Chapter 1
Before the great Long Cat made his ascension to the heavens and became the all-powerful ruler over the dominion of humankind, he was a simple and humble cat with a coat of great white fur and an atypically long body living a life that ordinary cats typically live with human masters. The cat never imagined that his carefree life would change. On one fateful day, after returning home from his routine walk in the surrounding neighborhood, Long Cat found his master sitting motionless on the couch. The bowl of popcorn the master was holding was on the floor with its contents scattered all over the place. His eyes were closed and there was a trail of drool on his chin.
Thinking that his master was simply asleep, Long Cat went near his master's leg and rubbed his cheeks on it. He then climbed up the couch and rested on his master's lap. Ever patient, he waited for his master to awaken, but that never happened. Five hours later, Long Cat's master continued remaining motionless and still. The master's body also became very cold, as cold as the surrounding wooden furniture. A sense of dread came upon Long Cat. His master was never that cold, except when he was just coming into house after spending hours outside in some unknown place during cold weather. What was happening to his master?
Long cat was beginning to feel desperate. He began scratching on his master's cold body. When that didn't work, he climbed to his master's face on the master's overstretched T-shirt and pawed repeatedly on the skin, but his master still remained motionless. Moments later, it dawned upon Long Cat that his master was dead. Yes, dead. He knew about the concept of death but never thought much about it. Death was something Long Cat usually attributed to the mice that he'd killed and not himself or his master. A feeling of gloom set over Long Cat. His pampered, carefree life was now over.
Before Long Cat could think any further about his predicament, his stomach began to growl loudly from hunger. He hadn't eaten since the morning. Going to the place where his master typically placed the food bowl, he found out that it was empty. Turning left, he could see that one of the kitchen cabinets were opened and the food was all there, except that he couldn't access them. He looked at the cans of delicious tuna while whimpering. Long cat didn't know how to open the cans to get to the tuna. Only his master knew, but he's already dead, and flies were already outside the windows of the houses, banging on the glass in their relentless attempts to get to the corpulent body that was starting to rot.
Needing to satisfy the hunger as soon as possible or risk starving, Long Cat climbed up to the countertop and, lo and behold, there were unwashed dishes in the sink with scraps of food still on them. He quickly went and devoured the food scraps sticking tenaciously on the plates, but afterwords his hunger was still not satiated. From his position on the countertop, Long Cat could see the trash bin. Realizing that there might be food in the container where garbage goes, he leapt down from the countertop and went to the trash bin. With some effort, he stood on two legs to reach the top of the bin. The container then overturned, spilling its foul-smelling contents on the tiled floor. There were more food scraps, especially from the nearly empty, opened cans of tuna. Soon he was satiated, but knew that his stomach would growl soon. Long Cat had no choice but to leave his master's home, but he decided that he would spend one last night there. He climbed back on lap of his dead master and slept.
Early next morning, when the golden rays of sunlight had first shown through window, Long Cat had awakened. His master's dead body was as cold as usual. About a dozen flies were flying around in aimless circles atop the master's head and some of them had landed on his body and was laying their eggs. Long Cat gave his master one last look before jumping off his lap. He walked through the lower opening in the back door to the outside world as he had done many times before, but this time was never going to return back to his master's home. From the backyard, he walked to the front lawn. The tall grass on the lawn was as green as ever. He crossed the black asphalt road to the other side of street into a wooded area. The grass was much less green here and shade provided by the tall, wide branches of the trees cast a blanket of darkness in the surrounding area. Long Cat gave his long time home one last look before venturing deep into the wooded area.
After traveling for three hours through unfriendly brush and foliage, Long Cat saw black asphalt in the distance. It was an empty parking lot. By chance, there was a large rusty dumpster nearby that was overflowing with trash. Thinking that he had struck a possible goldmine of food scraps, Long Cat quickly ran forward to reach green-colored dumpster. When he knocked a soda can on the ground during the run, there was sudden stirring within the large steel container. Six cats with motley-colored fur coats rose slowly from the dumpster. They all stared at Long Cat with cold, suspicious eyes while remaining an eerie silence.
"Ummm... Hello!"
The third cat standing from the left replied with a tone of unfriendliness, "What do you what?"
"Is there food in the dumpster?"
"Yes, there's plenty of food."
"C-Can you share some of it?"
"NO!" came the previous cat's curt reply.
"O-Okay, it's alright. I'll go somewhere else."
Long Cat then noticed opened tuna cans in the outlying trash. When he poked his face in one of the cans, he heard a threatening meowing sound.
"MEOW! I've already told you that we won't be sharing!"
"But this isn't in the dumpster!"
"Everything in this parking lot is ours! Go away now! Scram!" That statement was emphasized by a threatening bristling of the cat's fur.
Long Cat turned around to one of the parking lot exits and began walking. However, it seemed that his pace was a bit to slow for the gang of unfriendly cats for in mere moments their leader ordered two cats to chase him away. Long Cat began running after realizing that two ferocious cats were chasing after him. Even after he was out of the lot, they were chasing, but they finally stopped after one street block.
"Don't ever come back to the parking lot. If you do, we'll do worse than just chase you!" said one of the cats while revealing the razor sharp claws on his paw menacingly. The two cats then left, leaving Long Cat standing alone terrified in the corner of an unfamiliar street.
As Long Cat wandered randomly without a destination in the neighborhood that was new to him, he noticed that it was dirty and unkempt. Graffiti and pockmarks decorated the walls of some run-down buildings. The sidewalks were stained with soot and grime. Currently, there was hardly any people walking in the sidewalks, and Long Cat was at least grateful for that for he could explore much more easily. There was a lot of trash on the streets, but nothing was edible, to his dismay.
After much walking, Long Cat came upon an alley. Tall buildings lined both sides, making much of area dark. As luck would have it, there were some dumpsters and trash cans. Unfortunately, upon a closer inspection Long Cat found that there was nothing edible in the trash cans. The two dumpsters were nearly empty save for several pieces of broken, worn-down furniture, used syringes, beer bottles, and a middle-aged man sleeping in one of them. Just when he was about to leave, Long Cat saw a flicker of light. As he got closer to the source of light, he realized with glee that the object that was reflecting the light was a plastic tray of partially-eaten food.
"Yes, I've finally found food!"
Just when he was beginning to nibble on a fish stick, something struck his back, knocking him to the side and the fish stick out of his mouth.
"MEEOOOOOOW!"
"This food is ours now!" said the pigeon who had just dive-bombed Long Cat.
"But I found it first!"
Pigeons on the edge of the rooftop right above Long Cat rained their droppings on him, dirtying his pristine white fur coat.
"GAHH!"
"Scram or I'll have my flock dive bomb and poop on you some more!"
"No! I found the food first!"
"My fellow pigeons, teach this ignorant feline a lesson!"
"Ahhhhhh!" cried the cat as he was being pummeled by relentless attacks of the feral pigeons, while those standing in the sidelines cooed and sneered derisively at the cat.
Long Cat struggled out of the alley. It was until he was far away from the tray of food that the pigeons stopped attacking him. He could only look on helplessly as the pigeons devoured ravenously on the food that should have been his. After filling up their bellies, the pigeons flew out of the alley, but not before dropping more poo on Long Cat. He tried to dodge the attacks from above, but the droppings from the two dozen pigeons were so numerous that most of them didn't miss.
Despite having little hope that there might be scraps, Long Cat walked back to the clear plastic tray of food and found it empty as expected, except for several tiny morsels, but they were stained with droppings by the pigeons just to spite him. Because he was so hungry, he forced himself to eat the few morsels of food, poo and all. He then wondered where he should go next.
A garbage truck came into the alley, forcing Long Cat to run away a distance. Two workers came out and began emptying the contents of the trash bins into the compactor in the back of the truck. The truck then backed up more to pick up the dumpster with its hydraulics. It was then that Long Cat remembered that there was someone sleeping in the dumpster. He went to the two men standing next to the truck and attempted to alert them with his meows. At the same moment the two workers began arguing about sports. The man who had been sleeping in the smelly dumpster began screaming for help, but the two workers still hadn't noticed. It wasn't until Long Cat jumped up and scratched the skin of one of the worker's hands that they became aware of those screams. Instead of thanking Long Cat, the man kicked him away. They hurried to stop the trash compactor, but by then it was already too late.
Dark, billowing clouds began covering the sky. Long Cat looked upwards and felt small sprinkles of water on his face. It was going to rain soon and he needed to find shelter quickly or risk catching a cold. He came upon a bus stop, but unfortunately it wasn't one of the sheltered ones. It only consisted of a sign post and a wooden bench. The gaps between the slats in the bench prevented it from being a shelter. There was an old woman sitting on the bench and Long Cat walked up to her.
"Meow."
"Oh, you poor cat. Here, have some fish."
The old lady reached into a bag and pulled out a small slice of salmon meat with her bare, withered hands. Long Cat gladly accepted the slice of fish and meowed in thanks. He allowed the lady to pet him for a while until the bus came.
"The bus has arrived. Well, good bye cat!"
Long Cat wanted to get on the bus after the old lady but the driver closed the door before he could get on. The bus then quickly moved away, splashing the water from the puddle at the edge of the sidewalk on Long Cat, making his body wet before the rain did. The rain was starting to intensify and he needed to find shelter quick. He ran through the intensifying rain for several blocks and eventually came upon an open area beneath a freeway overpass. There were several worn-down cars parked in the open area that was also littered with non-organic trash. Deciding to spend the night there, Long Cat chose a nondescript spot behind a car and stopped there for his dinner. After finishing the slice of salmon, he curled into a ball and cried himself to sleep while thinking about the good times he had with his master.
To Be Continued...