Prologue

Rae's mother is dead. Her father is immersed with town politics and happenings. He takes her with him on an errand and she meets Kats for the first time.

I was twelve years old when my mom died.  Her death was not sudden, or something that came as a surprise.  She'd been dying for a long time.  Most of the last year of her life was spent too weak to leave her bed.  The curtains were never open, always drawn against the light too painful for her lackluster eyes.  She was always sleeping.  Her ashen face was paler than the starkness of the pillow.  Her brown hair, once full of curls and bounce, was dull and limp with her illness.  On the occasion that she was awake, we would talk in hushed whispers to one another.  I imagined we were like sisters telling each other secrets in the darkness of our nighttime room.

            Then, her bed was empty.  The curtains were opened, letting sudden bright light spill in onto the bare bed and the quiet room.  The nurse took Mom's life-sustaining equipment.  I became a shadow in the house, sulking from room to room with my music player shutting the world out.

            Maybe that's why I felt the connection with the most dangerous thing on the planet.  A spark.  Some sort of understanding. I was in a dark place, and so were they.

            A few days after Mom died, Dad dragged me with him to the warehouse.  I didn't want to go.  But that didn't matter.  He'd been informed that someone had trapped a couple kats, the wildest of all the wild creatures on this alien planet.  Or so stories about them said.  He had to take me along.  Mom was dead.  The nurse was gone.  There wasn't a choice.

            I was still reeling from her death.  She'd only been gone a short while.  Her absence, though I'd been prepared months for it, was still a shock.  Knowing it was going to happen had not made me any less pissed at the universe for taking her away from me.

            While Dad spoke with the mayor, policemen, and veterinarian about possible euthanasia, I curled my upper lip in disdain and wandered away.  The building was dark and creepy, but I was not afraid.  My music pounded in my ears, muffling the effect of the world on my senses.  I shoved forward through odds and ends of equipment until I came to a large iron cage.

            My breath caught in my throat.  Green, glowing eyes.  Three sets.  They were looking straight at me like multiple stabs to my body.  Piercing.  My legs trembled.  Caught in their collective gazes, I couldn't move.

            When I remembered to breathe, and that they were behind bars, I thumbed my music off and tugged the buds from my ears.  The world was strangely quiet.  I let the buds dangle around my neck as I stared back at the supposed most dangerous animal on Sumer.  But, they didn't seem all that dangerous to me.  Unlike tales I heard adults recount over and over at the breakfast table, on the porch, or in the garage, these eyes did not watch me with hunger and ferocity.  Rather, I felt my own sorrow and helplessness reflected back to me.

            I breathed.

            The kats moved, and so did I.  Like some silent query had bid me, “Come closer,” I answered and stepped to the cage.  Placing my hands on the cool bars, I peered in.  I was not afraid of the wild creatures on the other side.  They shifted, their eyes moving in the dark.  Their giant, shadowy forms ducked away from me.  One in particular met my gaze with an intelligence that I was not aware existed in the species.  He stood, towering above me in the cage, and stepped closer to me.  I could feel his heat on my hands he was so close.

            I didn't move.  I craned my head up to look into his feline-like face.  Small, rounded ears pricked towards me, waiting like a patient man with palms outspread.  The short, gray fur around his face was smoothed back.  His lips quivered around his small, rounded muzzle.  The nose was pale, pink velvet.  There were no whiskers.

            I met his green, pleading eyes.

            These were not wild creatures.  They were not dangerous.

            The lights flashed on.  I squinted in the sudden brightness.  The group in the cage huddled together, casting worried gazes upon each other.  The one standing shifted away as his eyes looked behind me.

            “Rae,” Dad yelled, starting me.  I had not really heard his voice in several days, had resorted to lip reading rather than listen to him trying to console me.  I jerked away from the cage.  “What the hell are you doing? Those animals are dangerous.”  He grabbed me around my shoulders with his large, work roughened hands and pulled me close to him.  His brown eyes were fearful under his bushy brows.

            The kats behind the thick iron bars watched us.  Frightened and staying near each other, they pressed against the backside of their cage.  Unable to get any further away.  Unable to escape.

            “C'mon, honey,” Dad said as the police, the mayor, and the vet carrying a rifle, all gathered around.  They were big men.  I knew their faces.  Little did I know that they would forever be etched with contempt in my memory from this moment forward.

            “You don't need to see this.” He spoke softly while he nodded to the men.  The vet raised the rifle to his shoulder and waited.  He looked at me, and then at Dad.

            My heart seized.  Realization dawned.

            “You're going to kill them?” I cried.  Euthanasia.  Death.

            “Rae.” Dad leaned down next to me.  “They are very dangerous animals.  We can't risk turning them loose and having them come back.  People's lives are at stake, and our livestock.”

            I gasped, shocked and heart pumping.  I stared at the Kats.  They shuddered in fear, skin covered in velvet smooth fur twitched.  They knew.  There was nothing I could do to save them.  There was nothing they could do to save themselves.  They were looking at the last few moments of life.  Mewing like whimpers met my ears.  I cried.

            Dad dragged me away.  My eyes were caught on the solemn gaze of the kat that had approached me.  He wanted to communicate.  Around him, his companions huddled close.  His intelligent stare held mine, trying to convey some silent message to me.  Our locked eyes was severed as Dad forced me through the side door into the cold, winter world outside.

            Pop, pop, pop.

            The gun cracked and echoed in the building.  Were they bullets?  “Humane” darts filled with deadly poison?

            My breath hitched and caught. I gasped, heaved for breath like a fish thrown suddenly into an unfamiliar world without water.  Dad led me away to our car.  I shoved the buds back into my ears with shaking fingers and turned my music back on, trying to drown out the cruel world that stole my mom and killed the innocent.