Write a story with a huge surprise, either in the middle or the end.

  It had been an extremely bad year for any stray animal living in the streets, but for a certain cat, it was getting worse in small increments. He was not just a cat; he was a cat on a mission. He had just completed his third round of the block that he called home and had found very little to stave off his hunger. Earlier, he had picked up the scent from the building across the street and had made a beeline to the back of the building to the refuse that was being tossed out the back door. This had been the best meal of the past week, and he had lingered for quite some time, in case more treasures were thrown out. He lived vicariously on the leftovers from the two-legged animals living in the buildings surrounding his home and a few of them were generous enough to toss him a scrap or two whenever they saw him poking around the garbage piles.

The residents had been dwindling for the past few years as the colony on the newly discovered planet had been established. The past year had seen an increase of new opportunities on the new planet and the local population had jumped at the chance to be included in the next transport. The animals left behind were forced to learn how to live on their own without the castoffs of the people in the cities. The cat had been fortunate that he lived in a poorer section of the city and the locals could not afford to fly to another planet or lacked the skills that could be useful with establishing new colonies. So, for now, he was guaranteed at least one meal every day or so. Every day though, he found fewer occupied buildings and he was fearful of what that would mean if they kept leaving.

He had been sleeping on top of some old boxes when he heard a strange noise. He could not locate the source of the noise, and it was repeating the same pattern over and over again. He decided to wander around the block and see if he could find the source of the weird noise when he caught sight of one of the two-legged creatures. He did his best cat stretching act and yawned looking at the thing. It was making noises and gesturing with its paws. The same noise he had heard earlier. Curious, he sauntered over to it and sat down looking up at it. He suddenly heard, “Gotcha!” and was swooped up into a cage. He yowled and hissed, clawing at the metal. A strange fog surrounded him and he blacked out.

The cat woke up surrounded by walls of metal, and there was a vibration underneath his body accompanied by a low hum. He stood and shook all over and heard noises coming from behind him. Looking around he noticed several of those two legged animals sitting at a table and eating. His hunger got the better of him and he stretched and went over to investigate the smell of food. He launched himself onto the table startling them. They all started chuckling and talking to him.

The one closest to him, cooed at him and said, “Good morning, little guy, are you hungry?”

He turned and stared at it, “What a stupid question. Of course I am hungry, I’m always hungry.” sneezing at the absurdity of the question. Licking his nose, he looked at them and realized that he could understand what they were saying. He gazed at each of them and could hear all their thoughts. Scanning their thoughts, he found that they called themselves humans, people, persons and whole lot of other things that was way too much information when he was so hungry.

The humans laughed even harder and looked at him incredulously. He heard one of them think, “Wow, I always knew cats were intelligent, but this cat is highly intelligent. Check out his thoughts and the questions that he is coming up with. We’ve never come across a species as intelligent as he is, except for the primates that we’ve studied.”

One of the other humans, Greg, said, “You are absolutely right. I do believe he is more intelligent than any animal we’ve ever tried this with, except as you pointed out, the primates. He may very well be on the same level as we are as far as reasoning skills go.”

He looked up at the humans all staring down at him and thought, “This is so weird, the last thing I remember before waking was one of these people, Mary, that’s its name, it just popped into my head when I looked at it, shouting, “Gotcha”. Now, I in a vibrating room and these humans are talking to me and I can understand what they are saying. I wonder when I will really wake up and if I do not wake up, a slab of chicken would sure be nice to dream about. That one is named Greg, that one over there is Manfred, and that other one is Charlie?” He stared at each person as he named them in his head.

The humans all clapped each other on their backs, and Greg and Mary started laughing, “He knows our names. Did you see how he put everything together. I would say that his reasoning skills are as advanced as we are. I think we should call him Gotcha. That seems to be the first word that he recognized. I am so glad we found him when we did. The experiment worked and I think it is time we shared our findings with the others.”

All Gotcha wanted was food and to get out of this hair-raising dream. All he could think of was that he had eaten something bad and he was either dead or delirious, “Where am I and how did I get here?”

Mary turned around and looked at Gotcha and said, “Poor little Gotcha, I am so sorry, we got so excited to know that our little experiment worked that we forgot how hungry you must be. Here is some chicken.” She said as she set a plate down in front of him as she continued with her story. “We have been trying to learn how to communicate with all the cats in your area, and finally found a way that we could introduce our formula into your food that would enhance the area of the brain that was thought to be the center of telepathy. Unfortunately, we did not get the desired results, except with you. We could not leave you on that dying world after what we had done. It would've been cruel to leave you after what we had done. Plus we desperately need your help with something."

Gotcha perked up and licked his whiskers. He thought to himself, “this is so strange. These strange people are speaking and I understand what they are saying”. He stopped grooming and sat up tall and thought loudly, “So, you understand me, and you brought me to this place, and you want me to do something for you, is that what you said?” Being a cat, he was very curious and wanted to understand everything about this place and these weird humans that he could now communicate his wishes to. A pang of hunger was making him loopy. These crazy humans could not possibly be conversing with him.

Greg grinned and looked over at Mary and said, “He's starving. Get him some more chicken. Looks like he is picking up everything very well, I'm so glad that I heard his thoughts down there when I did, I had been ready to give it up as a failed experiment.” Mary started laughing. She went over to a strange cabinet and opened the door. Gotcha felt a cool breeze coming from the cabinet. She grabbed some more of the chicken and replaced what he had already devoured.

“There you go, Gotcha, you deserve a good meal.” she said. Gotcha smelled the meat. Not wasting any time he devoured the chicken and looked at her for more. Mary laughed and gave him another slice and said, “That’s right, eat it up and we will get you more in a little while.”

Over the course of several weeks, Gotcha had discovered that he was on a spaceship heading for the colony that had been established a few years earlier. He had finally gotten used to communicating with the people on the ship. They laughed and chortled with his every thought. He had been fed about three times a day since he had arrived, and he finally was feeling full and no longer hungry. The humans had been taking exceptionally good care of him, he had a soft bed and a litter box that was private and self-cleaning. He was just waking up when Greg came into the room for his morning meal, “Good Morning Greg, I had a wonderful dream about food.” Gotcha said and stretched out while walking towards him.

Greg smiled and reached down to pat Gotcha on the head, “I am glad to hear that, Gotcha, as soon as Mary comes in, she will tell you in detail about the job we need you to do for us. I think you will like the job, but Mary is the leader, and it is her place to tell you everything about what to expect in the coming days. What would you like to eat this morning?”

Gotcha looked back at Greg, licking his paw, he thought, “I would dearly love some fish” and went back to grooming himself.

Mary came in about the time that Greg had fixed up a bowl of fish for Gotcha and said, “Good Morning, Gotcha, I hope you are enjoying your breakfast? While you were sleeping, we landed on your new world and I would like to tell you why we brought you to this planet. We have a rodent problem. They are too smart for the usual means of control. We have tried traps, poisons and deterrents of all kinds and they simply evade everything we throw at them. We brought a lot of cats with us, and had been putting the same formula into their food. We thought that if we could communicate with the cats, we could tell them what we wanted, but the experiments failed on all of them but you. What we need from you is a bridge of communication with the other cats to tell them that we would like for them to hunt the rodents down for us. You would not need to hunt with them as you are too valuable to us with your telepathy. So will you help us?”

He thought long and hard, walked over to the litter box and relieved himself and thought about what she had just told him. Looking her in the eye, he yawned and said, “I can try to tell them what you want, but if they aren’t hunting the rodents there must be a reason. I need to know more about these rodents and see how they are interacting with my fellow cats.”

Mary turned to a device on the wall, pointing to it she said, “Watch the screen. We have cameras set up everywhere and this is what we are finding.”

Gotcha looked up at the screen and saw what looked like a cross between a weasel and a mouse with scales covering the body and a long tail. The thing was about the size of a guinea pig, and it did not look all that dangerous to him. He kept watching and saw a couple of cats enter into view near the rodent. They walked up to it and smelled it and walked away. Very curious now, Gotcha asked, “Is this what always happens when they see one?”

Mary nodded and said, “Yes, we just can't figure it out. We feed the cats the bare minimum, so they must be hungry, but they just walk on by and in some cases, we have seen them eating together.”

Gotcha said, “Okay, I guess the next step is letting me talk to your other cats and see what’s up with this rodent that they seem to treat it as a member of the family.”

He jumped up on the table and sat down while Mary opened the door and called down the hall to some other human. A moment later, several cats were herded into the room. Gotcha looked at them and meowed and they looked up at him. He jumped down and went over to sniff them and rubbed against them. They sat down and looked at him as he walked all around the cats. Finally, he sat down facing them and meowed, “Hello friends, I am here as a representative of these humans to ask, ‘Why haven't you killed the rodents?' The rodents are eating up their supplies."

They looked at him and a few yawned and licked their paws, and one of them meowed back, “Because they asked us not to hurt them. They can talk to us in our heads, and we understand them and sometimes they bring us food. We cannot hurt friends now, can we?”

Gotcha started chuckling to himself and looked at Mary and said, “Your little experiment worked better than you realized. Those rodents must have eaten the food that you had meant for the cats and gained the power to reason with my friends on their level so that they could never hurt them? So, you are stuck with the vermin as you called them. I would suggest that you talk to one and learn from it. And maybe you will be able to stop them from raiding your stores and being pests.” Gotcha turned back to the cats and said, “Find one of your new friends and convince them to come and talk to this human? I promise she will not hurt it, and I will protect it from harm.”

The cats all turned around and raced out the door. Mary looked at Gotcha and asked, “What just happened, where are they going?”

He told her that he had sent them to get a rodent and bring it back to her. Gotcha watched as Mary’s face lit up with understanding. They would never be able to stop these rodents now that they were telepathic. The cats returned with a rodent and it looked at Gotcha and said, “Hello, friend, I hear that you wanted to talk with me.”

Gotcha licked his paw and said, “Not me, her.” He turned his head and looked at Mary. She looked at the rodent and said, “Oh, My, Word. They really can communicate with us. What have I done.” She sat down in a chair and stared at the little rodent.

Gotcha jumped into her lap and said, "Could we have some more of that fish, please?"