I hope the stars don't judge me

I stand where they forgot me. Exactly where they put me down. With my hairs standing up right and my eyes wide. They just forgot to pick me back up. Humans. Are by far. The MOST forgetful creatures that I have ever encountered. The roars of the metal machine drown my desperate meows. My people can’t hear me. I watch as the car moves along the road in a straight line. Straight as a pencil. With every minute that passes it shrinks, until it is merely a gray speck disappearing into the air. 

What do I do now? Did they want me to follow the car down the road? I thought they were smarter than that. My people had to have known that it goes too fast and my legs are too short. Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe I just have to wait, where they forgot me. Cars go so fast, it shakes the ground. I lose my footing, even my tail can’t balance me. I think I even feel my heart shift under my skin. Why must they go so fast? Do they know they shake the Earth? With every car that moves by, an erupting cloud of dust leaves my fur smelling of dry dirt. The kind that tickles your lungs. I don’t like it. What a shame I only have one tongue. The process of licking every inch of my hairs would go a lot faster if I had more than one tongue. I guess it's a way to pass the time. Until they come for me. 

Don’t the humans see me? Sitting on the side of the road. How do they just go by? I’m all alone. Loneliness tends to eat you from the inside out, doesn’t it. I think loneliness gets harder when you learn what it feels like to not be alone. The clouds are disappearing and the sky is being painted in pastels from yellow to purple to black. At least humans don’t inhabit the sky. It’s too pretty to be ruined. Shadows settle onto the ground and I too disappear into the darkness. I look up at all the stars in a competition to shine the brightest. Their dream is to beat the sun. But the sun is too bright. I wish I could tell the stars that I think they are prettier. Maybe that would make them shine a little brighter. 

My people still haven’t come back. The side of the road isn’t comfortable. I miss little amelie’s bed with her pillows and the glass in the wall. How I love to watch the birds on the telephone line from the safety of her bed. I hate how she loves to wrap me in blankets, but I would gladly be enveloped right now. If only they would show up, and bring me home.

Hunger nabs at my belly button, until it hurts. On the television I watch bigger, furrier cats trap prey in their paws and devour it like true animals. So barbaric. I was born to be a house cat. My true calling, a life behind four solid walls, amongst my favorite people. My last resort is to kill a mouse. It eats at me to end the life of another being. I hope the stars happen to be sleeping while I do it. I would hate for them to think of me that way. I would hate for them to see me differently. Maybe they’ll understand my reasons, my hunger. It's hard to endure the shivers that run through the air. It sends icicles through my veins, even my fur feels cold. Thankfully, after what has felt like 18 lives, the sun is coming. That malicious star in the sky is beginning to eat at the skin buried beneath my coat. The burning is getting to be unbearable and no longer can I stay on the side of the road where my people have forgotten me. When they come back I hope they look around, because I need to find shadows. I am so tired. The race tracks in my brain are raw from all the tires staining its clean slate. I’m not used to thinking this much. It feels as though boulders are resting on my eyelashes. I need to be awake… for when my people remember me…

Light floods into my brain as I open my eyes to humans surrounding me. Someone finally stopped. But it’s not my people. They don’t have the honey hair and peachy smell of little Amelie. Sweaty hands grab ahold of my limp body. I hate the way I feel the stickiness clinging to my skin. Humans are such disastrous animals. They shower with WATER for christ sake.

I’m too tired to fight. If only they could understand my meows pleading with them to let me go, explaining to them that I’m waiting for my people. Telling the story of how they got tinier as they sped down the road and eventually disappeared. They just forgot me. They just didn’t remember. There is no way little Amelie would leave me like this. All the secrets we shared. Her feeding me shrimp, her hand slipping under the table into my mouth. The telling of regretful decisions as she held me in her arms deep into the night, stroking my cheeks as she fell asleep. When she cried I would lay with her and meow. I always hoped a part of her understood I was telling her that she was going to be okay. I have watched little Amelie grow up. She isn’t so little anymore. But she’ll always be little to me. The humans don’t understand my meows. They don’t even try. So I surrendered to them, and a part of me died inside. Laying in the lap of an old lady with the scent of tuna and rancid red nails, I realized I had been left. No wonder little Amelie’s eyes had been glassy. As the lady stroked my chin, it dawned on me that my people slammed the doors of the car without picking me back up from the ground. They went with every intention of never coming back. I wonder if water poured from their eyes. Little Amelie how I love you. I was good at protecting you from all the nightmares. Why’d you have to abandon me?