Chapter Six -- But Enough About Finn.....

When I was last a player in this story I had just been scooped up by Finn and carried into the house. Actually the garage is as far as I got and the door made a heck of a noise when he pushed the button that closed it.

Now no one had mentioned food but I was assuming that was part of the reason I got to come in. That being the case I felt my prospects dim when I was put down on the floor.

"You can stay here until I decide what to do next," and with that he closed the door in my face. I guess being "a piece of work" didn't get one beyond the garage.

From the other side of the door I heard water running and then some clicking noises and finally some buzzing. Then I heard some activity in the kitchen but even better I smelled some activity in the kitchen. The door finally opened and Finn came back with a plate.

"OK shrimptoast, here's your dinner," and he put down a plate that smelled like what I'm surer heaven smelled like. Apparently he had consulted some guy named Google and determined I could have a little tuna, a lot of tuna oil mixed with some milk that had been watered down. Google knew his stuff. If I had a hand I would have wanted to shake his.

I consumed everything on the plate, all the time fighting not to faint from rapture. I had never had food presented in such a manner and it took me some time to realize I wasn't getting jostled by my siblings as we competed for the next bite. I was happily oblivious to everything going on that was not within the confine of that plate.

Which accounts for the fact that while I ate he had put some loose dirt in a box and set it down 10 feet to the right of me and place a folded old towel about 10 feet away to the left. When I was through licking that plate clean he picked me up and placed me in on the dirt.

"If you know what's good for you you'll use this," he said before scooping me up and placing me on the towel. "And you sleep here."

And with that he turned off the lights and went back into the house. No final comforting words and still no invitation into the house. So much for hospitality.

For the record I did know what the box was for. 

I wanted to look around the garage, which smelled a lot like the shed, but the only light I was getting was coming under the door to the kitchen and it wasn't much. And besides my legs were getting wobbly from the meal, demanding I lay down, so I swandered over to the towel and basically  face-planted on to it.

As I laid there drifting off into milky tuna coma I thought about the day. I started as a member of a family and now I was on my own in the world. At least the world inside this garage.

I kept thinking I should be scared but I wasn't.  I was, however, wondering where mothercat was. Why had she left me in that bucket? Why was I the one plucked off that jumble of kittens first? Did they miss me? Did they know where I was?

What I wish I'd known at the time was mothercat was asking the same sort of questions. She was spending the night in a large box with four of her five kids. That night after the house she was in got quiet she laid awake a long time and wondered how her middle child was doing. Every move she had made until then had been so right. But this one went wrong.

Like I said earlier, in time memories of her and my siblings would fade. But as I slid into a night's sleep and was still for the first time all day somewhere deep inside something began to hurt.