Eight Lives I

062/365

“Everything is right,” the relaxed, withered old feline says. “I think I’m ready.”

With her last bit of strength she strolls to the food bowl and eats a couple of bites. She heads to where her bed used to be and lays down on the wooden floor, her favorite spot by the closet door.

“This is much better. I don’t know why those idiots thought I’d want to die on a bed. They know I like the floor. But whatever, I guess it made them feel good or something.” Kitty continues to complain as the room loses definition and tone, “But they were good to me. Those were some awesome friends.”

“I’m ready…” she says, the room nearly pitch black.

She enters a dark void and is there for what feels like an eternity. But then there is a white dot far but getting closer, small but getting bigger and brighter. And it’s rushing right at Kitty. She can’t think or talk, but she can see this thing, and without fear she awaits its approach.

The light flies right through her and fills the void from wall to wall.

Everything is the brightest white, but dimming. It all fades to the view of a forest, grass, trees, butterflies and birds.

“What’s going on?” Kitty hears from her lips. “Where am I?”

She looks around, this place is unfamiliar.

Where the hell is she?

She stands and sees no white fur. Sort of. “I look like… Like the humans…” she says examining her hands, arms and legs. She touches around her body. She’s a young woman, curves, boobs, thumbs. But also not entirely like the humans, large cat ears instead of human ears, nails a bit longer and sharper than human nails and a long fuzzy white tail.

At a pond in the forest she gets a good look at her reflection. She’s half cat half human. Or a human with a tail, cat ears, whiskers the color they were when she was a cat, but human sized. “I’m kind of hot!” she says staring at her reflection sideways. “What’s going on, though?”

Kitty walks to the edge of a forest where she’s faced with a door with a void surrounding it. When she opens the door, the other side is hanging clothes, some boxes and another door. Eager to exit wherever she is, Kitty takes a deep breath and enters the closet to reach the other door. The door behind her disappears and she can only go forward.

She grabs the doorknob and jiggles it. The door won’t open. She fights with it, but it won’t budge. Until it begins to move by itself. And twist by itself.

The door swings open. Kitty was leaned against it and loses her balance as she falls out of the closet onto the wooden floor. She lands in a perfect squat and stands before a shocked young man staring with confusion and horror expressed exclusively through his eyebrows.

“Abe, is that you?” Kitty says to the guy who raised her before she died an old cat. Before she woke up a young cat woman.