Before We Knew It

• Annabelle Hudson, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2019

I could hear him thundering down the stairs engulfed by his own rage. The gramophone internal voice blared on in the background. I had not been fed today or the day before. My biggest desire at that moment was food. My mouth was barren and my throat felt the flame of thirst. Every once in a while, I try to escape from this hell but my route was blocked by trapping bars. My plan was to jump from the window since cats are supposed to land on their feet. My favourite human was a girl I believed to be named Kate. She would spend her hours playing with me with her little piece of string. I feel that she cared about me although her father did not feel the same. My life went around in that pattern for a while before one eventful day. Kate and her string were playing with me when the front door slammed shut. The rickety floorboards creaked with his weight. The door jerked without warning. Kate was frantically trying to scoot herself under the bed.
“Come out here you brat” slurred Kate’s father. “I know you’re in there.”
His voice could be mistaken as an ogre without proper information of his true identity.
The floorboards creaked as Kate’s father stepped back from the door. Kate tried to grab me by the scruff and hide me too before her father’s drunken mind finally came to a realisation that the door was locked.
‘He is going to try to knock the door down’ I thought to myself urgently. If only Kate could understand me. Suddenly the room filled with a dozen or so footsteps as men’s voices filled the room. All their voices made the once silent lounge room a jumble of voices a bit like a fruit salad. The room filled with untranslatable words. The only sentence I managed to decipher was “You’re under arrest!”
After that day Kate was taken away from me. Just the same as Kate’s father was taken away from Kate. I am lonely now and my once shimmering ginger coat is ragged and torn. I live silently among many others. Each animal longs for something long different. Me? I long for Kate and her string more than anything. I long for Kate to be safe more than anything in the world, away from the clutches of her demonic father. I stayed in that cage for what seemed like years. On the fortieth day two humans came to my cage door and scooped me out of my bed. They take me to a room that smelled of rubbing alcohol. Then the woman put a plastic cup over my nose and mouth. It felt as if an invisible hand was on my eyelids forcing them shut. No matter what I did I couldn’t stop myself from falling asleep. I felt a jab in my paw. Then I saw beyond the black of my closed eye.