There is something funny in the air, I can feel it. I think there is a conspiracy. My sister has already hidden herself; perhaps I should do the same. I am hungry so will take a bite to eat. Now that was the wrong decision. He got me by the scruff of my neck and is holding me down, calling out to his partner to come. She arrives and I am picked up and trapped. All around me metal bars, no way to escape. I can snarl and cry as much as I want, to no avail. I am locked in. I try to bite through the bars but they are too strong. Now I am floating on air. I am being carried in this cage; leaving my home and all that I know for something unknown. I can hear a door opening, I am moved upwards and the door is closed. There is noise all around me. I can hear talking and then I am moving. Well I am not moving but the place where I have been put is moving. There are smells in the air I recognise; something from the outside world, a freshness reminding me of a walk in a garden. The fragrance of fresh grass, of damp earth mixed with a more heavy smell, the smell surrounding the house and garden where I live: a chemical aroma that I always associate with the place where I am now trapped in my cage.
I hear a regular hum and sway from side to side. When will this stop? There is a sharp turning movement and then there is no longer any motion. I hear the sound of a door being opened and I am again flying, sailing through the air, being lifted to another plain. A strong smell of fresh air engulfs me, if only the bars were not in between. I could run for miles, feeling free and embracing my world again.
“Please help me someone, please” but my calls are not answered. I am not understood. We enter another place, but this is even more frightening. I see one of my kind also in a cage, captured by the others. No chance of escape, just sitting silently and waiting for his fate. My companion disappears with his cage, being carried away and he is also crying out for help. “Oh, if only I had hid like my sister, then I would not be in this predicament.”
I am now on a higher level, still in my cage and can smell the smells of my kind all around me, although I am alone. My capturer is there as well as another two of her sort and they are communicating. I look up with pleading eyes, and they have pity and open my cage and I am taken out of my prison, but I am still not free. One of my capturers is pinning me down and the other is holding a sharp instrument; memories awake somewhere from a far gone time and place. It all seems so familiar. “Hold her” says a voice and the sharp instrument is brought nearer and enters my body. I keep silent as I do not want them to think that I am willingly their prisoner. Who knows what they are going to do with me. “Put me down, please put me down” I cry but I have no chance and am put back into my prison, am again surrounded by the crossed bars of metal, limiting my view on the world. Now I attack. I open my mouth and make such threatening gestures that my guards get worried. I snarl and my eyes show such an expression that the others are frightened. “No, please not that” I call but my cage is now covered with a cloth to prevent my teeth sinking into the flesh of the others. The cage is locked and I am again being transported through the air. I see another of my kind entering to the place where I am leaving. “What are they doing to us?” I wonder. My cage is again put into this object that moves and the same feelings come over me when I was imprisoned: trapped again.
I now feel tired, I give up, I can no longer resist. Then at last something pleasant: familiar smells and noises. We have stopped and I am again travelling, but this looks familiar. I hear a door opening and oh wonder, I am released. My cage is opened and there is no-one to stop me. I jump for my life and am at last free again. My sister comes to greet me and I am back again in my four walls.
“Nera, we are back home now, so you do not have to be frightened any more” I said to my cat when we arrived home this morning from the visit to the vets for her annual jabs. I have to put my cat in a cage, put her in the car and drive to the vets and afterwards bring her home again in the car. The story might be the process from the viewpoint of a cat.
Rita's "Riting" Challenge #6: The Imprisonment
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