Forbidden Shadows - Chapter Seven

Stormcloud was ashamed. She was a true warrior, larger and fiercer than the other cats, and now here she was, trapped in a human's cage. She felt worthless and small, a mouse staring out at the huge world in front of her. She was being humiliated. And soon her death was to come.

Bluejay wasn't thinking at all about humiliation and how he looked. He was trying to find an escape. He appeared only to be a fidgety cat in a cage, but he had a plan. He could almost reach the lock on the cage. He had secretly watched every time a cat had been trapped. He saw how they locked the cages. It was genius! Now all he had to do is find a way to reverse their locking process to unlock the cage. But he needed time to think, and time was one thing he had little of. The human who had the grim task of ending his life was refilling his gas gun with gas as the cats scrambled around for their lives.

Stormcloud turned her head sadly at Bluejay, expecting to see him moping around, ready to see what their ancestors were like. But she was greatly surprised to see him looking determined. She was just about ready to yell to him, "What are you doing?" when his cage door swung open. Bluejay beamed at her. The look on his face said, I did it! Did you see that? I opened my door! Now I'm gonna open yours!

The blue tom rushed over to Stormcloud's cage. He put his paw on her cage lock and was about to open it to free his companion when he saw it. The nozzle. The Nozzle of Doom, he called it in his mind. The nozzle to the gas gun was inside Stormcloud's cage! He had to act fast. However, as he thought about his friend dying, his paws began to fumble and he messed up again and again. The human put his finger on the gas gun's trigger. "Do it! Hurry!" screamed Stormcloud.

"I'm trying!" he meowed. But try as he might, he kept fumbling and having to restart. Stormcloud's impatience was growing, this time being fueled on by fear. The gray she-stray looked like she was a volcano of fury about to erupt. And she probably could have become one. But the human looked at her. He stared, and as he stared, his hand dropped from the trigger.

The cats couldn't understand him. But the other killer humans did. And he was saying, "Come look you guys. This one's surely the biggest, but it's female! If we take this to the boss, he'll be pleased we spared her. This is a great test subject for his experiments. She could withstand the hardest of treatment, and so the boss could find out why she's so big when the males are usually biggest and strongest. Look, she isn't even scared. What a brave one! Let's get this one back to the truck."

A different human replied, "But what about the rest of these mangy strays? We gotta stick to our job, Justin!"

"Eh, after what we did to their friends, these ones won't be coming back to New York City any time soon. Cats are smart, even street strays. They know where we're from and what we're doing this for. They'll be sure to find a new home out of New York City boundaries. As for this pretty little grey one, she'll have her home in the cozy lab. Let's go please our boss," the one addressed as Justin said.

The other humans agreed, and they packed up their gas guns and extra suits and other equipment. They hauled it into a big white truck. And they took Stormcloud too.