Tag: animals

throes-of-redemption:

afishhook-anopeneye:

my name is cow
and wen she sits
benethe the stall
withe tiny kit

I hav no hands
withe which to pat
I use mye tung
I lik the cat

my name is cat
and with tha kit
In front of stall
we lyk to sit

I feel her tongue
I say meow
I have a fren
Her name is cow

Source: fluffytherapy

Nobody knows when it began.

Some say it was a Monday morning, but it could have been a Tuesday, a Sunday or anything in between. It’s hard to even remember the season – was there snow? Had the trees lost their leaves yet? Were other cats squeaking when their paws touched the concrete because the sun was burning down with too many degrees and no mercy? 

It could have been years ago, or centuries.

All the people of the small town know is this:

The cat doesn’t move.

And it doesn’t seem to eat, either. They’re not even sure if it’s a she or a he. (Some whisper it’s neither. A kid told his friend in school, during break. His friend said that’s stupid, but her eyes were a little watery and very wide.)

When it rains, the cat nuzzles flat into the ground.

When the sun shines, its nose lifts into the air, eyes blinking, fur uncoiling in little happy motions.

When the heavy blizzards come, nobody can see it. Every year, they think: This is it. There’s no way this tiny thing survived. Children don’t go to school, adults don’t even need to call into work because snow rules the world and the sky spits ice into the streets and lakes. 

As soon as winter leaves, the people go out looking.

The cat is still there. Its eyes are soft half-moon smiles. Someone always leaves food. It goes untouched, and somehow, not even the crows or seagulls dare come close to pick it up.

Everyone hears when it begins.

From one second to another, the sky is gone. There is no light. The universe yawns in horrible silence above their heads. Impossible, the people whisper as they stare where the stars should be and only infinite darkness grins back. 

The earth cracks. A sound emerges from it, loud and distorted and a million noises screeching at once. The people of the little town are running.

The cat sits next to the hole in the ground. Something is next to it, a terrible shadow, eyes coal-glowing-red, a claw around the cat’s neck. It looks at the people, half-moon happiness now despair, as if to say: I did all I could.

And the people realize (too late), and they beg (too little), and they shiver when the shadow moves toward them.

The cat doesn’t cry. It can’t. But it sits and looks at them with sad full-moon pupils, as if to say: I’m sorry for not being stronger. 

Source: catflare

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.