Stray Love

You wake up with a hankering for caffeine. As you stretch into your morning clothes, you can hear your neighbors arguing. Nothing new, just the occasional relationship scuffle. You wish you could have what they did. The kind of love that lasts through anything. You head out into the city though, trying to ignore the lonely feeling in the pit of your stomach. You enter the Cafe, a central hotspot for meeting great fellows. You walk up to the counter and order your morning brew, a large hazelnut latte with two shots of espresso. A few minutes pass and you have it in hand. You make your way over to a table in the back. As you sit there in your thoughts, you see him. A powerful black color moves in from the outside, drawing the attention of only a few. He sees you see him from across the room. Those rare, velvet-brown eyes stare deep into your soul, as you sip on your latte. And you can’t help but to stare right back with your innocent, lush green eyes. A crowd moves in from the outside, causing you to lose sight of him. He seems to have eluded you through the passing of the crowd. You head for the exit, hoping to catch him before he disappears for good. As you leave the Cafe, you hear a crash from the side alley. Running around to investigate, you find that he has clambered his way to the top of the chain link fence connected by the Cafe and Bakery. You shout out to him, as he flops down to the garbage infested ground on the other side. He takes off, slipping through a hole in the next building over. You move over to the fence, setting your coffee down on a crate. Stepping up onto a receptacle, you hoist yourself over the fence. Your designer skirt snags onto an open rail, causing it to rip down the side. As you fall over into the garbage, your right leg scrapes against a nail, leaving a nasty cut along the back of your thigh. Stumbling to your feet, you make your way over to the hole you saw him run through. A putrid odor wafts from within. You second guess your choice to follow, but your curiosity takes control, leading you off into what appears to be an overall empty building. A pile of old, tattered books sits off to the right. A large blackboard hangs off the back wall, covered in strange texts. As your gaze moves through the room to the left, you notice a familiar set of velvet-brown eyes. They’re peering out at you from between the rails of a staircase. You take a step towards him, causing him to bolt down the stairs. You follow after him, limping along as your right leg begins to throb and ache with pain. At the foot of the stairs, you can hear voices from below. As you lean in to try and make out their conversation, you feel a push against your lower back. You tumble down the stairs, hitting your head against the wall on the way down, causing you to black out at the bottom. You wake up to the sound of the same voices, this time in front of you. You’re in a large box made of bulletproof glass. A large metal tube juts in on the top left of the cage. It runs down the length and off into the darkness of the room. Over in one corner of the room is a chair, a small table with a lamp sits beside it. A radio leans against a leg of the chair, playing a loop of voices talking nonsense. They must be the voices you heard. Next to the chair are the stairs you fell down. And sitting on the last step is the very reason you’re here. He walks up to the glass and stares up at you. As you return a glare, you think that you can see him smiling. He walks over to the chair and sits upon it, staring at you with those velvet-brown eyes of his. Just when you think that nothing is going to happen, a strange gas comes out of the metal tube in the box. As you breathe it in, you feel yourself getting faint. After a few minutes of coughing and gasping for air, you pass out as he continues to just sit there and watch. When you come to, you’re outside on a balcony overlooking the great, Vertical City. Your paws are a silky white, while your torso is a soft orange. Your whiskers glisten in the neon lights above. As you continue to look around, you see him. He’s sitting next to you, his eyes brought out by the solid black fur. He walks over to you, brushing his body against yours. You purr as his tail intertwines with yours. He keeps walking along the balcony, looking back at you as if to say, ‘Come on.’ You race after him, following along the rooftops as he leaps from balcony railings and rain gutters. Taking a sharp left, he jumps down onto the roof of a building connected to another by a chain link fence. He hops down to a crate, where a black and white coffee cup has been tipped over. A puddle of frothy brown liquid sits below it. You leap down after him, curious as to why he’s brought you here. As you reach the puddle, he leans forward to drink from it. He notices your hesitation, swiping at the puddle to cover you with the coffee. You swipe back at the puddle, covering his oh so perfect black fur. He takes off, playfully looking back to see that you’re following. You find yourself back on the balcony as before, lying next to him as he licks you clean. And as you lay there together, staring out into the city, you think to yourself, ‘Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it made one.’