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Part of Fuega Fuega. The prologue is based on the first paragraph of The Odyssey, and the title comes from the title of (what else?) an album by the band Muse, and makes reference to Skull's eyes (which are like black holes) and the revelation at the end of the chapter.
Prologue[]
Sing to me of the cat, Muse, the cat of twists and turns, driven time and time again off course, once she had escaped from a life she no longer wanted to live. Many cities of men she saw and learned their minds, many pains she suffered, trying to survive on the streets, fighting to save her life and find a home.
Black Holes[]
Carly’s sire was a giant of a cat, tall with the glossy cream fur. Out of all the Siamese cats that lived on the property, this tom was the prize of his housefolk. He had sired many best-in-show cats and had made his housefolk’s reputation strong.
Carly’s dam was also a prized cat, her lithe build and clear blue eyes the very definition of a Siamese. A whole wall in her housefolk’s home was covered in blue ribbons that she had won for him. But she was not happy living a champion’s life. Her name was Muse.
It was not Muse’s housefolk that decided when her last show would be. She decided herself. After one show where she was especially poked and prodded and handled by the judges, and after she was bred to the tom that lived with another breeder, she decided she had had enough. One night, she escaped from her cage and into the part of town where humans sold food from faraway lands and other strange things. She was not prepared for the hardships and dangers a cat must face on the streets, let alone a pregnant cat who has been pampered her whole life.
Muse managed to live a few days on her own by the market, feasting on scraps and finding shelter under some of the stands. But the humans would chase her with their brooms, and she quickly grew hungry, not used to feeding on a few morsels of food a day.
Then, one day, she met another cat hiding around the marketplace. He had matted white fur and black, expressionless eyes. He had managed to steal half of a roasted chicken, and he asked if Muse wanted to share it with him. If she were still a housecat, she would have agreed with no hesitation, but she was more cautious now. Nevertheless, her hunger was clear by her visible ribs, and she reluctantly agreed to share the food with this cat.
“What is your name?” asked the white cat, politely swallowing his food before talking.
“Muse,” murmured the she-cat. “And yours?”
“I have none,” he replied. “My mother never named me, and I’ve lived on the streets with no name ever since.”
“How did you manage to steal this chicken?”
“My friends helped me out.”
“Your friends?”
“I have a group of cats who follow me. They are all very streetwise and know just when the Twolegs aren’t looking. We live like kings. I’ve noticed you around here and I asked them to help me get some food for you. I can see quite clearly that you’re expecting kits, and that you were originally a housecat. It’s clear you need some help around here. I was wondering if you wanted to join us.”
“Thank you for your hospitality, but I think I can manage on my own,” mewed Muse. As charming as this cat was, something about his dark, soulless eyes put her on edge.
“Don’t worry, we will all treat you with respect,” assured the white cat. “If there is a cat who doesn’t, they will have to go through me. We are very friendly to each other; some of the cats happen to be my own kits.”
“Well… I guess it wouldn’t hurt to meet your friends…”
As soon as they were finished eating the chicken, the unnamed cat led Muse out of the marketplace and to a small alley a few blocks away. The alley was lined with dumpsters, and several cats were leaping out of the closest one and were gathering around Muse.
“Hello, Father,” greeted the closest cat, a dark gray tabby tom who looked to be about six moons old. “And who is this beautiful she-cat?” he added with a purr, dipping his head in respect.
“This, Snap, is Muse,” replied the nameless tom, playfully bumping his son’s shoulder with his paw. “I offered her a place to stay, and she agreed to look around our humble abode.”
“She’s not carrying your kits, is she?” asked a she-cat with ginger fur.
“Peach, I just met her,” the white cat chuckled.
The last cat, a blue-gray she-cat, hopped out of the dumpster with a young kit in her mouth. The kit’s fur was beautiful, with swirls of different shades of gray. And her eyes, which seemed to have just opened, were a fantastic shade of blue.
“What beautiful eyes,” murmured the nameless tom, his dark eyes staring at the kit. “She will be a pretty she-cat when she is older.”
The she-cat set her kitten down. “Since you’re her father, I was thinking that you could name her.”
“Hurricane,” meowed the white tom, almost instantly. “She shall be named Hurricane.”
The other cats yowled in unison, joyful for the name of their leader’s daughter. Muse purred, feeling more at home than she had in a long time.
The unnamed tom and his followers taught the Siamese she-cat all about their group—how they hunted together, ate together, slept together, and were very close-knit. Muse agreed to stay for a night. And then she stayed for the next night. And then the next. Eventually, Muse didn’t even think about leaving the group, and she was happy.
More joy came to her about a half-moon after she joined the nameless tom’s group. Her kitten, a healthy she-cat, was born, and the other cats rejoiced. The white cat promised to take care of Muse and her kitten, whom she had named Carly, as though they were his own flesh and blood.
That promise, unfortunately, was broken.
A few days after Carly was born, a group of humans—too old to be kits but too young to be adults—approached the alley. The cats ran into the safety of the dumpster. They could hear the humans making noise outside.
“What are they doing?” the white tom asked Muse, knowing that she could understand human speech.
“It sounds like they’re hitting pots and pans together,” meowed Muse, listening closely. “They’re saying, ‘Come here, kitties. We want to see you. Come here, kitties.’ Do you think we should go out? Maybe they want to help us.”
“Unlikely,” muttered the unnamed tom, sniffing the air. “I don’t smell any food. And I know those Twolegs, they’re not nice. They damage other Twolegs’ monsters and cause all sorts of trouble. But they’ve never bothered us before.”
Eventually, the humans left, and the cats left the dumpster and returned to their normal activities. But the humans returned the next night, at the same time they had the previous night. Once again, the cats hid in the dumpsters, and once again, the humans made a ruckus outside and asked for the cats to come out of their hiding.
The humans returned every night, but they started to do more than just cause a commotion. They slammed into the side of the dumpster, shouting for the cats to show themselves. Sometimes, they would ram into the dumpster so hard that the cats were knocked off balance, the kits wailing in fright.
“What do they want from us?” snarled Peach over the noise.
“I don’t know,” the white tom yowled back. “But whatever they want, don’t leave the dumpst—”
He fell silent, as did the other cats, when they heard the creak of the lid open. A sneering face, a giant hand, and before Muse knew it, the nameless tom hissing and scratching the humans, trying to free himself. The human tightened his grip on the cat’s throat, and the tom gasped.
“G-go,” he choked hoarsely. “R-run away.”
There were screams and cries of alarm as the cats ran for the opening, everyone for themselves. Muse wrapped her body around Carly, shielding her from the many paws of the panicked cats. The Siamese she-cat wasn’t going to leave just yet; she wanted to make sure the white tom was safe.
“Muse, leave!” he yowled, gagging as his breath was cut off once more. In his other hand, the human held up a machine with metal claws and a growling noise.
“He’s going to kill you!” cried Muse. “I won’t leave you!”
“There’s nothing you can do!” growled the unnamed tom. “If you stay here any longer, they’re going to kill you t—AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
The human swiped the machine over the tom’s ears. Blood splattered onto Muse’s fur, but she could only stare in shock as the growling of the machine and the tom’s screech mixed together.
It was only when she saw another hand coming towards her that she grabbed Carly in her jaws and leapt out of the dumpster. Through the dark night, she saw the other cats heading towards another alleyway, but she headed in the opposite direction. She wanted to get away from the pain, from the tom’s screaming, from the noise, from everything.
Revelations[]
“What happened next, Butch?” I asked eagerly. “Tell me!”
“Alright, Fuega kitty, no need to get so excited,” growled the bulldog. “Muse kitty ran with Carly kitty for as long as she could, and they stopped right by an animal shelter. The vets took them in and cared for them for a while. In the end, he accessed that Carly kitty was alright, but Muse kitty never recovered from what she had seen happen to the white tom. She told her story to Carly kitty so she would remember it—Carly kitty was old enough to understand it by then—and then the vet put Muse kitty to sleep.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s when the vet sticks this needle into an animal, and they die peacefully,” explained Butch somberly. “Normally, the vet does that when the animal can’t recover, so it spares them a painful life. I imagine that Muse kitty would have a very hurtful life if they didn’t put her to sleep. Anyways, Carly kitty was adopted by the family that lives a few houses down from us, and they traced her origins back to the purebred Siamese line.”
“But Carly said she was born in the shelter.”
“She normally doesn’t like to tell her story to anyone unless she knows them well. She’s been on Hart Street for more than a year, and she only told me her story recently.”
“So…” I stood up and paced around the dog house. “This makes things make more sense.”
“What do you mean?” asked Butch.
“The white tom was Skull, obviously,” I murmured, continuing to pace. “And those humans must have been the ones to shave his head and cut his ears off. And I guess that’s how he got the name Skull and went insane.”
“Fuega kitty, what are you talking about?”
“Skull must have gotten his followers back eventually, except for Peach. That’s why Hurricane didn’t recognize her when we first met her—Hurricane was only a young kit when Peach was in Skull’s group—and Peach said she hadn’t seen Skull with his injuries. She fled before she could see it happen.”
“Fuega kitty, I’m kind of worried about you right now…”
“Peach must have left the market section of Twolegplace before Skull could round her up, and somewhere in the time before that and when she had me, Vulture, and Ella, she met Peanut and traveled to the sky-high Twolegplace. Or she traveled to the sky-high Twolegplace and THEN met Peanut, living with a human there. Or she met Peanut while she was still in the market section. Oh, this is all so confusing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“But what about those kits that Peach had with Skull that she mentioned to Hurricane about? Didn’t she say Skull ate them or something? Perhaps she somehow knew about Skull’s new reputation and made up that story to gain Hurricane’s respect.”
“You know all these cats?”
“Yes, Butch!” I meowed exasperatedly. “That ginger she-cat, Peach, is my mother. She had me and my siblings, Vulture and Ella, in a crowded part of Twolegplace where the buildings reach as high as the sky. Ella told me this whole crazy story about shimmering cats, and then she left us. And you know that pretty kit named Hurricane? She’s an adult now, rounding up more followers for her father, and she came to us and asked if we wanted to join him. Since Peach knew Skull—but not by name—she agreed to join him. But it turns out that Skull is a complete jerk now, running a whole ‘empire’ of cats, and I decided I had had enough, so I escaped. And that’s how I got here.”
“So…uh…” I could see that Butch was trying to make sense of my story. “Um…okay, I get it. But who’s your father? Skull?”
“No, he most certainly isn’t,” I growled. “My father is a housecat named Peanut. He has tortoiseshell fur and yellow eyes. I’ve never met him, but Peach said that’s what he looks like.”
Butch blinked. “Great hamburgers…Fuega kitty, if that’s really who your father is…I know him. I know Peanut kitty.”