Chapter 1: Fever Dream

I awoke with a splitting headache and felt deliriously feverish. It took me a minute to realize what my surroundings were. A simple white towel coated with some light stains covered the floor. Noticeably, there was a pale brown stain by my head. The foul taste in my mouth hinted at the origin. I, with some concentrated effort, rose myself into a sitting position. The room felt relatively small, but it had enough room for me to fully stand. A basin of water rested at the far wall. As I looked closer, I realized this room seemed wrong. One wall was all bars with no visible door built into it. The rest seemed to be just stainless-steel sheets.
As I took in my surroundings, I noted a peculiar feeling behind me. I turned my head sharply to catch the sight of what could only be described as a furry tentacle waving in place. I rose my arm to touch it and realized something far larger was wrong. That arm was covered in white fur with black patches. At the end of it was a round paw. In my panic at the situation, I accidentally flexed my toes and saw claws rise from the observed paw. I instantly knew what I was, or at least what category. I was clearly a feline of sorts, a quadruped given the paw was my forepaw, and I appeared to be of some kind of domestic breeding given cats do not naturally come in black and white without breeding.
My revelation had to wait as the headache I'd been ignoring spiked into a migraine. I felt nauseous with pain and felt myself retching in response. Someone out there must have noticed because a giant, at least to my perspective, peeked in and noticed the situation. In a pinching maneuver, they reeled in two bars, one dug into the ceiling and the other the floor and swung the whole barred wall away. Their hands were covered in semi transparent white gloves. Those hands wrapped around my chest and lifted me off the floor and out into that empty space. Reassuringly, they repositioned their grip on me to have one arm swung under my legs to rest on and the other acting as a physical barrier from dropping. The migraine and the fever kept me from complaining.
The giant took me into some kind of giant operating room complete with a stainless-steel table. They set me on the chilly table and turned their attention away to look for something. I didn't dare resist. I had neither the energy nor willpower to move from that spot. I faintly hoped this wasn't my end. The giant returned with a very large intimidating needle. I tried to scramble away with what little energy I had, but they caught me by the skin on the back of my neck, my scruff. Somehow that triggered an instinctive reaction of going perfectly limp. I felt the needle sink in and I tried to make my displeasure known. The giant responded with a soft cooing in an unknown language. Then things felt fuzzy and my energy lessened even more. I fell into a deep sleep as the giant continued to mutter incomprehensible words.
I awoke again in the steel room, but this time I felt infinitely better. In my now healthy state, I took to assessing myself. Given my build and my proportions, I could only guess I'd somehow become a cat. It strangely didn't bother me much. Something about how I couldn't remember before this room besides basic information made the situation more bearable. I mean, I'm an intelligent cat now. I can't change that as far as I'm aware. Cats don't have it that bad either. Recognizing this as a veterinarian's building, I contented myself to wait. Either I'd be adopted/taken back by whomever left me here, or I'd be euthanized. There was no means for me to change my fate, so it wasn't worth worrying about.
Soon enough the giant, or as I now recognized as a human, made an appearance again. They seemed to be noting my improved condition and opened the wall again. Their gloved hand reached forward and began to rub me softly. It was like a perfect massage. I could feel the tension leave my body and a soft rumbling seemed to be emanating from my chest. I pressed into the hand, begging for the attention. I saw the veterinarian's eyes soften at my response. It seemed they hadn't expected me to survive whatever I had been sick with. After a few more rubs across my silky fur, they withdrew the hand and closed the wall again. They then hung a piece of paper off one of the bars, as I can only assume, as status of my current condition.
I let my instincts guide me as time passed. Drinking from the basin somehow was natural. Sometime in the evening, the human returned with a bowl of brown mush. It looked like vomit, but the smell was heavenly. I set to eating it down, pacing myself. If I had been as sick as the veterinarian seemed to display, I needed to keep the food down. I finished the food polishing the bowl with my tongue in about thrice the time I felt like I could have eaten it. The vet seemed to have been watching and looked happy that I hadn't scarfed the thing down as fast as possible. They wrote something on the piece of paper and left again.
The next day the veterinarian returned, but this time someone else accompanied them. It was a woman in her twenty somethings who wore a sweater with small kitten designs embroidered in it. She took one look at me I could tell she was smitten. She poked her fingers through the bars and I took a tentative sniff before rubbing up against them. She was my key out of here. I couldn't afford to make a bad impression. Seeming with the vet's permission, she opened the wall and began to hold me. She definitely was a fan of cats since she held me with extreme care. I felt no discomfort and was unconsciously purring again. She seemed to be assessing me as she started to walk us out the vet's office. I couldn't understand what she said, but somehow her cadence gave me a hint. With a pause in between her incomprehensible words, one word came out clear.
"Smudge."
I perked at the word which seemed to have excited the woman. She began rubbing me softly muttering those alien words with the one recognizable word smudge smattered throughout. I realized that was my new name. Smudge. Why did it invoke in me a strange sense of DeJa'Vu?