Username: All Along Watchtower
Cat Name: Misty Morning
Gender: Nonbinary
Rank: Cat living in the Factory
Clan: The FactoryAge: 49 moons
Prompt:There was one rule held above all others in the gathering of cats Misty Morning once called their home: You were not to mingle with humans, nor eat anything they offered you.
It seemed so easy. It should have been easy. For the first years of their life, Misty Morning skirted the edges of the city, hissing and diving away whenever they saw humans. They had been raised to hate and distrust them, and so they did.
They were not quite three when something happened to change that. Leaffall was cruel that year, and leafbare would be worse. Those who left the camp to hunt strayed closer and closer to the city's edge to find food. On one of these trips, Misty Morning found themself confronted by a human.
They were still inside, frozen, staring out at Misty Morning - but their hand wavered close to a door, and Misty Morning knew what that meant. One swift move, and the human could be outside with them, catch them -
Instead, the human sat down inside their home, and blinked.
Misty Morning couldn't say how long they stayed there that day, staring at the human who slowly blinked back at them, silently urging them to trust. Eventually, they turned tail and retreated - and they told no one of this.
The days passed. Occasionally, their hunting trips brought them back around. On their third trip, they smelled something before they saw it - something strong and meaty. When they found the source, it came from a bowl near the edge of the porch. Inside, the human was watching - and Misty Morning realized that they must have left the food out, and only just now. They glanced at the bowl, every instinct telling them not to feed, to run away - but they hadn't caught any prey in these past days.
They ate without thinking, ravenous. Never once while they ate did the human leave the house, nor try to grab them.
By the time they reached home again, one scrap of a mouse clutched in their jaws, the realization of what they'd done hit in full. Shame overwhelmed them, and they felt the eye of every cat upon them as if they all knew what they'd done. The mouse went straight to a queen. No one questioned why they didn't seem hungry themself - eating part of what you'd caught before bringing it home was considered normal. They vowed to themself that they would never return, that they would commit themself to the code ever harder.
They were back at the human's house within three days.
Things progressed after that both slowly and quickly. Misty Morning would visit the human's house to eat, bringing back all their meager catches to the other cats. A week passed. The human started to open the door. The human sat outside while they ate. The human pet them while they ate, soft and hesitant and backing away every time Misty Morning stopped eating. Eventually, they could pet them, even when Misty Morning wasn't eating.
Near the end of leafbare, the human left their door completely open, foodbowl just inside. What the human expected was for this stray, feral cat to take weeks, months even, before they'd be willing or comfortable to live inside. They had been prepared to wait that long.
Misty Morning knew it, sort of. At the very least, they didn't expect this human to rush them. But the other cats were growing suspicious. They knew that if they stepped inside this home, they could never return to their old group.
They crossed the threshold anyway. Their human was startled when they didn't want to leave, when they only sat by the door and meowed to be let in whenever they tried to give their new cat outdoor time. Misty Morning became a cuddler, a content house cat. They loved their human.
But old habits die hard. The conditioning you are born with is hard to escape. And some days, as they watched the world from the window, they still felt a spark of shame.
