The Chronicals of Alaraf

The old man tried to lock the calico in his tuna drawer again so he was back hiding with his fluffy gray friend in the back of the library again.

      “Haha,” said the human beings, “They are grooming each other”

       …and the cats simply sneered at you in feline contempt as they studiously removed all traces of human filth from their soft & brilliant furs.

     A beautiful orange and white cat snuck in as well, he was also escaping the dreaded tuna drawer.  This was a drawer in a college office where cats were kept in secret and fed tuna only in the dark.

       The long-haired gray cat had terrible time there.  The new orange and white cat had a terrible time there.  The orange and white cat lived in rotation between catching rats at the auditorium, sleeping in the chapel, or getting treated like a normal housecat in the Chaplains’ office.  Orange cat was also very loud and lanky like an abyssinian, but was actually fully Irish Manx and so Lynxy he was often used to simulate bigger cats in plays.

       So.  He hid all the time now, as much as possible, knowing if human beings caught him they would put his tufted ears into an itchy hat and tangle his fur in stupid velcro dressing him like a lion or an angel or a genie or whatever the play demands.

      ….or, if old man tuna drawer catches him, he could be locked in a desk drawer between classes and overnights with a kleenex box half filled with tidycat and one to three cans of tunafish.

       So here was orange and white cat- he has bright blue eyes and is very clever, mostly preferring to sit in high places and Watch humans rather than be pet by them.  Then, as soon as it was noticed how pretty his fur and how passive his nature, that is truly when his life started to suck.

       Orange cat, we call him “Muezza”, was insecure.  He did not know if he would be welcome as the old man yelled outside that he “was the number one expert in catology” and “that no other human loved him more”

     The little calico said to cat colored the same as an orange dreamsicle “Is the human yelling for me or you?  I just barely escaped the tuna drawer.  My Friend taught me how to stay safe.”

       “CAN you Teach me?” asked the orange cat.

         …and the calico tackled him while purring, wrestled him to the ground, despite being much smaller, and said:

       “We ignore human beings and only eat what is safe and not a trap from them.  We do not trust their collars.  When they try to trap us, escape. Share food and warmth with other cats, and let us pick all the crunched leaves and old tuna out of your furs- we don’t care you are prettier than we are- it’s just that incense, oud & old crusty tuna smell really weird together.

      And when the human beings yelled outside, orange and white cat either yelled back louder, hid his ears under a ripped blanket, or the calico would wrap himself so thoroughly around his head he couldn’t hear the humans outside anyway as the gray long haired kitty remained perfectly content & unaffected no matter what any human said at all.