First Year of Life

By Travis, Period 4

My life has been fairly good, I suppose. When they leave, I get the place all to myself. The people, I mean. There are two of them, the nice small one, and the large sadistic one. He is one of my greatest enemies. My arch nemesis, however, is the sponge. That evil, crafty, conniving sponge. Every day when the people leave, I make my attack. Whemn the large one gets back, however, it makes a counterattack, smacking me repeatedly in the face and saying "NO, NO, NO, NO!" Every attack I make only seems to make it madder, although it seems also to get smaller. That cursed, red sponge is the center of my anger and nightmares.

Other than that, life is good. They feed me well, change my litter often, and, of course, there is my Cat-Fish-Action-Toy. Basically, it is a cloth fish attached to a length of elastic string. Some cats may just bat it around, but I am above such petty stunts. I like to grab the end of the fish and walk as far as I can, until I can barely hang onto it any longer. Once I reach this point, I let go of it and it zips back and forth for several minutes. Once it stops, I do it over again. Of course, then I have to bathe, eat, nap, watch TV with them, so as you can see I have a very stressful life. It all got worse on that fateful day in March, however.

I had been noticing a distinct change in the smaller one’s appearance. She seemed to get wider and wider. She seemed to like to sit down a lot, and the larger one did things for her, like cooking food and cleaning. She got wider and wider like there was no stopping her. I was afraid that she would eat my food also because she was so huge. Then one morning the people both left in a big hurry, not even bothering to feed me before leaving. This was a serious matter, me not getting fed.i was justifiably miffed when only the big one returned.

A few days passed, and then the big one left, bring the other one back home with something in his arms. I figured that they were trying to make up for not feeding me.

"Well this had better be a good present," I thought to myself.

You can imagine my surprise when, instead of a new toy or some food, the was lifted to reveal this ugly, pink blob of ugly. I drew away in disgust, because of the odd chemical smell emanating from "The Thing" as I would later refer to it. I would have hissed at it if my better judgement had not prevailed. The sadistic one was watching me with the same focused intensity I use on any mice foolish enough to venture into my lair. I knew that if I even looked at it wrong, I would get booted as I had before when I had angered him. They took it into every room, and all it did was cry. That’s all it ever did was cry. All night, all day, all the time there was this odd sort of background noise. The incessant wailing was the worst thing.

Things did not fare much better in the next few weeks. I remember when it learned to crawl. It proceeded to chase me around the house, grabbing my tail when it had cornered me. The good human just laughed and picked it up. It never got in trouble. When it knocked over a vase, it did not get swatted, booted, or even yelled at. Where as if I even sneezed in the thing’s direction, I was yelled at by the big one. By this time, the long extinct sponge was forgotten. I had a new, more dangerous opponent; one more cunning than the sponge ever could have been. With the sponge it had merely been a fight. This was War.

It always seemed to have the upper hand, with that innocent giggle and smile. I was the only one who saw through that smile and into what the thing actually was. It was the sadistic one, just smaller. It was locked in battle with me even as he flaunted his power over the people by arrogantly dumping a bowl of spaghetti on his head. I love spaghetti, and the only way I get it is if some falls on the floor. They give him a whole bowl, and what does he do? He dumps it on his head as if it was playdough. As the people watched Top Gun on the VCR, he sat on her lap and stared at me. He was laughing at me, I just knew it. With every movie they saw, he got to sit on the furniture while I had to lay on the floor. It got worse when he learned how to climb. He climbed on everything, stools, chairs, end tables, boxes under the Christmas tree. there were very few things he had not climbed on.

It was around this time that the world population reached approximately 5 billion. It seemed people around the world were having their own little bundles of destruction as well. Black Monday caused stock market woes, while the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise took 189 lives in the North Sea. My favorite moment looking back is when it got sick the day after it arrived and they had to take it back. I was hoping that they would leave it there, but no such luck. Bruce Willis married Demi Moore in 1987 as well.

I knew that I was fighting a losing battle. He was showing signs of walking, and I could not afford to put up with running from it when it was walking rather than crawling. I knew that I had to act quickly, and my chance came around a year later, in April. A visiting relative was careless, and left the door open. I escaped, and traveled to Florida where I have resided ever since.