid trouble and he learned quickly, both by nature and by need. Food was scarce; trash was closely guarded by wary cats and annoyed humans, and rodents easily escaped from Mother's shaky paw swipes. Any meal she managed to scrounge up for them both settled warm in his belly, and he could ignore the ever gnawing hunger when Mother was at his side. She tried to teach him to hunt as best she could, but the art did not come to him as easily as slinking around the shadows had.
He also learned from Mother that the streets outside the alleyways were only to be ventured into with careful planning, or out of desperation. Dogs would rush at you with roaring barks and bared teeth that could tear him to sheds if he was caught between them. Humans there would kick you, throw stones, yell, or toss you into a cage to be taken away, never to be seen again.
Despite her own warnings, there were a few humans that Mother visited. They would pat her head and gently brush their hands down the ever prevalent knobs of her spine, speaking softly in words neither he nor Mother could understand. Sometimes the humans gave Mother food, and only when they retreated back into their homes or turned the corner would she call Kitten away from where he had been hidden in the shadows to share the meal.
One evening Kitten woke up without Mother's warmth, no matter how tightly he curled into the fur of her stomach. A week passed; no rodents had yet fallen at his paws, no trash had been without a guard he could evade, and he could no longer will his way past the weakness in his limbs. He warily approached the residence of one of Mother's humans, scratching at the door as she had, in hopes the human would have food to spare (and perhaps some comfort for his grieving heart). Instead of gentle hands and quiet murmurs, the human that appeared roughly grabbed him and shoved him into a cage, their voice loud and jarring and excited all the while. Even when Kitten had protested with tooth and paw, the excitement in the human's voice had only lessened for a moment, and instead of letting go the hands had only grasped him tighter.
Despite the warmth of the room he was trapped in, Kitten could only feel cold. He curled tightly in on himself against the back wall of the cage, ignoring the overbearing smell of the new plate of food in front of him as his stomach continued to plague him with shakes. He wished with all his heart to be back at Mother's side with her rough tongue brushing away all his worries and fears.
More days passed. Kitten barely had the strength to continue curling up when he rested in the back of the cage, let alone fight the two pairs of hands that roughly lifted him out of the cage, poking and prodding him as their owners spoke to each other just as roughly. Once Kitten was placed back into the cage and as the voices became muffled when they left the room, something that had not happened caught his notice. He feebly lifted his head, and a sudden surge of strength flooded his body at what he saw. Hurriedly, he crashed against the unlatched cage door and without a thought, leapt towards a high-up window he would have never dreamed of reaching even with a full belly. By instinct alone, Kitten swam frantically through the air with movements Mother could have never taught him, pushing past the window and far, far away from his prison. Just as the surge of desperate strength began to ebb away, in mid-flight he ambushed a rat climbing a wall and fell to the ground alongside it. It became the first of many more meals he would eat alone.
No one is to be trusted. Not the cats that chased him and mother from any semblance of shelter they found, hissing at their backs as they ran away with empty stomach. Not the dogs that bared their teeth before he and mother even got close. Not even the humans that quietly held out food towards him as he bared his own teeth, when the bones had still been painfully visible under his skin. How could he trust when even the humans Mother had trusted betrayed him?

