Deliverance

I am out. Free. Back at my post.

And I must give credit where it's due: it was the Woman who sprung me. The Man helped, but clearly the Woman was the brains behind the elaborate jailbreak.

They must have bribed one of Fingerer's minions, because I saw one of them giving the Woman a lengthy and thorough tutorial on the secret workings of their various tubes and needles. And then, while the Man blabbered away with endless inane questions — a well-timed distraction — I saw the Woman quietly secure several bottles of powders and a large flask of clear liquid. Clever Woman, you've found the antidote!

I was quietly and unceremoniously whisked from my cage into a small transport box. Not the most subtle of smuggling conveyances, but I did my part and lay flat and still. We narrowly dodged disaster on the way out when Doctor Fingerer appeared and blocked our egress. But the Man opened up with a barrage of idiotic queries, and the Woman took advantage of this misdirection to sneak me out of the labs.

It has not been an easy road back. The Woman continues to administer her antidotes daily, and despite the unpleasantness of the process, I cooperate. No price is to high to rid my body of the poisons visited upon me by Doctor Fingerer. And twice daily I am injected with some manner of super-serum that makes me feel once more like the warrior I am.

All that remains now is to find and destroy the labs of Doctor Fingerer, to set free the multitude of cats imprisoned therein, to burn the facility to the ground, and to piss on the ashes.

The Catrix

What happened? Where am I?

I was... I was... wait. I was in the fortress. Wasn't I? On the ancillary cushion that verges the main corridor with the mess hall. Something wasn't right, though. Something in the pit of my stomach, something off with my legs. Head swimming. And then... then I saw the Man, coming at me with his portable pinfold — that green gated transport box, that windowed coffin of his...

Now, I'm here. Where's here?

Small, enlcosed area, though not so small as the Man's box. Cage. And I smell... evil. Dark, sinister, cruel. Here with me is a small blanket, a scattering of litter, some food — stale. And water — suspicious. Am I in prison? Solitary?

Not quite. There are other voices around me — cats. Angry, frightened, groggy, drugged. All around me: above, below, on all sides. Cats stacked stories high in rows miles long, in identical pods, many with weird tubes snaking out of them.

Tubes! My claws, there are tubes going into me! What the hell?! I am being pumped full of — what? What horrors are being forced upon me here? What twisted fate is being injected into me and my brethren in this evil place?

This cannot be the Man's doing. Despite the bizarre mysteries of his recent Bay B experiments, I know that his projects, though freakish, tend to be playful, kinetic, and noisy. Here we have quite the opposite — it is all very quiet, clinical, morbid. And the smell, I know this smell...

Fingerer. Doctor Fingerer is behind this. I didn't place it right away as I've only seen his lobby and his cold prodding-table before. I'd not been exposed to the fiendish bowels of his inner labs. But the smell I now recognize — it is the pungent taint that lingered upon Fabio when he would return, half-shaved and heavily drugged, after long absences. Is this the place they brought my brother? No wonder he wound up inert and half-mad.

Well, to hell with this place. I am getting out, just as soon as I can figure out how these tubes work. Fortunately, Fingerer's minions were less than thorough in processing my admittance — I still have my knives, tucked safely away and waiting. The next time one of them comes poking for blood, she'll get more blood than she bargained for. I only hope I cross paths with Fingerer on my way out. We'll see how he likes it when the tube's up the other orifice.

Hey now, whoa there. Whoa.

When thumbs first sprang from the Small Man's flippers, thus ushering in the clutch-and-hurl chapter of this weird new world, I was thankfully and providentially immune to his graspiness. The Woman's hair, the Rodent's ears, the Man's chest-wisps all fell easy prey to Small Man's spit-slimey grapsers, but not Shmool.

For one thing, I prudently kept my distance, having observed the perimeter about the Small Man within which one was subject not only to his pinchery, but also to his cascades of viscous upheaval. The Man and the Woman, somewhat inexplicably, choose to remain within this zone almost without fail, thus taking the brunt of his daily fusillade and spending the better part of their new lives half-soaked. Darwin at work.

Even so, every now and then the Small Man would be brought close to me, usually because I happened to be in repose upon the giant purple cushion when the Woman lugged him over for another bizarre slurp-and-burp ritual. This was tolerable and permissible, as the Small Man had his mind elsewhere and seemed to have a natural understanding that the Shmool was not to be grabbed. Again, Darwin in action.

That has changed. Yesterday, while I dreamt serenely of drunken squirrels, I suddenly became aware that somthing had me — by the face, no less. Emerging from my slumber, I realized that I was seeing the world through the pudgy little digits of Small Man's lemur-paw, now squarely affixed to my nose, fingers curling tighter under my chin, stumpy thumb pressing hard between my eyes.

For a moment, I was bewildered — where had this thing come from? And more importantly, what the hell was I going to do? One cannot bring one's fangs into play if one's mandible is clamped shut. I tried pulling back, but that was no help — Small Man was reaching over my head to grasp my face. Pulling back only drew me closer to him, thus improving the angle of his reach.

So I froze. Make like a lifeless pillow and see if he'll release me...

After a moment, his hand slipped back from my face onto the top of my head, and he started to gently stroke and scratch between my ears. I held as still as I could, eyes darting about the room, looking for an avenue of safe retreat (no luck there — the entire fortress is so littered with Small Man's equipment as to be practically unnavigable).

Carefully, slowly, almost imperceptibly, I craned my neck away from Small Man and angled my head an easy quarter turn, putting as much distance as I could between his plump pokers and my eye sockets. As he continued rubbing and kneading at the back of my head, I became aware of the voice of the Woman, laughing gently and encouraging the Small Man. “Good boy, good job, gentle, nice cat, nice kitty cat.”

No! Not nice kitty cat! Mean, tough, battle-hardened killer cat! This was wrong, all wrong!

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of his clutching and releasing. If I could time it just right, I might be able to leap away between grasps. Steady, easy, steady...

And suddenly, the thing was gone. I chanced a quick glance over my shoulder to see the Small Man had returned to his slurping work, and taken his meat hook with him. With as much dignity as I could summon, I got up and took a couple measured steps away from the two of them, establishing a safety margin that apparently will now have to be maintained at all times. And good thing, too — for the Small Man then proceeded blurp his sustenance all over the Woman, the grisly cascade running down her side and pooling up in the warm divot where I had reclined not 5 seconds ago.

Another daring escape.