I

Introduction

Life According to the Cats of Kuenifer

One needs more than nine lives to live in this family

The little beast shall be mine.  Heart and tail synchronize, and as my mother before, I find my pulse.  Steady and expectant, I bow, both to the ground and the orders that give life. As the small beast’s kin have fed on mine, long dead, I act. The blood pulsing through me pushes me onward.  As it must because I must, all my hair rising�"everything almost dies outside volition.  I confess but will never profess total detachment from the chase.  Some creatures may consider me solely enacting obligation.  If truth sounds, there is more.  Within that victorious and�"for the smaller creatures�"murderous leap, I will not admit a preference for blood, in color, viscosity or taste because I possess no such inclination.

I am in fact owed myself.  I like to think of my situation as a lose leasing.  Yes, higher creatures claim me.  I render them service, namely the catching of my meats, acknowledgement�"still they don’t know it all.  Nor do I claim or have ever claimed, at any time, to have a grasp on any totality.  Yet, I shall say that in moments of relaxed reserve, something else calls on the inside: in the fields, close to the ground, the sound resounds.  It is the heart pulsing in time with my life and out of time with the rest.

Author's Note

In process.