Tevun-Krus #99 - BDO

Me - A Short Story by @AngusEcrivain

 Me

By AngusEcrivain

Cats don't have names, only those assigned to them by their human masters. And the very fact that a) humans had never been masters of the feline species, they only liked to think that was the case, and b) the human race was now extinct, along with a number of other sentient species on the planet, meant that those cats who might have had a moniker assigned to them, never would.

And so it was that a cat, once called Steve but because there were no longer any humans around to refer to him as such, and because like all felines he was a complete and total fucking narcisisst, he simply thought of himself as 'Me', sat upon the window ledge staring out into the night.

Me had been alone in the house for a couple of hours, for it was only a couple of hours prior that the human race had gone extinct. Me didn't really care how or why that extinction had happened, nor did he care much to look into the events that had led to it. He was incredibly happy, however, that not only had the humans gone extinct but it seemed that whatever had done the deed had affected canine species, too.

Me had no real idea how he knew that humanity was no more. Nor did he know how he knew that dogs and their evolutionary counterparts, as well as monkeys and chimpanzees, four hundred and seven species of fish, and killer whales, had gone extinct. He just knew, and that was fine.

Having had enough of staring out of the window, Me hopped down onto the carpet of the living room floor and padded through to the kitchen. A pot of something bubbling merrily away upon the hob caught his attention, and he leapt onto the counter to investigate further.

It does smell good, he thought, though as he was a cat what he actually thought was meow, meow meow.

One thing that human could do was cook.

On the countertop beside the stove was a book, opened to a particular page. Me could not read, because he was a cat. Had he been able to read though, he would've seen that:

softened butter, for greasing200g/7oz self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting100g/3½oz shredded suet1 tbsp caster sugargood pinch salt150ml/5fl oz semi-skimmed milk or water6–7 tbsp raspberry or strawberry jam

was most definitely not the recipe for the delicious-smelling hot-pot that was cooking on the stove, rather it was a recipe for jam roly-poly. But as he was a cat and therefore did not possess the necessary cognitive capacity to read, Me had no idea that was the case. With that being said, it's unlikely he would've cared, even if he did.

Me shook himself and dropped down from the kitchen counter. It was at that point that he heard a faint scrabbling at the door.

A quick inspection of the ground floor of the property, his property now, he supposed, led to the discovery that all of the windows were closed. There was a draft coming from somewhere though, and Me set out to find it. He did so, eventually, and slipped easily out of the bathroom window.

The humans had placed their bathroom on the first floor of the property, and Me had no issue at all dropping a single storey to the ground below where he landed easily on his feet.

It's good to be a cat sometimes, he thought. Actually, it's good to be a cat all of the time.

With no small amount of caution, Me made his way around to the back door of the house, the door through which he had heard that faint scrabbling. He was not a particularly scaredy-cat, if you'll pardon the pun, but the tom cat from three doors down was a piece of shit, and Me had no intention of running into him if he could help it.

Woof, he thought, considering for a moment that had he been able to vocalise such a noise, it would've shit that piece-of-shit tom cat right up.

Before rounding the corner Me stopped for a moment, well several moments, that he might thoroughly clean himself, and then he did indeed round the corner.

He need not have worried about it being the piece-of-shit tom cat from three doors down. Instead, it was a raggedy stray female with whom Me had, on occasion, enjoyed a little extra-curricular fun.

"Meow," he said. "Meow, meow meow. Meow?"

"Meow," she replied. "Meow meow. M-Meow."

"Meow," Me replied, solemnly.

Me and Me, because as mentioned previously cats are narcissistic as fuck, made their way quickly along the street in the direction of the park Me (the female Me) had told Me (the original Me) about. Had Me been thinking clearly, he would no doubt have thought it odd that there were many more cats around than there should have been. Cats had always been a popular pet for humans, of course, but there were hundreds more now than there had been mere hours ago - billions more, worldwide.

Me did not know any of this of course, but it's fair enough to say that if he had known, it's something he would probably have cared about, if only a nominal amount.

Me and Me (the female Me and the original Me) along with every other feline who also, obviously, thought of themselves as 'Me', in the neighbourhood, descended upon the park.

Me had visited the park on occasion. It had proven to be a good hunting ground for squirrel and field mouse. As such, he was certain he would have noticed if there had been a huge obelisk, glowing a vibrant green as it was, in the centre of the park. And as he had not noticed such a thing before, Me had to surmise that it was, indeed, a new addition of some kind.

It's so pretty, he thought, and he voiced that thought to Me. "Meow, Me-ow!"

"Me-ow!" she agreed, wholeheartedly.

Me found that he was drawn to the object, the huge, glowing-green obelisk, and he could see that he was not alone for every single feline in the vicinity was walking towards it, as if they had no control over their movements. That was something to which Me could attest, or at least he would have been able to had he not been so drawn to the object, so obsessed by it.

As he got closer, Me saw that the obelisk featured a narrow archway. It was that he was drawn towards; the archway, or something immediately on the other side of it, that called to him and all of the other cats in the neighbourhood so strongly.

Me could not help it, and so enthralled was he that he would not have wanted to even if he could. Before him feline after feline disappeared through the archway, temporarily silhouetted by the brilliantly bright and vibrant green glow, before they vanished. And Me was next. He did not even think twice, for something about the object was preventing him from doing so.

As he stepped through the archway the vibrant green absorbed him and before he disappeared he was sure that somewhere, right on the edge of his hearing, he heard a canine voice say, "Sit. Good human." Me could not have heard such a thing though, because everyone knew that dogs couldn't talk...