Poppy was a most lovely kitten, a calico, with deep blue eyes and incredibly soft, long fur. Her tail was bushier than her body, and her ear whiskers were several inches in length, curling out to the sides, like a pair of horns. Not only was her fur soft and orange colored, with many black and white splotches, her nose was colored black with a funny splotch that extended out to the right. It was adorable, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, the spot appearing on the other side tended to freak her out and she would think another kitten appeared. “Meow! Meow!“ she would yell at it. At least that is how it sounded to us humans. You see, Poppy was an intelligent kitten, and despite her meows and hisses which sound like gibberish to us, she was actually saying, “Hello Cat, what is your name?” and then get frustrated when it wouldn’t respond, and so she would go off to do something else.
Our story begins on a sunny march day. Poppy’s human owners, who considered themselves Poppy’s parents, and who Poppy thought were her parents, who she knew since being a little baby, were doing what humans tend to do. Sleeping, eating, cooking, and so on. And while the time passed, Poppy was doing what cats like to do. She cleaned herself, did some pouncing and walking around, and took copious naps. When the evening came, while her parents were eating dinner, Poppy was lounging around and wondering what else she might do today. She had already had some snacks and she had already done plenty of jumping around. What she needed was an adventure. Most cats never go on adventures, most of them don’t really want to and they prefer to sit around and eat all day, but Poppy was different. Not only was she cute and smart, she had a sense of adventure, a zest for life that the world hadn’t knocked out of her yet. And so, between her daily activities, she liked to play around and do silly things, hoping that something exciting may happen.
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On this seemingly normal day, as Poppy was sitting and cleaning her fur, in a stroke of luck, she noticed a strange little doorway in the bedroom wall. Most doorways tend to lead to other rooms in our buildings, except for a few that lead outside, but Poppy’s parents kept those locked. She always wanted to go exploring outside, but she never could reach the doorknob. This little doorway though, was special. Not only was it small, but it had no door in it. As soon as Poppy saw this doorway, her heart started to race. “I wonder where that might lead to,” she thought. And so she jumped off the bed, walked towards the doorway, and this is where her grand adventure, and our story, truly begins.