A/N: Written for the Challenges by the Dozen challenge at the general writing forum Caesar's Palace. Also written using the Caesar's Palace prompt Explorer.
Buttercup is old, now. His matted fur has begun to fall out in clumps, and his eyesight has begun to give, but he's a strong cat. Always has been.
He's sitting in the only sunny spot in the nearly-windowless barn, his legs tucked neatly under his rump. The hay is sticking up into his side like spears, but he doesn't mind so much, and he drifts off into comfortable sleep.
For a cat, he's seen much. For a cat, he should understand much.
If he could speak, he would say, in a cranky and crinkly voice, that cats definitely have dreams, for that afternoon he dreams of things that once were.
His birth came quickly, as if he were eager to get out of his mother and into the world, and he was the biggest and fastest of the litter. His mother would grow sore from his constant tugging at her nipples for milk with his little teeth that were so determined to get what he wanted and little squirming legs that would kick his brothers and sisters out of the way. When his eyes finally opened and he saw the grass and the bugs and the sky, he opened his mouth widely and yawned, baring his fangs for the clouds to see. And then he went tumbling into the field (before his mother scooped him up by the neck and brought him back to safety).
He doesn't quite remember how he was weaned, but he remembers catching his first mouse. He had been sitting in the long grass, wide eyes watching for any movement, when he saw a field mouse dart into a clearing, rearing its head to look for any danger, before it crouched to eat a few kernels of corn that the farmer had missed. Buttercup's shade of yellow fur made it easy for him to slip between the stalks and pounce on his prey with beginners enthusiasm, and he thought to himself with a sense of satisfaction that he was indeed a success.
Cats have nine lives, as legend has it, and Buttercup has definitely used up all of them. He was being drowned in a bucket, plunged in and in again, squirming, biting, yowling, but he couldn't move...until someone saved him. And then there was boom, boom, boom...the ground was shaking and it was so loud and things were falling. Buttercup leapt under something, anything, and somehow he managed to feel dignified as the world collapsed around him.
When the sky stopped falling and felt as if it were hovering over the earth, if the clouds of smoke had anything to do with it, he emerged from the rubble. He shook his body and a billow of dust flew off of him. Nothing here was left besides food for flies. But he made it, somehow.
…
His dreams past pleasantly sometimes, and not so pleasantly at others. The visions sweep through his head like a film from the cinema, but he doesn't stir. When Katniss finds him, later, still unmoved, he is smirking.