Black Cat Origins

Chapter one

At six years old, her father leaving all the time for a number of weeks or even months were a common occurence. As she gripped his trouser leg and asked him when he'd be back, he would just smile and tell her ''In two shakes of a cat tail my FeeFee.'' And he would be gone, backpack on his back, briefcase in hand, waving as he opened a taxi door and climbed in. As it drove away, young Felicia gripped her mother's skirts, looking up at her, then the taxi as it came a small spot on the road, then the hill swallowed her father up as the vehicle drove further away from them. From her. 

She was not a nusience to her mother, she sat and played with her dolls like any normal girl, watching the time tick down till 'Two shakes of a cat's tail' became daddy being home. And everytime he returned, he brought back small gifts from his journey, dolls for her, or a small teddy, to add to her ever growing collection of toys, and some form of jewllery for her mother, and a bouquet of flowers. And that was how it was. She didn't fully understand why her father had to go all the time, why couldn't he stay here with her and mommy? Occasionally she would enter the room and her mother looked angry, and her father also, but they would be silent about the heated conversation they had had, just showering her in attention and affection. She was not a dumb girl, she knew something was going on, yet he held her tongue from asking, thinking if they needed to tell her something, they would say. Parents told thier children everything, right?

As the years past, and Felicia became the young middle school student thast would make both her parent's proud, straight As and enjoying the extra curricular activies her mother wanted to to do, gymnastics, and cheerleading, she found herself becoming increasingly aware more of her father not being here, when most children in her high school had both thier parents, or had divorced, and even had step parents, Felcia wondered more and more where her father went, and started to voice those concerns with her mother, who dismissed them with a mere ''He works in antiques, so he has to go away a lot.'' Which resulted in very het up arguments as she accused her mother of hiding things from her, and then a very big SLAM of the door as Felicia left the room and hid in her room to sulk at her mother's lack of explainations of her father's disapperence. When he returned, she would run to him, as she had as a child, giving that huge father-daughter hug that only could be shared by the pair, and started nattering on about whatever she had been doing in school. Being picked for the gymnastics team, what grades she had for what subject, things that every parent wanted to hear from thier child. The encoragements from her father to keep going, to keep up with those grades, that he was proud of her, kept fluttering into the conversations they had, and Felicia reveled in her father's compliments, even though her mother always demanded the straight A's she wasn't sure she could acheive. And so, her father never recieved the arguments that she shared with her mother, finding her father to be far too placid to have a good argument with, and being able to dismiss any anger within Felicia helped too.