Chapter 3
What is that smell? It smells good but where is it? Torrance slowly opens her eyes to see an opened can of tuna just a few feet away from her. She hasn’t eaten since the night before when…when. She shakes her head, unable to remember what exactly happened the night before. She stands up and stretches, wondering if she can eat the tuna or if she should leave it. Her stomach growls in protest of leaving he tuna alone but why? She hates tuna with a passion ever since she was a little girl. She licks her lips and gingerly steps towards the can, her nose sniffing the air around the can as well, her sense of smell suddenly a lot better than it has ever been.
She shakes her head as she smells something under the tuna; a sweet smell like someone’s flowery perfume. She sneezes at the smell and tries to lift her hand to cover her face but her hand didn’t cover her face. She stares down at two furry paws underneath her instead of her manicured pink nails. Paws? Two soft reddish furry paws holding her up but how? In her confusion, her ears perk up as she hears someone whispering, only being able to pick up a few words. She hears the words beautiful cat, tuna, not eating, and hope we catch her soon. She doesn’t understand fully what is going on but her grumbling stomach pushes her forward to the can. She tries to figure out how she is going to get the tuna out of the can with cat paws. She moves closer feeling something tickling her cheeks as her face gets closer to the can. But something takes over her as soon as she touches the can with her cheeks and before she can stop herself, her face is in the tuna. She begins to devour the tuna, her stomach growling in appreciation of the food.
Suddenly there is a loud snap around her, scaring her half to death, and she jumps. Her eyes see that a metal cage has materialized from out of nowhere around her, trapping her next to the tuna can. She hisses at the giants that appear around her, her foggy mind still not able to grasp what has happened. Where she is? Why is everything around her so tall? She braces herself as the cage around her is suddenly lifted into the air. The giants carry the cage, with her trapped inside, out of some bushes that she hadn’t even realized she had been hiding in. She looks around in the early morning light to see that she is in the park not too far from her apartment.
The fog lifts from her mind and she remembers what happened last night. Walking home through that park and then hearing someone rushing towards her from behind. She coughs and gags when the memory of a man with a scar over his left eyebrow pulls out a knife. She shudders when she remembers the nasty grin as he drove the blade deep into her throat. Not being able to hold back any longer as the memory of her blood flowing out of her neck then out of her mouth plagues her mind, Torrance lowers her head and throws up in one of the corners of the cage.
“Oh no, the poor kitty just threw up,” she hears a soft female voice say from somewhere above her.
“We can clean it up once we get her back to the humane society,” a gruff yet gentle male voice informs his colleague. “But we need to get her out of her here to keep her safe.”
Torrance tries to talk to the people but only a delicate meow emerges from her throat. She looks confused and tries again but the same delicate meowing can be heard. Soon she can see the van in the parking lot, the same one she has seen patrolling the park before in order to pick up other lost animals, and gasps when she can finally see herself. She sees a red cat with chartreuse eyes staring in shock back at her through the bars of the cage in the window. Torrance swallows, ignoring the taste in her mouth from puking earlier and stares at herself in the window until they place the cage into the back of the van.
‘I am a cat…I am a cat,’ she keeps saying repeatedly in her mind. ‘How can I be a cat?’ Torrance begins to pace back and forth as much as the cage would allow, doing her best to keep herself calm. But the emotions are too strong and she blacks out, emitting a tiny anguished sound from her mouth as her body slumps on the ground of the cage.
A while later, Torrance opens her eyes to find herself in a more spacious cage, her fur cleaned up from her earlier episode in the transporter cage. She is lying on a soft cream-colored bed with a food bowl and a water dish close. Through an opening across from her, she can see more of her cage and a litter box. She blinks, still feeling groggy and confused, trying to understand how she could be a cat when she used to be a human, a murdered human, but still a human. She slowly stands up and slinks over to the see-through glass, peering out at the other filled cages. Seeing cats of all ages eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, or sitting and staring out like she is doing. She can hear voices down the hall of a young woman excitedly talking about the cats and another lower voice, maybe a male, telling the woman what he is looking for in a cat.
Torrance steps back away from the glass and heads over to her food bowl, her stomach grumbling again since she had thrown up most of the tuna treat earlier. She wrinkles her nose at the slop in the bowl but the smell makes her stomach grumble louder, wanting the slop. Unable to stop herself once again, she dives nose first into the bowl and begins to eat what she thinks is some chicken in sauce cat food from a can. She lifts her head and licks her lips as she takes a break from eating, the voices gradually growing closer to her cat condo. Growing curious, she licks the rest of the food off her whiskers and saunters back to the front to peer out to see the people and find out what they were saying.
At first, she doesn’t see the man talking, only spying the woman who had helped capture her from the park earlier. The two stop in front of her condo, looking at the cat across from her. She eyes the back of the man’s shaved head, her little nose twitching a bit. The guy shakes his head at the almost white-colored cat, telling the woman something that she can’t hear.
The woman nods and points behind her, “We do have this new young female cat that is a red classic tabby. We actually just picked her up from the park. She has all her shots as of today but hasn’t been spayed yet. She will have to be spayed before she goes home once adopted and the adoption fee will include the surgery.” She turns around and faces Torrance, smiling, “Oh good, she’s awake. She’s completely healthy but since she just got here with us, we don’t know her personality just yet. She is also nameless right now so if she is the one you end up liking and want to adopt, you will get the honor of naming her.”
The man, hands shoved in his pockets, turn on his heel to face her, his eyebrows lifted since he is interested to see this new nameless cat. Torrance’s jaw drops as she stares into the man’s dirty water blue eyes. She nearly throws up again when she sees the scar over his left eye. ‘It’s him!’