Chapter 1OrangeTabby POV 🐈
OrangeTabby POV 🐈
Okay. Maybe I'll write.
Don't expect Shakespeare. Actually don't expect anything. My grammar is held together by duct tape and emotional damage.
Read it. Don't read it. IDC.
...
Once upon a time...
There was a stray cat.
Me.
Yeah. I know. Lame opening. Shut up.
I don't remember where I was born.
People always ask where someone comes from, as if every life begins with a place that matters. Mine didn't. If I ever had a home, it disappeared long before I was old enough to remember it. The only thing that stayed with me was the rain. Endless rain. It soaked into my fur until I couldn't tell whether I was cold because of the weather or because the world itself had decided warmth wasn't meant for creatures like me.
The sidewalks became my bedroom, my dining table, and sometimes my battlefield. Every morning began the same way—with an empty stomach twisting so hard it felt like something inside me was chewing on itself. I wandered from alley to alley following the smell of food that was never meant for me. Restaurants chased me away with brooms. Shopkeepers clapped their hands to scare me off. Even the pigeons seemed better fed than I was, and I hated pigeons with every ounce of my tiny orange soul.
People passed me every day.
Some glanced down for a heartbeat before continuing on with their lives. Others never looked at all, stepping around me as though I were just another puddle left behind by yesterday's storm. After a while, I stopped trying to meow at strangers. It was exhausting asking to be noticed. Being invisible hurt less when you pretended you preferred it that way.
Eventually, survival became routine.Wake up.Figure out whether my stomach or the rain was more unbearable today.Search for scraps.Get chased away.Find somewhere that wasn't completely flooded to sleep.Repeat tomorrow.
Honestly? Zero stars. Would not recommend.The strangest part wasn't the hunger.It wasn't the cold.It wasn't even the loneliness.It was how color slowly disappeared from the world.
The sky was always gray. Buildings blurred into one another. Faces became impossible to remember. Every day looked so much like the last that time stopped meaning anything. I wasn't living from one adventure to the next.
I was simply surviving until the next sunrise.
And if someone had asked me back then what I wanted most, I don't think I would've said food.I would've said..."I just wish someone would look at me."
Not through me. Not around me.Just...at me.Because sometimes, the difference between a stray and someone's beloved companion isn't luck.It's the one person who finally decides to stop walking past.
10/10 lifestyle. Would not recommend.Everything was gray.Not literally.Just...Have you ever looked at the world and felt like someone turned the saturation all the way down?
That was when everything changed.
Or maybe...
everything had already changed long before I realized it.
It happened on an ordinary night.
The kind of night that swallowed every sound except the rain.
I had spent the entire day wandering through unfamiliar streets, hoping luck might finally remember my name. It didn't. The fish market had already closed. The bakery owner had chased me away with a broom. Someone had even thrown a shoe at me.
Not the pair.
Just one.
Honestly...
rude.
By then my paws hurt, my stomach felt painfully hollow, and my fur was so soaked it clung to my body like a second layer of misery. I wasn't looking for food anymore.
I was just looking for somewhere dry enough to wait for morning.
Then...
I saw it.
At the end of a narrow alley where no building should have stood, there was an inn.
A real inn.
Or...
at least it looked like one.
Its windows glowed with a warm amber light that spilled across the rain-soaked stones like melted honey. Against the endless gray of the city, it looked impossibly bright, as though someone had stolen a piece of sunset and hidden it behind old wooden walls.
I stopped walking. No .I froze. Because...I was almost certain that alley had been empty yesterday. Maybe I was hallucinating. Hunger does weird things. The smell reached me next. Fresh bread. Black tea. Old paper. Firewood.
The scent of books that had been read so many times their pages remembered every hand that had ever turned them.It was warm.Not just physically.Warm in a way that made something deep inside my chest ache.
Who the hell makes a place smell like safety?That felt illegal.Definitely suspicious.Every instinct I had screamed at me to leave.Nothing that beautiful came without a price.every time something had looked promising before, it had ended with shouting, kicked ribs, or another broom aimed directly at my face.
So naturally...I prepared to run.One more step, I told myself.Just one more step backward.Pretend you never saw this place.Pretend warm lights don't exist.Pretend you're perfectly happy being a wet little trash goblin surviving on questionable leftovers.
...
My paws refused to move.Instead, I kept staring at the windows.Somewhere inside, a fire crackled softly.Someone laughed.A kettle whistled.For the first time in what felt like forever...the world didn't seem quite so gray.Humans usually wanted one of three things.To ignore me.To kick me.Or to tell me I wasn't allowed to exist where they could see me.
Then the door opened.An old man stepped outside.Long robe.Messy beard.Definitely looked like he knew at least seventeen forbidden spells.He looked at me.Not through me.At me.
"...Hello, little fellow."
...
BRO.
WHO SAYS THAT??
I was literally dripping muddy water all over his front steps.I looked like I'd lost a fight with life itself. And THIS MAN...picked me up.WITHOUT HESITATING.Sir.Have you considered germs??
He carried me inside like I weighed nothing.Didn't complain when I soaked his robes.Didn't even flinch when my tiny panic claws accidentally became slightly attempted murder.
Instead...he laughed.Actually laughed.Then he set down a little bowl of warm milk beside the fireplace.Not outside.Inside.Beside the warmest spot in the whole inn.
...
I stared at it for like...five minutes.Because...nothing free had ever happened to me before.Humans always wanted something.There had to be a catch.There wasn't.After that...came the bath.
Listen.I KNOW.Cats hate baths.I hated baths.I screamed.I filed complaints.I considered legal action.He apologized every thirty seconds while washing mud out of my fur.When he finished...he wrapped me in the fluffiest towel known to mankind.
...
Illegal.Absolutely illegal levels of comfort.Then...he sat in the old chair beside the fire.Opened a book.Lifted me into his lap.And started reading.Not because I could understand the words.Just because...he thought no one should fall asleep in silence.
...
That was the first night...I slept without wondering if I'd wake up.And somewhere between one page...and the next...I made the most serious promise an orange cat has ever made
One day...I will repay this old wizard.Somehow.Some way.Even if it kills me.
...
Granted...my current contribution is mostly screaming about missing chapters and committing minor acts of emotional blackmail.
But still.
I'm trying. 😤🐈
