In Life, Comes Death

My name is Ayla...

I have lived a rather odd life, different from all the other cats in the world. Better than a stray cat's and luckier than a cat who has had a master all it's life. I have lived out in the streets since I was a very young kitten full of life. I remember always hearing my mother tell me that humans are nothing but trouble, they will come for you and take everything away from you, even your life. Don't trust a human, she'd always tell my siblings and I, we were taught to fear all of mankind because of the past she had, being taught the same things that we were.

As I got older the days began getting tougher and tougher for us; my siblings, mother and I were separated from each other. The cat kidnappers came into our neck of the woods and found us. Everyone scattered among the yard of the abandoned home where I was born at, under the porch. Those kidnappers didn't get my siblings and I, but they did manage to capture mother. They thought that they could lure us towards them if they caught mother, although my siblings fell for the trick, I stayed under the home and managed to make it out alive. At first I was excited to finally be on my own, without someone to boss me around or to push me away. But that wasn't until I started getting hungry.

Now with an empty stomach and no one to play with whenever I got board, I was now alone. I didn't feel excited, I was without my siblings to push around when they were doing it to me. I left that home where I was born at, there were too many memories of my family that were left there. It was like they were still there mocking me, bossing me, pushing me around, and reminding me that I was now alone making me think, What if I fell for that human's trick and followed mother? Would I still be with them?

With all that mother taught me in the short amount of time that we were together, I left that home and survived in the harsh world that is super dangerous for a young kitten. But I was lucky to find a partner, a female with the name of Kiki. She and I were an inseparable pair... she and I took on the world like it was nothing. We hunted for food together, stole out of trash cans, stayed away from the cat kidnappers and we kept each other warm during the cold months of the year. Sometimes I would stare into windows of the humans homes, that was as close as I wanted to get to them. I would look inside and see them with the fire going and everyone sitting there laughing with each other holding cups of a hot liquid. Sometimes those homes would have a cat laying with them being warmed by the fire.

I would stare into that window and think, Gosh, if only I was in that home like that cat. I would be warm by the fire like him or her and not be so cold. But I have to trust mother's philosophy... Kiki would always snap me back into my mind and we would continue. She became like my mother figure for the rest of the years that I needed a mother. Kiki was amazing... she told me stories about herself like she used to have a small litter of her own to care for, but one day she came back to the birth den where she had left them, and they were gone. One of them was dead and the others were gone without a trace. The only thing that came to my mind was that the cat kidnappers captured her kittens and took them to the place that she called The Unknown.

She would tell me that The Unknown is a place where all kinds of animals would go when they were captured by the cat kidnappers and would never come back, never to be heard from again. One day her and I walked by that place called The Unknown, it smelled like death... hopelessness... and fear. I was frightened of the place, it was most likely where my family has gone, with a place smelling like that, they probably didn't make it and ended up dead. I swore to myself that day that I would never end up in that place, I didn't want to die.