I chase salmon across a river of stars. Each one leaps, soaring over the rapids, and I leap after them. My tail is high, my eyes bright. I catch one with a powerful swipe of my paws. It is succulent and delicious, a feast of qi and flesh.

The Moon cheers, the Earth watches fondly.

The spirits pause their business as I walk by, for I am the greatest cat - the shadowdancer, the dream walker, the king slayer, the devourer of souls and vermin. None may command me but the dark gods.

My name is Jenkins Greenleaf and this is the tale of my lives, my many deaths, and all the things that happened after that.

***

I was born, small and mewling into a pile of other small and mewling creatures - my brothers and sisters. I remember them well. Barely a whisker between us, we were bald, blind, pink, hungry and so very, very new. To begin with my kingdom was tiny, just like me. My first memory is of darkness, of warmth, and of blissful comfort, cuddled safe against the furry mountain of rumbling peace that was mother. I dreamed the days and nights away with my siblings. I do not remember much about this time, but I was happy. Too young to see, or think, time passed in a comfortable haze of belonging.

Mama had a purr like rumpled velvet, and she loved me very much. She loved all of us very much, but me in particular, because I was the cleverest and most beautiful of the litter. She taught me many things: the importance of love, of making sure one’s fur was perfectly in place, how to wash behind my ears with one paw, and how to lie in the sun and dream. This last, most especially, is an art form. It took me many years to perfect my dreaming, but this was the start, at the very beginning of all things.

It was Mama who taught me that cats are special - the best and brightest of all creatures.

“When you are grown, my darling, none will be your equal,” she told me. “You will leap many times the height of your body, you will taste the air and it will speak to you of its secrets. You will run up and down trees, and jump between roofs with the grace of the wind!” Her voice lowered and she whispered in my ear: “And if you work hard you will keep spells in your whiskers, sup with the moon, and dance on the very edge of the world.”

I thought that sounded nice, although I was mostly interested in milk at that stage. Mama was as wise as she was beautiful, her tortoiseshell coat a tapestry of colour and pattern, while us kits were a motley pile - stripes and black, brown and white. I alone was satin darkness from tip to tail.

This special time of love and comfort came to an abrupt end. Up until then, we had known nothing of life beyond the basket. There was no need. Mama was everything, and we had had each other in those brief moments she was gone.

Loud voices boomed overhead.

A sharp crack, a wail. Somewhere, someone big and high-pitched screamed, and then started to sob. Another wail. I was grabbed by rough hands, ripped from Mama and shoved unceremoniously into a sack.

It was confusing. So many noises and sensations.

I didn’t like it at all.

I cried for Mama, for the missing warmth, for my brothers and sisters. They, at least, joined me shortly afterwards, each of us thrust tumbling like unwanted things. Together we raised our tiny blind heads and mewled. Somewhere mother was crying for us too, but we couldn't reach her. I tried, I tried very hard, but I was so tiny. My claws were as soft as my belly. Outside the sack the horrible voice boomed and rolled like thunder and then we were swinging through the air in a sickening motion.

Together, we were bumped around in a tumbling mass for what felt like ages.

Then we were tossed, higgledy-piggledy, discarded, unwanted things, falling together, falling; a deep splash. Water! Chill liquid seeping through the sack-cloth, then water everywhere. Cold, wet, so very, very cold.

We sank into darkness, and this time the darkness was cruel.

It snatched at us with icy fingers, pulling us down, reaching into our throats, choking and sucking the breath from our lungs.

Pulling us down, down, down.

I tried to scream but I could not. Still I fought. Around me my brothers and sisters fought. It was so unfair! Where was Mama? Maybe she would come for us.

But she didn’t.

We were alone.

One by one my brothers and sisters grew weaker. One by one they stopped fighting, the strength leached from their limbs by the cold weight of the river, air leaking in bubbles from their mouths. Then I was the only one struggling. I urged them on, alone in the dark, bumping against the soft bodies of my family, struggling to escape, confined by the sack. We were drowning. I was drowning.

I didn’t really know what was happening but I did know I was angry.

We lost our first lives there in the dark water but we were cats. The best and brightest of all creatures. The most magical, the most special. Death would have to try harder to defeat us. We had only just begun to live, I liked living! There was so much to know, so much to do. I was not done learning. Death would have no dominion over me, so I came back.

Come on, I urged. Myself, my siblings. Move, fight, swim! I refused to give up! Look! Look there!

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I fought and fought, struggling towards the light patches, and confined by the sack cloth of the bag that was our prison.

This was the first time I met River. River is not evil, not really. She is just wet. She is made of water and, like the rest of the Folk, she is fickle and not a little capricious. I think she tried to help us that day. I have never been certain. But whatever the truth of it, the current snatched us up from the deep, spinning us around, and… a moment later I felt the bump of stones beneath me.

My head broke through the water first, for I was the strongest. The air was so sweet. I gulped it in and shouted at the others to breathe! Shouting, shouting! My brothers and sisters listened. Wet, bedraggled, we coughed and spat, sucking in great breaths, just in time to save us from another death.

I could see light through the holes. It hurt my eyes, and I cried again, loudly. Some of my siblings nearly gave up then, but I pushed at them with my snout! “Don’t give up! Fight! Fight!”

Then there was a voice from outside. Unlike the other voice, this one was calm and kind. I did not understand what it said, but we were lifted, gently this time, into the air.

This is how I met Maud - plucked half drowned from River’s deathly embrace. At first I thought she was a giant. I did not yet comprehend the concept of two-leggers. Of ‘people’. My brothers and sisters shrank away from her hands in fear. I reared up to protect them, my legs wobbling with exhaustion. All I could do was to sink my milk teeth into the fleshy appendage she reached out with.

The giant muttered something, but the hand that grasped me remained gentle as she pried my fierce jaws open. One by one we were scooped up and held against a warm body. Bundled away, the world rose up, shades and shapes and light passing by in another sickening whirlwind. This was scary, but not as scary as last time. We had defeated death, and the hands were warm. Perhaps it would be okay.

The giant was talking to herself, or perhaps to us? Striding quickly through the forest, but I did not understand the words. However, they did not sound angry, not like the booming voice. They were soothing, low and soft. So I listened, and held on.

I hoped we were being taken back to Mama, but no. No Mother. Mama was gone. But the place we were taken to was warm and cosy. A fire cracked in the unseen distance. Each of us was carefully dried, then placed carefully in a blanket in a puddle of sunshine. That was better. That was nice. I knew what to do in the sun. I leaned into it, my eyes half closing as the light danced around me. The wonderful, wonderful warm golden sunlight. The giant tucked a woollen blanket around us, still talking gently.

I tried to groom myself, and my closest brother. Our fur was a disgrace, all scraggly and messy but I was too tired to do much. We let the giant rub us dry then immediately fell asleep, tired out by the events of the day. My brothers and sisters were there, so it would be alright. Sometime later we were woken for milk. It was not Mama’s milk but it filled the holes in our bellies. We drank and drank and drank and then drifted once more into sleep.

I was too tired to dream dark dreams of dark, cold waters. That would come later.

I woke, confused, and drank again, and slept and woke, again and again.

Slowly the terror receded. We had a new home now. Despite the lack of Mama it was nice. Much nicer than the cold, dark riverbed, and there were no scary, booming voices. It smelled interesting too - lots of plant smells, and cooking smells and soap smells. The giant two-legger was kind. My Maud was not my Maud yet, she was just the giant with tender hands and access to milk.

Gradually, we came to know each other. She took care of us and we grew and grew and grew, playing and fighting and sleeping and drinking and dreaming. Soon enough we were tumbling out of our make-shift basket and exploring the room that was our new world. At the time it seemed so big. A cavern with a great stone hearth in which a cheery fire burned more often than not. When the sun was away this was our favourite place to sleep, there and on Maud’s lap.

There was a stone window sill with rows of herbs. Some of them were fun to nibble, and others made me sneeze. I soon learned to stay away from those. Some of them gathered the sun close, others seemed ringed into shadow. Some of them were surrounded by pretty glittering lights like a rainbow. I liked to watch those while I was dozing.

At the back of the room was a comfy cupboard with a hole just big enough for a kitten to wriggle through. Inside it was dusty and dark, but it felt nice and safe, a little sanctuary. I went in there when it rained very hard, and the thunder boomed like the horrible murder giant who had taken us from Mama. I missed Mama.

Outside there was a wooden table, and a wooden chair, and a plump stuffed chair made of soft stuff. That was where Maud liked to sit in the evening. She liked to play with balls of wool, sometimes she would let us help. The balls unwound when you pushed them, which was lots of fun. I found out later that we grew up in her wool basket. I still enjoy sleeping in it from time to time, even now I am quite grown.

My Maud, being a giant, was much bigger than a cat. She had two legs instead of four, and she stood up, most of the time, balancing on them precariously. She had clever fingers, long and tapering. No fur grew on them. She had lots on her head though, and it grew strangely long. Her fingers were a bit ugly without any fur, and her claws were short and blunt. But since she uses them to scratch where I cannot reach at the very back of my neck I did not mind so much. She could not speak cat, and she could not see spirits, or Folk or Small Gods, but I grew to love her anyway.

After a while my brothers and sisters were taken to live elsewhere. At the time this made me sad and I missed them terribly. Now that I am older and wiser I understand that the two-legged giants need the protection of cats. We are talismans of good fortune, warding away bad luck, evil, and vermin, and it is our duty to look after them, if we feel like it. But at the time I did not understand this and I was lonely.

Left with only the two-legged giant for company I made an effort to understand her babble. At length her noises separated out into meaning. It hurt my head to listen for too long, and she lacked the tail, ears and body to communicate properly. Still, I understood enough. She told me not to worry about my brothers and sisters, they were going to new homes nearby. Of course she would be keeping me. I was the most wonderful, afterall, and the best looking. This, I understood.

I vowed that I would find my family one day so we could play and hunt together in the woods that I could see through the windows beyond. But all was not bleak. I still had my Maud, and my cottage, and my sunbeams. I finished exploring the rest of the house, (a cellar, and a loft with a big comfortable bed-nest) and found the garden in which lived bees, chickens, a pair of geese and a goat.

Having my own garden was very nice. I explored every inch, and then moved on to the woods beyond. The forest was immense, and a little intimidating, in an exciting way. Trees bigger than the biggest giant, and flowers, and bushes and birds. Glorious, delicious looking birds! There were also Folk everywhere - little pixies with elegant, dragon-fly wings, gnomes with silly hats, brownies and tree-spirits and wisps in the evening. I danced between the puddles of sunlight and moonlight and shade and darkness. It was everything a cat could possibly want, and it all smelled so good! I could have as much of the world as my feet could tread.

My domain grew larger by the day, as I grew in size and confidence.

As I grew I tested myself constantly. I was still quite weak and rather small, but I knew I would soon become strong. I could not forget the loss of my first life. Never again would someone pick me up by the scruff of my neck and toss me in a sack. Never again would I die in the cold, surrounded by the bodies of those I loved.

It was not to be borne.

It was not to be tolerated.

I would improve myself. By tooth and claw and whisker I would grow. And so I did.