Speckles

Speckles. What a ridiculous name. Mind you, the full thing is Mr. Speckles the Third. I do not know who Mr. Speckles One and Two were. But that’s what the small biped had named me when she excitedly pointed at me with one front paw and used the other to tug on her mother’s arm.

I didn’t have a name before this. We didn’t need names on the streets–we could recognize one another by smell, by the way one walks. But then I got part of my left ear torn off by a coyote, narrowly avoiding my whole head being trapped in its jaws as I clambered up a tree. I stayed in that tree for two moons, munching on small bugs while all the while growing sicker from the festering pain of my ear. Only once I was absolutely certain the coyote had gotten bored and left the area did I come down from that tree. My sickness had progressed more than I realized, and my descent from the tree was more of a fall, followed by loud yowls of pain I unintentionally let out.

Two bipeds immediately rushed out. They were older, well-past breeding years, and clearly mated to one another. The female biped started to reach out to me slowly, cooing and clicking her tongue at me. The male pulled her back before she got too close, speaking in their mostly incomprehensible language. I understood one word though as it is a common knowledge amongst those of us living on the streets: rabies.

With my back hunched and my fur on end, I eyed the biped couple wearily as the male took out the strange light up box bipeds keep in their rags. He began speaking with the box held up to his ears; I could hear another biped’s voice coming from the box in a strange, tinny synthetic way.

One of the transport killers–”cars” are what the rats called them–showed up not long after and I was captured and shuffled into a cage. I didn’t feel well enough to put up much of a fight.

The bipeds did things to me that made me sleep during my capture. Some unknown amount of time later I awoke in a bigger cage, my ear wrapped in cloth and smelling of sterile chemicals instead of rot. Around me I could smell and hear other animals chatting, crying, laughing, and snoring. Eventually I learned from the others around me that we were in some kind of shelter where bipeds came to look at us and maybe take one of us with them, if we are fortunate.

I spent many moons there until one day two female bipeds stopped in front of my enclosure. Due to my injury–which was now almost completely healed and no longer covered in white cloth–I was granted a cage to myself rather than sharing. The two bipeds smelled similar and were clearly kin. The younger one pointed at me and pulled on her mother’s arm and the next thing I knew, I was placed in a box and yet again in one of those “cars”.

One of the first biped words I came to learn in my new home was “Speckles”. The little biped said it every time she reached for me, petted me, or attempted to pick me up. The older female only set it in an angry tone after I’d accidentally–sometimes intentionally–knocked something off the ledges where the bipeds prepared their food.

The mother and I maintained a tentative alliance; however, the child and I developed a friendship. I came to sleep in her bed every night, curled up against her warmth. Whenever she was on the soft cushions in the big room with the large picture box awake and making noises, I claimed her lap as my seat. I exclaimed excitedly and rubbed up against her little legs when she returned home from wherever it was that she went for many hours a day. Whenever she was home, I spent most of my waking and sleeping hours with her.

Three days ago my little biped did not return from wherever she goes. This has happened once before, in the hottest months of the year, where she was gone for seven moons before returning home, telling me energetically of many stories in her incomprehensible biped language. But this feels different this time. The mother biped has been constantly leaking salty liquid from her eyes. She has not been sleeping or leaving the house for her usual activities. Other humans have stopped by, bringing food and wrapping their gangly arms around the mother biped. Something is wrong.

As more moons go by, our home descends into disarray. My litter box fills more than it ever has before and even I start to be bothered by the smell. The receptacles the bipeds use to hold their food begin to pile high in the bowl of the water spout. The mother biped has been unkempt, her grooming falling behind. I am awoken many times a day by the sound of her wailing, her eyes leaking profusely.

My little biped is not returning.

…

It has been more than twenty moons since my little biped has not returned. Today the mother biped washed and groomed herself. Her head fur was pulled tight at the back of her head and tied into a ball. Her eyes were watery, as they so often were nowadays with all of her leaking, but they had dark painted outlines around them. She actually left the house for many hours for the first time in a long time, dressed in strange monotone rags and smelling of sweet chemicals.

Her return was quiet. The mother biped put down the bag slung over her shoulder and slipped off her paw covers. Slowly she unclasped her head fur from its ball form and let it spill out around her. I could smell the salty liquid she had clearly leaked from her eyes while she’d been away. Her walk towards her room was slow and lumbering, her eyes unseeing and her face pale. When she reappeared from her room she held something in her hand that made jangling sounds with each of her steps. The small container held small bead-like objects that shuffled and hopped as she moved. The mother biped went into her child’s room and I silently slunk in behind her. She had been so quiet since her return, and now she stood over the bed of her daughter, staring blankly at the place where the child biped would normally be curled up with me at night. Suddenly, the mother biped let out a choked cry and sank to the floor beside the bed. Her eyes were leaking again and her front paw was pounding against the side of the bed, as if she were trying to injure it. She was crying out biped words, screaming in anguish.

Then she opened the container with the small beads and instantly my fur stood on end. The smell was chemical and bitter. She emptied the entirety of the beads in her front paw and gazed intently at them. Slowly, she started to lift her front paw towards her mouth.

Instinct kicked in and I immediately leaped on the bed in front of her. I screamed at her, trying to tell her to stop even though I knew she did not understand me. The mother biped didn’t even acknowledge my presence, her gaze still fixed intently on the ever-approaching beads. Her front paw was halfway to her mouth now.

I jumped and sunk my teeth into her front paw holding the beads.

The mother biped let out a yelp in pain and most of the beads fell from her hand and scattered onto the bed and the floor. Her eyes no longer appeared glazed over and had temporarily stopped leaking. She was looking at me incredulously, as if noticing where we were for the first time since she arrived home–as if she’d finally woken up from a dream. I unclamped my mouth from her flesh and we sat there for many moments, staring at one another in complete stillness.

As her eyes welled up with liquid again, the mother biped reached her hand out to stroke my head and she whispered, “Thank you, Speckles.”