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First, it was the great warriors.

We shot bullets into their fur and wore their teeth as trophies. We stripped them off their pelts, lives, their dignity lost long before the blood stilled in their veins. We painted them as monsters, and the few that called them great, apex, a necessary and beautiful part of our world, had their voices silenced. We forgot their names, forgot what tigers, bears, foxes, lions, wolves or cats were.

So first, the warriors were killed, and we didn’t hear how the wind got louder.

Second, it was the mighty watchers.

We pushed harpoons into their scales and ate their fins. We caught them in nets and dragged them into their suffocation, their eyes fading after our knives got them. We went into their world, took the colour of their coral homes and roared them blame on them when they lashed out, desperate from the pain. We don’t remember their names, don’t remember shark, whale, seal, ray, octopus or reef.

So second, the watchers were killed, and we didn’t hear how the ocean floor cracked open.

And then, it was the tiniest wanderers.

Those we did not hunt. They were small, almost invisible to us, and we were too grand and magnificent to care. We took their flowers, their ponds, ripped out their beloved forests and ate and shattered and wiped out. We found thrill in submitting warriors and watchers to us, but wanderers were too unimportant, too ugly to even look at. And we did not even notice, did not look for frog, spider, fish, mouse, bird or insect.

So then, the wanderers died, and now we heard how the ground howled beneath our feet.

We tried.

I promise you, we tried. We sacrificed and cried and brought everyone together to fix it, mend it, do something. Do anything.

The wind screamed our names. Ocean and earth whispered for our blood.

If we’d been able to keep the final, the last, the crucial wanderers alive, then maybe the barriers would have held up. Maybe, if their last swarm had not died along with its queen in an expensive lab, then we would have lived.

We should have known that the warriors weren’t our prey, but our world’s attack against the ancient. Should have known that watchers weren’t a burden but our planet’s defense.

Should have known that the ignored insects, the annoying critters, and the last wanderers that we once simply called honey bees, weren’t our servants but our only survival.

So, we failed. And when the wind and its heat, the sea and its waves, and the earth and its hunger came to swallow us, we closed our eyes and heard.

“I’ve caught one,” the fisherman screams, grinning at his hook stuck in the girl’s cheek. “I caught myself a mermaid!”

Her hair is green, algae curled around it. The fisherman’s grip is greed, is lust, when he rips at it to get her closer. Her mouth glints like a pearl and oh, he could sell her after he’s – well, once he’s done with that beauty of hers. “Aren’t you a pretty one,” he licks his lips, “and all mine. I caught you, so you’re mine.”

All at once, her song ends. No sound comes out of her mouth that stays open, teeth tiny and many, sharp in the slick night. She tugs the hook out of her cheek. The fisherman watches, his heart burning from how fast it runs against his flesh, as her wound closes up and a bit of blood drips from her little mouth.

“Yours,” the mermaid says. The sea echoes her voice, an accent he can’t define, oh who cares, she’s just – just prey – and her pupils snap into slits. “Yours?”

The ocean ripples.

The waves tremble.

The wind whispers, smiles, then stills to not disturb the song that rises once more.
“No,” whisper a thousand voices, whisper a million teeth, whispers ten thousands of stares in the water. “We caught you. You are ours.”

People often misunderstand what the old saying about a cat having nine lives means. The cats prefer to keep it a secret, as most humans can’t be trusted with information so fragile and precious, but there are exceptions.

The merchant who shares his leftover fish. The young girl that hides littler after litter of newborn ones in her room until they find new homes. The old man with scars who still has enough kindness to open his shed to let them slip in from the rain. Boys, teenagers, mothers, warriors, brothers – some are trusted.

Exceptions, yes, few nowadays and rare, but honoured all the more.

So nine lives there are indeed. Each cat is born with them and no matter the time or place, they are lost easily.

This is where the story ends for most people.

But for those who are trusted, those who wake up one morning and find a weird taste in their mouth, the scent of a forest never touched by human hands in their nose, and a strange lingering touch of whiskers on their forehead – they know the truth.

Nine lives for this world, is what all our legends used to say.

You, friend of cats, know the ancient, almost forgotten sayings.

You know of cat eyes shining in the deepest night when they shouldn’t be able to. You know of cats staring past your ear, at that forbidden spot right by the frayed corner of your vision, and you fear that if you look, your cat won’t be able to stare it into submission anymore. You don’t look. The cat purrs. You’re safe.

The kittens have all their lives still. They do not look at the edgewalking beasts that whisper through their humans’ house. It will take time until they fall, hurt, learn.

The oldest cats know so much that a touch of their paw will make an entire village shudder. Their quiet voices cast spells. Let them roam. You cannot imagine the things that flee from them as they walk in silence.

Cat friend, you know it in your heart.

You know of the paths they walk that human feet can’t find.

You know of the nights they vanish and return with the scent of blood, earth and salt in their fur, and when your fingers touch their coat, a cold shiver awakes your skin.

Sometimes, they hear things. You don’t know what, but you know enough to let them sit in front of your house or room, paws tucked under, dark stare never leaving an invisible spot in the air.

And when you float between sleep and life, when you’re unlucky enough to claw at the edge of death before you’re ready to go…

Then maybe, friend of cats, you’ll feel a brush of fur along your legs. Maybe, just before you startle with awe in your heart and wake once more, the same pair of eyes that should sleep by your side winks at you from another world.

Humanity’s stupidity may be infinite but here is a little list of traits we have that are also infinite: curiosity, stubbornness (beyond infinite), the potential of kindness as well as cruelty, the ability to learn where we didn’t know or were wrong, and most definitely the ability to achieve something simply because we were told that we couldn’t, so get out of the way, the universe’s most mind-boggling creature is coming to prove you wrong.

“Well, your qualifications look adequate,” the man says slowly. He’s middle-aged, his hair is as grey as his suit, and his mouth sits in an unimpressed line that hasn’t twitched once. The woman with dark eyes next to him hasn’t smiled once, either, and the younger man by his other side hasn’t even looked up at her. He just lazily drags his pencil over his paper.

“But,” the man goes on, dragging the words as if he’s reading them from an instruction manual that constantly deals with defective products, “we’re looking for someone with a unique character. I’m talking inner strength. Would you say that you possess that quality? Would you say that you’ve got enough bite for us?”

She takes a moment to let them wait. Makes sure that her grin appears in a motion of careful, practiced confidence. 

She reaches into her bag.

“I think I do.”

She opens her fingers for them.

She shows them the small, fuzzy, brown kiwi.

She listens gleefully when the middle-aged man chokes on nothing during her first bite.

The woman holds up longer, but even her nails are clawing at the table when a the fruit shrinks with every bite, and fuzzy skin disappears together with green fruit right into her mouth.

“What the hell,” says the young man once she’s finished her kiwi, and when she pulls out another one, he gets up to grab her hand. “You’re hired.”