THIRTY-EIGHT: Caged

Once at the Refuge she looked into each of the cages.  Pair after pair of empty eyes stared back at her.  She spotted a litter of kittens.  None of them quite matched the one in her dream.

“Can I help you?” said a boy who worked there.

“Well, I’m just looking for a cat, a kitten. But something not as small as these cuties here.”

“We’ve got plenty of them.” The young man smiled.  His jeans were torn at one knee and the logo on his T-shirt was faded and ripped a bit at one shoulder.  She began walking along the cages toward the end.  She noticed a sharp smell.

“What’s that smell?”

“Bleach?” he asked. “We use it to clean the cages.”

“It doesn’t smell clean,” she said. “It smells like it would hurt.”

“Uh.” He paused.

She spied a large kitten huddling and shaking in the corner of his cage. There was a yellow ribbon tied around the upper part of his cage door.

It was the cat from her dream. It was Octavius.