A Day As My Cat

• Tehmina Shahzad, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2022

I’ve always thought that it was so unfair that animals get to enjoy and live their lives without any chores or rules at all and if they break any rules, they don’t even get into any sort of trouble. Like what type of logic was this? This was until one day after a crazy event happened, my views changed for ever.
One normal day I woke up to get ready for school. I was having breakfast when suddenly Nala, my cat spilled my glass of milk and guess what? I got in trouble for it! My mum said that I was responsible for it as I could have stopped her from spilling the milk and you know what made my day even worse, I had to clean it up! As I was cleaning it, I found a crystal and it looked real pretty, so I took it when no one was watching then I quickly rushed to school.
When I came back from school, I took the crystal to my room and put it inside my drawer and at night I went to sleep not knowing what was to unfold the next day. The next morning as I woke up and went to the toilet, I saw my reflection in the mirror, I was shocked. I was in Nala’s body! “Thank God it was the weekend”, I said to myself. At first, life was great. Having to do nothing at all and being able to do anything I wanted, and Nala had to do all my chores and somehow, she managed to do them. Life was great! Until……. hours past. I felt so lonely not being able to talk to anyone and so hungry, only being able eat cat food which tasted gross.
Hours went by and I really wanted to go back to being myself I was losing my mind I tell yah and that’s when it hit me the crystal! I realised that the crystal that I had found, looked very familiar to me and I figured out what it was. It was the crystal on Nala’s collar and if the crystal transferred my soul into Nala’s body, then it could switch us back, but there was still one problem, I still had to get the crystal from my drawer, but how could I? I then realised that I was in a cat’s body and cats can climb basically anything so I went to my room through the window hoping that nobody would see me, and I jumped on my side table and opened the drawer and got the crystal and touched it and boom! I turned back into myself YES, YES! I said while hugging Nala.
After I turned back into myself, I went to my mum and hugged her so much, more than you can imagine and when she asked me what happened I just said, “mum I realised today that you should always appreciate what you have”.