Rufous the Cat

My usual daily routine is this: Sleep, eat, sleep, wander around, sleep, find someone to pet me, sleep some more. Maybe eat a few extra times. Depends on the day. Basically, I don't do much. I haven't had to do anything different since they brought me to their Big Box when I was a newborn. I was living in the Outside before. That was a bad time... but now I don't have to think about it.

The one that found me smelled like Clean. Just Clean. The Big Box smelled like the Lady did. There was also a Little One who smelled different and kept rubbing my fur. It felt nice, and my throat started to... make this weird vibrating noise. They liked that so I kept doing it. I liked living in this Big Box. One day there was another Little One that came. I already knew there was a Man; he smelled like the dumpsters I used to eat out of. But the Little One was evil. She would make this awful noise, and pull my tail and ears and hurt me. Whenever someone hurt me I hissed, or scratched. That made me feel better.

I liked to jump on the big fluffy thing (there are so many of them, in almost every room. it's great!) and lay down there.

The little ones got bigger, and nicer too. I learned that when they wanted to pet me or feed me they would say Roofaas or something. Roofis? Rooface? Sometimes they call me Poofiss. Or Poufous (they laugh whenever they call me that. I don't think it's funny). I eventually started looking over whenever they said anything. I still do that now and it seems to work.

My favourite was always the first Little One; she filled my food bowl with those tasty brown things. If I followed her around, she would pet me.

But now she's gone. She put most of her things in boxes and took them away. She left me and now only comes home for a few days at a time, and not often. I miss her a lot. She smells like my mom, but also different. Her smell is gone from the house now. Some days I can't remember what she smells like.

The other Little One, the one that used to pull my tail and ears, is the one that fills my bowl now.

I've started to call the Lady my mom because she's the closest I've had to one. She acts the way I imagine a mom would; she pets me the way I like, she takes care of me, she gives me food (sometimes if I follow her a lot she gives me more). The only thing she doesn't let me do is enter the forbidden Little Box, where she goes during the Dark. She only ever moves the wall to go inside, then closes it behind her. I've only been there a few times. There is this big fluffy thing in the middle that sometimes I would jump on and sometimes I would crawl under. There isn't anything else interesting in the Box. Every time my mom finds me in there she carries me out (that hurts my belly) and doesn't pet me for a little while.

Sometimes the Man makes this noise with his big paws and makes me get off the big soft fluffy thing.

The Man is scary sometimes.

***

Living in the Big Box is different now. It's been 17 person-years, so I'm 84 now. I feel different. I don't like those bumpy floors. They take me higher and lower in the Big Box. It's hard to go up; it hurts my legs. Sometimes I think they forget to put food in my bowl. There's that brown stuff, but it doesn't smell good anymore, so I don't eat it. Sometimes I try to jump on the fluffy thing I know I'm not allowed to sleep on, and my mom doesn't tell me to get down. Even the Man doesn't scare me with his paws.

Sometimes I think there's a new fluffy thing in the Big Box, but then it's just the Man on top of the soft thing. He is bigger now, so I lay on him. The Man is warm.

Now all I do is sleep on the fluffy things for the whole day. Sometimes I eat, but I'm not hungry. Sometimes I hurt all over and I don't know why. Sometimes I can't breathe properly.