It was dark as I wandered around the town, down new streets and alleys I had never smelled before. It began to rain and I couldn’t go back to the den like I would usually, so I thought I would go into one of the human dens. I found one that didn’t smell very strongly of human with a gap under the door which was just tall and wide enough for me to squeeze through. It was warm and dry inside and I cautiously looked around.

The first room smelled of roots and vegetables the likes of which I would find in our alley from time to time. I was hungry and needed some meat. Just then, I heard the scratching of a mouse; actually, a whole nest. I waited in the shadows where their scent was strongest, my mouth watering and the pang in my stomach almost hurting. As soon as one showed itself, poking a sniffling nose out a hole in the wall and daring to wander into the room, I pounced on it. There was a hollow sound of a thump when I landed on the mouse which must have carried through the house, for I heard a human approach.

A glowing light came toward me and I had to decide quickly if I should flee or stay. Since it was slow to approach, I decided see what would happen. My full attention was on the light and the tap, tapping of a stick. A human with a crooked spine slowly lumbered into the room carrying a candle to see by and a stick in her hand. My heart fluttered ready to flee should the stick fly toward me at any moment. The mouse was still in my jaws, as I watched the woman. She stopped and looked down at me. The stick remained unmoving at her side.

“Was that you?” the human huffed. “Well, I suppose you can stay if you get rid of those mice for me. I don’t have the energy to deal with them these days.” I dropped the mouse and meowed at her, but she just turned and went back the way she had come. The thick stick came down in cadence with her opposite foot as she made her way back in the direction she had come. I followed her very quietly in the shadows to watch her. She turned, sat on a large bench, placed her candle on a small table next to it, leaned her stick nearby, and blew the candle out. She pulled her gnarled feet out of some flimsy coverings, laid down, and covered herself with several blankets.

I watched and listened until her breathing became deep and even. If she felt safe enough to sleep with me in the house, then perhaps I could also feel safe here. I wandered back into the front room and ate my kill. Then, I found a warm spot near the fireplace to sleep. I still faced that back room where the woman slept.

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In the morning, the woman put out a small plate with milk on the floor. It reminded me of my mother, although it was cold and didn’t taste right. It was nice not to have to hunt for all my food. Each day, I would find another mouse and nearly every day she would give me some milk or a little meat if she had any.

She also put an old pillow in the floor she said I could use as a bed to sleep on. She kept it next to the fireplace since she seemed to know I liked to sleep there. It was more comfortable than the floor, so it became where I always slept.

All I had to do was avoid the milkman, who came every few days and keep the mice out of her house and she seemed pleased with me. She’d get the fire going during in the mornings for warmth and to cook her food. Then she would bank it before going to bed.

She would chat with me as she worked in her kitchen. There was only the kitchen with a small table where she worked and ate and the back room where she slept. She told me of her children who never visited. She had a daughter married with children of her own and a son that had moved away to she knew not where. As the weeks turned to months that I shared her space, she began to spend more time sitting next to the fire in a chair that rocked gently covered with smelly blankets.

Her talk about her family shifted from complaints and regrets to recounting of happier times. Sometimes I almost felt like I had met her children and followed her to her Master’s house where she would sweep and cook. She started putting my milk on the table and didn’t fuss when I jumped up to lap it up. She called me her little scavenger and told me even though I was black, she didn’t consider me bad luck at all. I wondered if my bad luck was why my mother had gone away.

One morning, I went out to hunt, and when I came back, there was still no fire in the hearth and something didn’t smell right. I crept into her back room where she was lying very still under her dingy blankets. A few days later, when the milkman noticed no one was collecting the milk jugs, he went in and found the woman as I had.

More people came later and said she had died. They took her away. A new person moved in, but whenever they saw me, they would tell me to scat.

When I squeezed under the door again, just to check the woman wasn’t back, the person yelled and tried to hit me with a poker for the fire. The next time I came around, the door had been fixed so that I could not get under it. The lady with the crooked back was gone for good. I’d have to find my own way. Was that the bad luck she had mentioned?

I skulked around my old home a while. Perhaps I thought the lady with the crooked back and walking stick would come back. Perhaps I hoped. It did no good. She didn’t return. Perhaps dying was a permanent thing. There hadn’t been the smell of any predator nor any blood, so I hadn’t been sure.