Forbidden Shadows, Chapter Six

Stormcloud, Bluejay and the rest of the cats stared at tall men in all white suits with gas masks. They had guns meant for spraying deadly gas.

"Everycat, scramble! They can't get us if we're all separate!" Bluejay meowed.

Snowtuft, a white Persian cat, attempted to do just that. She tried to dash through one of the men's legs. But waiting behind the long man's legs was a cage, and Snowtuft was trapped as one of the man snapped shut the cage's door. The man, as if to demonstrate what he would do to the rest of the strays, pushed the very tip of the gas gun inside the closed cage and pulled a tiny trigger. The cat was surrounded instantly in a fluffy gas cloud.

Inside the cage, Snowtuft held her breath as long as she could. But soon her lungs clenched tight inside her, begging her to breath. One breath will not hurt too much, just one small breath, the white fluffy cat thought silently. She took a tiny breath. As soon as the gas reached her lungs, its deadly poison spread in her body and she fell to her side, never to see her companions again.

As the gas cleared, the cats were astonished yet not astonished to see Snowtuft lying lifeless on the ground of the cage.

The ten or so men turned to the rest of the cats, who knew now that there was no way to escape the shed. They were cornered, trapped.

Suneyes glared at one of the men with her yellow and menacing eyes. She extended her claws and dug into the solid ground of the cage with anger. Snowtuft had been her best friend. And Suneyes, who was known to have a short temper, was about to explode with fury.

Instead of attempting to escape, the she-stray flung herself into certain death. The bright-eyed tabby cat launched into the air, landing right on top of one of the men's faces. He tried to get her off, but Suneyes had a good grip into his skin with her claws. This was the perfect distraction for the rest of the cats, for the other men tried to pry the tabby off of their companion's face instead of stopping the rest of the cats. The strays all saw their moves and dashed out of the cramped shed.

Just as the shed emptied of city strays, Suneyes was finally wrenched off of the human's face. She was thrown into a cage. The same process began that had happened to Snowtuft, and Suneyes died an unfair death as well.

These men were evil, and every one of those cats knew it.

Since Suneyes had been dealt with, the lot of ten men grabbed their gas guns and cages, ready to end the short lives of every cat. The kittens were terrified, and the youngest ones who could walk had to be carried by their mothers, for they froze in fear. Without help, they would be prey to the cat exterminators.

Stormcloud felt her temper stand on edge, boiling with anger. But she knew, thankfully, that this was no time for foolish actions. Suneyes had distracted the exterminators successfully. But while doing so, the tabby orange cat had ended her own life stupidly. Stormcloud knew that the sacrifice of this one cat had meant a lot, but sadly it had had a cost. Suneyes was gone.

Meanwhile, Bluejay's thoughts raced in circles in his head just like Stormcloud's thoughts. As the cats ran around by the men's feet, trying to run from the death that was calling, Bluejay thought about everything they could have done to prevent, or at least predict, the men's arrival at the abandoned farmhouse. He found millions of things the cats could have done better to avoid being found, but sadly he could not go back in time to make sure everycat did everything correctly.

As one of the kittens, a silver kitten named Moonpaw, was scrambling away from a human's gloved hands, he saw something that terrified him to a halt. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" he screeched.

The rest of the cats glanced up. They stopped in horror as well. Their two omen-granted leaders, the only ones who knew where to go, were being held captives in the hands of the gas-wielding men.