In his tiny cage he sat alone near the back.
It was so bright near the front and it smelled yucky.
He smelled yucky.
"Why am I here?"
The little kitten let out a cry, loud and shrill but he was drowned out by the hundreds of others in the packed mill.
Shoved in a cage atop four others, his situation was precarious at best. He didn't dare to move for when he did, the cage rocked dangerously.
He desperately wanted to sleep but it was so loud that he could not rest. People were everywhere poking their fingers in cages, laughing, talking. Dogs bayed and howled from their own cramped cages begging to be seen.
The little kitten didn't even bother, he had been there too long. No one ever noticed his small cage near the back. Most marched in, dragging their loud whining children behind them and would point to the first one they saw. Very few would ever take the time to wander about. Those who did, the kitten was wary of them. They were almost always snake owners or pit fighters looking for cheap bait and the smaller the better.
His own sister had been taken by one when they were both small. She was all he had left in the world.
She had left with a balding greasy man with barely any teeth as he smirked and handed the man in charge a twenty dollar bill. He had shoved her into a filthy paper sack and tied the top closed with twine, ignoring her cries.
When she left the little kitten cried and cried for days, refusing to eat or drink. He was desolate without her.
That was months ago and he hadn't forgotten.
A loud familiar squealing sound assaulted his ears which perked up slightly. That sound was what the food cart made when it was beginning to make its rounds. It had a broken wheel and sounded horrendous but the man in charge was too cheap to buy another.
The noise in the large building grew to a thundering crescendo as the food began to be distributed. The man who pushed the cart began to swear at them and scream for them to be quiet but they would not be silented. Food only came in the form of a handful thrown into their cages once a day and no one wanted to be looked over or forgotten.
The little kitten looked down at the floor of his cage at the moldy leftover bits of food stuck to the urine and feces covered newspaper and listened to his sunken in little tummy rumble and cry. He couldn't remember the last time that he felt full. Maybe it was when he had been with his mommy whom he remembered only faintly.
She had been beautiful, that he remembered. Orange and white long-haired just like himself with tufts of fur coming from her ears. He had only one memory of her and it was one he re-lived everyday when he felt the most alone and depressed.
She had been nursing all of her other kittens, and he was the only one that was not eating. She had picked him up tenderly by the scruff of his tiny neck and had laid him gently across her front paws where she proceeded to lick behind his ears with her rough tongue.
It had felt so wonderful and a faint purr had begun to throb in his throat as she lulled him to sleep beside her warm body.
She had been taken away barely four weeks after he and his siblings were born. Shoved into a crate and disappeared leaving her kittens orphaned and alone in the cage. One by one his brothers and sisters followed until only he remained.
A rattling noise shoved aside his thoughts and his weary eyes struggled to focus on the rain of stale kibble that fell on and around him. He tried to eat, picking around the excrement and mold, desperate to quelch the burning ache that never truly left his ribs.
When he could stomach no more he crawled back weakly through the filth of his 15x25 metal enclosure to his corner, the cleanest spot that he fought to preserve. He began to clean himself, more for comfort than anything else as his matted and greasy fur needed nothing more than a good bath and shave if it were to ever look remotely shiny and silky once again. He sneezed violently seven or eight times and wiped away the snot with his paw, struggling to breath through his clogged airways.
For the last several weeks he had struggled with a bad cold and it seemed to be getting worse. There were days where he felt so weak and close to the brink he wouldn't move at all. He would alternate every few moments between shaking with the chills and burning with a fever. None of it was made any better by the fact that he was laying atop wet newspaper that had only been changed three times in the entire course of his stay.
Today was one of those days. After his bath he found himself too weak to stand any longer and collapsed to his side in exhaustion, his sides slowly rising up and down. A hacking cough suddenly racked his emaciated little body and he was forced to struggle to his feet once again in order to be able to breathe until the spasms subsided.
It was then that he heard a shrill woman's voice raised in anger at the man in charge.
"This is the most vile place I have ever been! How could you treat helpless animals this way? They're dying right in front of your eyes and all you can see is the money!"
"Listen lady, I'm going to have to ask you and your child to leave if you're not going to buy anything", the man sounded just as angry as he spat out his retort at the woman.
The little kitten sat with his eyes barely opened and cocked an ear in their direction as he listened.
But she refused to be silent. "I'm going to call the authorities on you, this place......this place...should be burned to the ground! You disgust me! I'm horrified that my daughter had to see this.......Cali?......Cali where are you, we're leaving right now."
"Call the police, they already know about me. I got a license. They won't do anything lady, I'm just tellin you in advance, savin you the trouble", he called after her as she marched away furiously calling for her daughter in the cramped aisles and aisles of cages.
The kitten listened as her footsteps faded in the opposite direction and then he saw her. The most heavenly of angels walking slowly past his cage. He mewed softly and she turned swiftly to find the source of the cry. She wore a yellow shirt with a smiley-face on it that matched her long blond hair which fell to her shoulders and framed her little round face. Her expression turned to one of great sadness when she saw him sitting there and she went to his cage immediately.
She must have been no older than nine but she showed a maturity level that far surpassed that age as she approached slowly and calmly, her arm outstretched, as she cooed at him softly. The faint flickerings of a feeling that he hadn't felt in a long time began to spark somewhere deep inside of him and he slowly emerged from the shadowy depths of the cage.
