The Cages Room (flash fiction)

(This piece was an exploration of a funny kind of grammar I call Malka Speak, and is one of a series of writings about the impact of relationships between aminals and their people)

We stayed close together, Maura and I did.  We would rather be in the cages room with each other cat, than be taken out alone.  Maura got people’s attention first – they wanted to call her Boots or Socks or Slippers, but she would get bitey if they didn’t want me too, and they would put her back for someone shyer.

I got lost in the sea of cat faces.  People would calling me Tabby, if they called me at all.  Lots of us cats got called Tabby.  Maura and I were not kittens anymore.  Actually, we still were kittens at ten months old, but people usually wanted us cats more when we were the tiny ones with baby whiskers, and too big of ears.

Once upon a day, Maura and I were just getting up from a sleeping when we saw his biggest brown eyes looking at us.  We looked into his eyes and we cats saw our way home.  We both of us saw it!  We got so excited that Maura, she forgot to be bitey. 

Oh boy!  He is looking at me first and he is calling me Sweetie!  I snuggled close to Maura so he would know for surely that we were together girls, and he saw us both cats. He asked to meet us two together! 

That was the beginning of us three.  Boy did Maura and I have an important job for doing!  We could see the heart of our new person right away, and we were seeing the depth of his hurt and his lonely. We knew we were home.  He rescued us from the cages room, and we rescued him right back.

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