She cried. Oh how she cried.
What was wrong?
Jacobo swished his tail, trying to figure out what was happening.
Hours ago his master had burst into the circular room with four beds in a rage that had scared him enough to hid under the bed, and cause the other girls to leave.
Then she just started to cry.
Horrible wailings that depressed him.
He sat on the floor near his master's bed, head craned and his eyes fixed on her as she sobbed uncontrollably.
She was so sad. But why? Jacobo decided it was his job to find out why.
He crouched up on his haunches and in a single leap cleared a jump onto the bed. It was quite a jump even he was impressed with.
He delicately stepped over her body smelling her. She had no injuries. Why was so crying like she was hurting?
She turned over and looked at him as he rested a paw on her chest with water on her face. She sniffled and picked him up and held him above her as she laid.
"Oh Jacobo, its awful, just awful. Your…you're the only thing I….I have anymore. My only family."
Jacobo cocked his head. He had no idea what she was saying, but he knew that when someone said "Jacobo" he would probably get a treat.
He looked at her hopefully; maybe his master was planning to give him a treat. He hoped it was ham. The ham from dinner. Jacobo licked his lips, thinking about dinner. He liked ham a lot. And chicken.
Then an idea struck him. His master hadn't eaten at dinner. Maybe she was sad because she hadn't had any ham. That was bound to make anyone sad. She should get some. And bring him some too.
She sent him down gently next to her on the bed, and rolled over to turn away from him. She was no longer sobbing, but hiccupping little cries every so often.
So it wasn't about ham. Jacobo was disappointed, but never the less still tried to solve the mystery.
He upped himself and sat back up on his haunches, looking at his so sad master. He strained him memory, trying to think of a time when he was sad without being hurt.
Then, in a memory that made the fur all over his body prick, he remembered.
Not remembered in the sense that he had specific memories, but more sensations he had only been a kit at the time. He didn't remember his mother too well, but he remembered her sent. He remembered the sent of his brothers and sister. He remembered the warm darkness from their den. He remembered all the snuggling.
Then, the earth would shake. Human voices would yell. Then he was alone. He didn't know what happened to his mother or siblings, but they had left. Maybe to safety. But he was left alone in the den.
He remembered the sent of the human hand that reached in. Jacobo had bitten the hand, but he had been so young and weak that his baby teeth had hardly left a mark. The hand had taken him. He had struggled.
They next few memories were nothing but blurs of strange sensations of cold metal and human voices.
Then. The cage.
He remembered very well the cage.
He remembered the thick wire encasing him in a space where he couldn't even stand. He chewed the wire, he yowled for his mother.
He had….cried. Cried in a away without tears or any injury.
Then, she came.
He remembered her soft voice. She had stuck a finger in the cage to pet him, which he nipped. He arched his back and had growled trying to make her leave.
But she didn't. She stayed there and talked to him and brought him food.
She would leave for hours at a time, and he would fear that she wouldn't come back. The cage was maddening. It would never get dark. Days upon days of never ceasing light. Maddening, absolutely maddening. He would feel delirious and begin to see his mother outside the cage. He would ram his body against the cage, trying to get to her.
He didn't know how long he spent in that cage, only that the cage had become significantly smaller over the course of his stay.
Finally, the day came where everything changed. The girl with the sweetest sent. The sent that brought him the few pleasures and comfort he knew of, opened his prison.
He smelled her fear as she snipped the wires apart.
At first, he had been almost too frightened to leave, but slowly took his first steps out.
He remembered his choice. He could run. Run away and get away as far as he could. He didn't. He jumped at her. She hugged him for the first time, and for the first time in a long time, he felt safe.
She had taken him a place where she and he stayed. She had made him in her closet. At first he was frightened, being reminded of the cage, but when he was enveloped in the warm, soft darkness, the only darkness he had seen since his den, he fell immediately to sleep.
As so went their lives. During the day, during her long absences, he would sleep. At night she would open her closet and he would jump into her arms and she would let him play all night.
She fed him played with him, bathed him (he loved that, he loved swimming), and treated him like his mother would. But he didn't view her as his mother. She was his friend, his best friend.
A slight hiccup jerked Jacobo out of his semi thoughts and he felt a surge of sentimental awareness for his master. He gently stepped over her and gazed with his huge green eyes at her. She had fallen asleep, but still had an expression of pain on her face.
He looked up as the other girls came back into the room quietly, whispering as they climbed into their beds. He waited until they feel asleep; just to make sure they wouldn't do anything to his master.
He stretched himself out in his favorite sleeping position, over his master's neck. She stirred slightly, but didn't wake.
Jacobo drifted off to sleep, deciding that maybe his master had a cage he just couldn't see.