#77 :At the Animal Shelter

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Sensei

I’m in a cage. Lately I seem to be in cages a lot and it's starting to piss me off. I move and pain streaks up and down my body. I don't even TRY to stifle a shriek. I let out a scream like a panther. I hurt. Fade to black....

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Consciousness returns in withered shards and bloody tatters, it stays a while and then it flutters away...and returns. I fade in and out of consciousness for a while. I finally begin to remember how I came to be here.

I seem to be missing my wings...my shoulders certainly hurt. It seems that everything else is gone also, I’ve got no battle rattle at all.

And I hurt.

Oh how I hurt. Due to my construction my bones are almost unbreakable, my skin is almost impossible to puncture, and I have a strong resistance to fire and suffocation, but I still bruise. I’m in great pain. Why is that? I should be healing. I was engineered to be a fast healer. A quick check on my heads up retinal display tells me that the internal nanomachines spread throughout my body are working full bore.

Unfortunately they seem to have meager resources since I've failed to eat in the last few days. In order to repair the most dangerous damage and keep me alive the nano-machines had used all stored up body fat. A lot of fat is in nerves and they took some of that. Not having insulation around my nerves doesn’t make me feel any better. It actively contributes to the pain. My nerves are on fire. Muscle mass was next. The nano-machines were eating me alive to keep me alive, and there are no nutrients left over for frivolous things such as pain suppression. I need food and I need it badly. Water too. I'm thirsty and dehydrated as well as starved.

I look around my new cage and survey my resources. Lo and behold there appears to be food and water in the corner. Not thinking, I attempt to jump up, intending to rush over to the food dispenser. That was a bad move,...... really bad. I let out another shrieking , burbling....whimper and collapse on the floor in a miserable, mewling puddle. I still hurt. I really, really hurt.

After a while I slowly and carefully slither over to the food bowl. It takes a long time to traverse just a short distance, I pass out a couple of times on the way. When I get there I pretty much just lay in the food. I feebly use my paw to assist in shoveling kibble down my throat, barely bothering to chew. Standing and eating like a normal cat is beyond my capabilities right now. My internal nanomachines eagerly utilize the food for energy and raw materials. They use it as fast as I can ingest it. After a time I roll over to the water dispenser and drink hugely...then I return to the food. I eat all that's available and I still want...I still NEED more.

I wail.......more FOOD!!

Someone hears me caterwauling and approaches my cage. I turn my bruised, burned and battered face, did I say burned? I'm seriously, horribly burned, ....toward them and snarl. It's a monkey-boy and right now monkey-boy’s are on my shit list. Right at the TOP. The only being I want to see less of than a monkey-boy is a Frost Demon.

During the last day or so I've been sacked, bagged, dragged, dropped, dumped and caged repeatedly. I had been catastrophically transferred from my home Dyson Sphere to who knows where I am now. I've been blown up, stomped on, beat up, dropped from orbit, blown up again, and crucified. I’d had a burning house collapse on me. All because of monkey-boys, and Frost Demons.

I wasn't happy with any of them and I had monkey-boys available to vent my spleen on. So I did. Verbally. I let it know in no uncertain terms what I thought of it, it's mother and the dog that sired it. But I didn't try to kill it. Heaven and all the Gods knows that I wanted to. I was tempted to try, But I didn't. I'm not stupid.

I think I scared it.

Luckily for me I didn't scare it AWAY since it refilled my food dispenser, several pounds of food this time, perhaps more than my body weight. The water was evidently plumbed in and was endless. Thank goodness for that.

That set the pattern. I drank, I ate, I slept. If anyone approached me I shrieked, snarled, spit, hissed and threatened bodily dismemberment. It was not all bluff.

I had food, water and appeared to be relatively safe.

Time passed...I don't know how much.

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Next Episode
#78: I lied…
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#76 :Death of a Friend
First Episode
# 1 : In the beginning…

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