Leonard (My Life as a Cat), Carlie Sorosiak [7 ebook reader .txt] 📗

the sky. Balancing on that branch was almost impossible. I managed to steady myself just in time. Only seconds later, the tip of the human’s boat slammed into the tree trunk. Everything shook. Bark split with a menacing crack, and the girl snapped her head up, eyes wide.

Despite the circumstances, I tried to savor this moment. It was my first time meeting a human; I didn’t want to get it wrong. Hello there was the greeting I’d memorized—simple yet elegant—and I attempted this with a string of long, eager meows. It couldn’t have gone worse. I sounded like a garbage disposal. (We will get to the evil of garbage disposals later. And seagulls! I must tell you about the seagulls.)

But now the girl was ordering me to jump.

“It’s okay!” she shouted into the tree, her voice cutting through the wind. “I’m a Girl Scout, and I’m here to save you!”

Well, I’ll admit that I was more than a little relieved. Save me, not shave me! Nevertheless, I squirmed. This small human was going to rescue me? She was maybe four and a half feet tall, and no more than eleven years old.

I hesitated, skidding back and forth on the branch, torn between options: stay in this tree, alone in a storm, or jump—with legs I barely trusted.

Stay or jump.

Stay or jump.

Stay or—

A sharp gust of wind decided for me, cracking the tree branch above my head. Instinct took over as my body pitched forward, away from the terrible snap.

I felt myself falling.

Then I felt myself questioning if I should have remained in the tree.

Because I’d misjudged the jump. The water was already swallowing me whole.

Here is an interesting fact. Being underwater is a little like floating in space. Except for the dull roar in my ears, there was barely any sound. Everything was dark, glittering, and lonely.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t panicking.

I was panicking very much.

My legs flailed. My paws thrashed in front of me. Bubbles rose and popped in my throat.

You’re immortal, I thought, trying to calm myself. You cannot die, so this water won’t harm you. In a way, I was untouchable: my species has always existed in the universe and always will. But I’d never felt stress before—never understood the power of it. And embarrassment. I was ashamed to fail this spectacularly, after I’d longed for decades to be human.

Every traveler to Earth keeps a record: a series of images captured, then shared with the rest of the hive. Over the years, I’d filtered through pictures of family Christmases, of dinners on New Year’s Eve, of human birthday parties and picnics in parks filled with green. I had called up those images again and again—learning the humans’ traditions, the lines of their faces. I wanted to try a cheese sandwich, too. I wanted to go to the movies. I wanted to walk with someone by a river on a blistering hot summer day.

All of this required being above water.

Luckily, the girl was already grabbing the scruff of my neck, yanking me from the deep. The air was a shock, maybe more so than the water, and I shook vigorously as she plopped me down. It was surprising, really: I found that I liked shaking, the way my body moved everywhere all at once. The boat shimmied beneath my paws.

“Oh my goodness!” the girl said, still shouting over the wind. “Are you okay?”

I thought very seriously about this question. Obviously, I was not. Cats and water don’t mix. (I couldn’t recall a great deal about cats, but I suspected this right away.) I liked that she asked, though, even if all I could answer was mrrr.

Here is something else: my chest crunched as I looked at her. (Humans like the word crunch, and I believe I am using it properly here. You may correct me if I’m wrong.) Either way, glimpsing a human up close was something like a miracle. I was bowled over, entranced by the girl’s tiny nose, her cheekbones so smooth under her light-brown skin. Yes, skin! With pores and everything.

I tried to memorize her at once, in case someone on my home planet wanted to know. Smallish ears. Roundish chin. Dimples.

Gripping the oars with white knuckles, the girl pushed hard against the rippling water, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly powerless, tail curling around me in the frigid boat. My own skin prickled as objects floated by, trapped in the flood’s current: a plastic Hula-Hoop, a deck chair, two inflatable lawn ornaments that looked suspiciously like gnomes.

It was all starting to hit me now—really hit me. The distance I’d traveled, the predicament I was in, the fact that I was breathing and couldn’t quite figure out how. I inhaled harshly, too fast and too sharp; my lungs fluttered, causing me to wheeze, just as the boat careened dangerously to the left.

“I’m not really a Girl Scout anymore!” the human said suddenly, like she was purging a hair ball.

We will get to a discussion of hair balls. Oh, will we ever. But right then I just stared at her, unable to unravel how scouting played into this. Many areas of human life were still a mystery to me. I thought it best to give her a wise nod, like those that I’d witnessed on captured images of I Love Lucy, a human TV series that I especially enjoy. I tipped my head up and down.

The girl seemed mildly puzzled by this, her eyelashes fluttering.

But she rowed on.

Through the rain, I was beginning to see the shadowy outline of a house—a human house on stilts, with a wraparound porch. The lawn was fully submerged under a thick sheet of water. I sincerely hoped there was a plastic flamingo somewhere beneath the waves, to really give it that human touch.

As the boat shuddered, jerking us from side to side, a white-haired woman came into vision. She stood rigidly on the porch, a beach towel draped around her shoulders. Stocky and tough-looking,