Random Short Stories

Mother Tigress [💧]

Footsteps disturbed the massive creature from her slumber within the confines of her glass-walled enclosure. The magnificent striped beast twitched, and slowly drew her head up.

Sirex, the Siberian tiger.

Her dim light of her narrowed green eyes softened when she saw the familiar humans approach her enclosure; welcome guests, the three of them.

Slowly heaving herself to her massive paws, the large feline stretched her jaws open into a mighty yawn. Impressive three-inch fangs glinted in the overhead lights above, catching the lights that shone off them.

Slowly making her way towards the glass panel separating her from her caretakers, Sirex was sure to stretch her limbs as she walked.

Her pelt was a thing of sheer glory and beauty, with fur like golden flames licking the sun and an underbelly glistening white like snow, overlapped with stripes blacker than the darkest nights arranged in the unique pattern of all tigers.

Her claws were impressive too; long, sharp and pitch black, though some of them had clearly seen better days.

She winced particularly as she put a little too much pressure on her left paw; two claws there had been broken prior to her arrival to the animal sanctuary.

Oh, she remembered that day all too clearly.

Some humans had set out a snare in her usual hunting path; she suspected they had been watching her for a while and she had clearly never known.

The tigress had been teaching her two young cubs, a male called Terje and a female called Calliope how to hunt, and the snare had caught her when she had least suspected it.

With a sigh, Sirex recalled her distress when Terje and Calliope refused to leave her despite her roaring at them to run and continuously tried to free her from the trap.

That had resulted in disaster; Calliope and Terje had been shot with sedation darts and had fallen unconscious by the wicked creatures who had caught her, and despite her roaring her defiance they had shot her as well.

Sirex remembered the ghastly conditions she and her babies had been kept in when they rose to consciousness once again; all in minuscule cages with rust forming streaks on the bars, twisted wires everywhere and the scent of sickness and decay drifting about the still, dead air.

There were other animals there too, but many she had never seen before in the forested mountains. Upon speaking with a creature called a sea lion, Arvid, she had realised they were being taken away from their homes to a place called a circus.

Sirex wistfully recalled her cubs whimpering their fears to her and her desperate attempts to try and comfort them; all had ended in failure as they seemed more fearful by the day.

Months passed; the animals in the cages were transported to different places via an iron bird the humans called a plane and when they were on the ground, they were stuck in the back of a rusty lorry.

The humans showed no signs of stopping until their sick collection was done; Arvid had told Sirex that the humans wanted to start and exotic beasts circus for entertainment and to earn big bucks, whatever that meant.

The reason they never unloaded the animals at one place before heading to another was simple. They were afraid the authorities would catch on, and all of their work would all be undone.

As a result, all the poor animals were doomed to follow their captors around wherever they went.

It was evident despite the animals captured being considered exotic and rare, the humans cared very little for their lives and instead only thought of money, as Sirex and the other animals found themselves malnourished and starved.