I was born with no name. I wished it could have been kept that way, as a name only brings conflict. I wished I just could have stayed as I was, an infant tucked away from those who handled me with an inhumane touch, away from those who saw me as their property, away from the exploitation humanity offered.

I never imagined that the human race could be so vile. At first, my thoughts were not focused on how self-centered and ignorant the hairless beasts were. It would take time to discover just how severely their society was plagued with cases of neglect, maltreatment, racism and killing. I was beyond ashamed when I realized I was one of them. I was not always afflicted with this… disease. I was born a feline.
Everything changed when I was just a kitten. My littermate and I entered the world beneath a rosebush that belonged to the Milano family. Mrs. Milano had two sons, Timothy and Malcolm. Timothy, a shy but amiable dark-haired boy who went by the nickname ‘Timmy’, was the person who left food out for my mother. We didn’t exactly belong to him, but he and his brother both cared for us with the kind hands of saints.

We were not allowed in the family’s cozy little house, but I bent the rules and often slipped inside. I preferred the house to the refuge of the rose shrub. I didn’t feel like such an animal when I played upon carpeting and tile.

Mrs. Milano, who had divorced her Italian husband just two years before my birth, had severe allergies to anything that had four legs and fur. I had managed to slip inside and out of the elements unnoticed on a couple of occasions, to plant myself next to the compassionate woman as she prepared my mother’s tuna fish. She would eventually see me, and laugh, her blue eyes shining. She would then gather me up in her soft arms, cradling me close, and then turn me outside after a kiss.

I loved the feel of the kitchen tile on my roughened paw pads… it was cooling, and much more gentle than the brutal asphalt I was forced to recreate on each day I lived outside. But I grew used to the lady’s usual sympathetic explanations, complete with convincing sniffles and large hives swelling upon her arms like nickels.

The Milano’s neighborhood, nestled in a modest county called Troen, was friendly and welcoming on the ruralborder. Mother prohibited us kittens from wandering much further than the fringe of the sidewalk, a coarse concrete river that ran right by the rosebush.

She explained, “I don’t want my two fine kittens to mingle with riffraff.” I guessed she considered the other stray or outdoor cats to be the ‘riffraff’. Mother was domineering, with an affectionate but paranoid heart. She had a deep fear that we would end up like our poor father, a rogue whose life had been snatched by a car.

Troen sat right on the margins of the city limits. A highway hummed nearby, the very one where my father had met his end, and there was a laboratory, a school, and some fast-food establishments quite close to the community. Not many people walked by the rosebush, or even through the neighborhood for that matter, so we lived a quiet, innocent life. Living a life of peace was fantastic… I savored each morning I was blessed to have. Existence as a stray was not as terrible as the other cats described. I had no concept of violence.

My sister and I blossomed into fine young cats. At the age of two months, after the lazy summer days had blended into the cool rush of September, I led the carefree life. I knew little excitement except for bounding about on clumsily large paws and batting at the occasional ladybug that dared to intrude upon our rosy thicket. Then, the excitement morphed into the beginnings of terror. I smelled the electrical odor of fear, as it traveled with a fluid grace through the air, leading an evil human procession. They were on the prowl for feeble creatures like me.

Every evening, just as dusk was beginning to tinge the sky with ominous hues of blood red, two formidable men in white lab coats would walk by the hedge. They carried clipboards and watched us intently, with analytical eyes. They questioned Timmy and the rest of his family about our behavior and our “mysterious origin”, acting as if they had never seen common strays before. The Milano’s said that they knew nothing about us, except that we were homeless and they did not know whether to send us to a shelter or leave us alone. The men would respond with a nod, jot down some things in their notes, and then depart. I sensed danger whenever they turned up. They just didn’t smell right. Maybe it was the formaldehyde, or maybe I had the talent of smelling the stench of cruel intentions.

Fear turned into panic. About a week after they started their crazy observations, the humans connected a series of multicolored wires to the generators and computers that enveloped us. They had been surrounding the bush with equipment over a hurried period of time. My family no longer felt even the slightest bit safe. In fact, we felt harassed, and my mother, who was small and widowed, couldn’t properly defend us. She was unable to assign us a “cat-sitter” when she left for her mouse hunts. And one night, this proved to be disastrous.

I flipped onto my back and stayed there with my eyes open, watching the scarlet evening sunlight steal out of the filigree of intertwined leaves, twigs, and flowers. Shadows crept into the shelter and made spooky shapes out of the lumpy roses that surrounded my sister and me. What was taking our mother so long? She had to have left more than an hour ago….

As my nervousness mounted, every sound I hadn’t noticed before became more obvious. The monitor on my right beeped loudly and erratically in a pattern like the pulse trembling at my neck. The human smell seemed to grow stronger. My littermate was sound asleep and did not notice the change in the atmosphere. Everything was still… too still….

“GOTCHA!” a deep voice boomed in my ears. I cried out as I was swept off of my back, stunned into paralysis. A man dragged me from the womb of the rosebush and onto the pavement by the scruff of my neck. I did not attempt to counterattack. I yowled as the assailant pinned me to the concrete. His face was a sneering white object poking its way through the gray and black colors of the night. A streetlight flickered above me and I could hear the distant rumbling of the interstate on the other side of the hills. The man began wrapping strips of sticky, black tape around my legs to restrain them. He then lifted me from the ground as I writhed at his touch. My world was blotted out with deadly darkness as I was shoved into a trash bag, like a piece of rubbish.

The man’s muffled voice was filled with the joy of his barbaric accomplishment as he bragged about my capture. “I have her, Ethan!”

Another human spoke, in a voice like ice. “Excellent. You make a fine assistant, Dr. Jones.” I did not know who these savages were, but I began to think that they were the riffraff my mother had told me to avoid. Their conversation was garbled, despite me pressing my ear against the dark curtain separating me from the freedom of the outside world.

Everything was the blackest black I had ever experienced. It all smelled like burnt plastic. My heart was doing a little dance inside of my chest. I tried to keep calm, but I was unable to breathe. I could feel my claws catching on the thin plastic of what was my synthetic grave. It seemed I was abruptly weightless, and then something slammed into my side with a queasy thump.

I was aware of the hard surface under my body. The atmosphere was constantly shifting, falling and rippling like sand. It felt like I was moving, and I heard occasional screeching and blaring sounds. Two rough voices were rising and falling, almost like my faint breathing, quick and irregular. I heard one last screech, followed by dead silence. I was yanked out of the jerky confinement a few moments later. The bag swung about and I whimpered as it kept hitting something. I felt buoyant and sick. I was dumped from the bag after a long time of being suspended in the air. This time, a woman stood over me. Her face was blank and uncaring as she viewed me with blind eyes.

Everything was too white and too shiny, like the woman’s face. The room smelled like chemicals and frightened animals, particularly cats. I rested on the table for a while, panting, while the woman guarded me. Frothy bubbles of saliva congregated at my lips. The men entered several dreadfully lengthy minutes later, and they nodded to her. She left me alone with the strangers who had destroyed all tranquility I had known.

I felt really tiny and helpless, like a fly with its wings pulled off. I was completely immobile, and I looked up into the stone-cold faces of the humans, who I later learned were scientists. Psychotic scientists. They were staring down at me in disapproval. The short, bald-headed individual had beady hazel eyes, which glittered at me behind round glasses. His lips were twisted in a strange sneer. He had a brown goatee that he rubbed occasionally as he thought, and a bronze ring was stuck through the lobe of his left ear. “You sure she’s right for this, boss?” he asked the other man. This man had an arrogant, annoying air about him. But the second was grim, thoughtful, and malicious.

The human the stunted one had called ‘boss’ was extremely tall, and gangly as well. He reminded me of the weed in Mrs. Milano’s garden. It was bent and knobby in some areas, and it stood tall above and shadowed everything else, always growing back whenever cut down. This man I stared at now appeared to have been through his fair share of people attempting to cut him down. His snow-white hair looked like it had never seen a brush or even scissors, blooming out from his scalp like ostrich feathers. It matched the color of his neatly ironed lab coat perfectly. What frightened me most about him were his eyes. They were a penetrating electric blue, holding wicked plans, but no emotion. Even though his eyes revealed no feelings, his motionless mouth said everything. It was a hard, accusatory line.

I made the most pitiful meow I could in an attempt to gain some sort of sympathy. “She’ll do, Jones,” said the very tall man. “Look at her: a slight bit scrawny, yet healthy. She’s just what we need for part two of the experiment. We needed a young cat for this, and just look at her juvenile features.” I felt ill as he tickled my nose mockingly.

“Part two?” questioned Dr. Jones. He adjusted his glasses and took a closer look at the clipboard he had been holding. “What, Ethan, is her sibling the beta-carotene cat?”

“Yes. And this is the one—,”

“She’s the one where we just inject her with the human cells, right?” Dr. Jones interrupted him.

The man named Dr Ethan slammed his fist down on the stainless steel table I happened to be on. Like a springboard, the thin material bucked and nearly sent me flying into the air. The scientist grabbed Dr. Jones by the collar. “FOOL! You don’t interrupt me. We don’t want to make any mistakes, imbecile!”

Dr. Jones’ knees were quivering. I hoped he felt as frightened as I was.

“B-b-but b-boss,” he stammered, sheepishly pulling at his feathery facial hair, “will a simple injection of human cells be enough to alter her feline DNA pattern?”

“If you read my experiment plan….” Ethan fell silent, but spoke to the short man by widening his eyes behind the tufts of his hair. His face was redder than the ripe tomatoes in Mrs. Milano’s garden. He bared his teeth. “Remember, we will be crossing her brain waves with the...” the man nodded towards the door, “you-know-what. We’ll discard of that one. But the formula will multiply and take over this one’s felinity.”

I cocked my head. My what?

“Like cancer?” Jones meekly asked.

“NO, IT’S IN THE PLAN!”

“But that booklet is really thick…” he held out evenly spaced hands to support what he was trying to say.

Dr. Ethan grabbed his wrists and Dr. Jones began to whimper in pain. “You DON’T want to infuriate me, Jonesy, my pal,” he said with mock affection. His voice was low and dangerously gentle. He released Jones, who fell, gasping. He was on all fours, trying to grip the slippery white linoleum floor.

“That hurt,” he moaned, his voice a whining nuisance. His supervisor ignored him, and turned to me.

“Now, my pretty cat,” he said in a detached tone, leaving his pained partner on the floor, “I have a little show to complete, and YOU’RE the star of it!” He cackled.

I blinked at him in confusion. By this point I was not very frightened because the two humans had proven to me that they weren’t very bright.

Dr. Ethan turned to face a filing cabinet, and I saw his broad yet bony back. He whirled around to face me again, this time holding a small, silver contraption in his right hand. I tensed in apprehension as I saw its gleaming pointy nose. The man took my paw and, with extreme speed and accuracy, seared something onto the bottom of it. I shrieked, screaming a monster’s cry, and ripped myself away. My skin felt like it was on fire, scorching and raw. I couldn’t look at the wound or even lick it because of the way I was tied up in the strips of snaky black tape. Every time I tried to move I would come close to rolling off of the table. It was like being on the edge of a silver cliff.

“She’s marked,” the tall man announced.

The recovered Dr. Jones made a note on his clipboard, took a look at the wall behind me, and made another note. I craned my neck to see what he had been squinting at. It was a big, round object that was smooth and flat. It had a glass panel on the front of it and black tic marks printed along the sides. Two long, flat, black sticks were sitting still and pointing to some of the different tic marks, and a skinny red stick was moving around in a circle with a whirr. I was fascinated. I concentrated at looking at that alien object I had never seen before. WHAT WAS IT? I was randomly desperate for an answer….

While I was distracted, I felt a very sharp, pinching pain right between my shoulder blades. I jumped and hissed, showing off my teeth to Dr. Jones. He pulled the needle and empty syringe out of my skin and threw it onto the counter, grinning. “Injection complete.” His voice sounded impersonal.

The object… what is the object? The object… I have to know!

A rusty creak broke the near-silent air, and the two metal doors gaped, ejecting a stretcher from the hallway. The empty-eyed woman I had seen before was pushing it. Tied with the same black tape that restrained me was a young girl, about twelve or thirteen years old. Her brunette hair was a chaotic mess of split ends and dirt, and her eyes were framed with plum circles of stress. Between her indented cheekbones, her skin caved into an open, silent mouth. Electrodes clung to her hairline like leeches, and the wires fed out between her flaccid tresses and led to even more electrodes, which Dr. Ethan pressed between tufts of my fur, sticking them to my skin in lines down my back, circling my scalp, adhering to my legs… parasites.

The girl cried out. “My parents are going to find my empty bed in the morning! They’ll call the cops and find your fingerprints on the windowsill! You are going to be caught!”

What was she gabbing about?

Dr. Ethan smiled at her, and I almost saw friendliness. “You’ll be back in your bed, honey. But it won’t be you.”

What!?

My intestines twisted in upon themselves as he slowly pivoted on his feet to confront me. Don’t let it hurt. Focus on something else. The… object. What is it? Search… find it! Be the object! I was going mad.

“It’s time.” I saw the man’s pasty hand reach for some mysterious device behind him, which was obscured by his blindingly bleached lab coat. A fantastic electrical crackling explosion sparkled brilliantly before my eyes, so close that the fire seemed to be radiating from my eyeballs themselves. That was when the world disappeared, drowned out by the effulgence, and my mind, which happened to be screaming: CLOCK! CLOCK! CLOCK!