Epilogue: Free

It was some time before I found the strength to tell Alonzo what had happened to me, though I know not if I will be able to do so when he arrives to talk to me. For a few days we were happy, we were part of a tribe. But gradually things have begun to go back to the way they were. I have become an outsider again now that I have recovered from my illness – a concussion and a broken arm – and my kittens were born. But my kittens are welcome members of the tribe, and since they have been able get about on their own, there has not been a Jellicle that disliked them.

They are growing up now, the three of them, and I begin to feel the call again. The shadows are still there, even if I have banished their demon God, that angry ghost that had ruled my life for so many years. I am just now beginning to grasp just how many years that was. My mother, the queen he snatched from the human temple, was one of the sacred Cats from the glory days of the human nation of Egypt, which has been in decline these thousands of years.

I have power within me, from the sacred line of my mother and the shadows of my demon father; these gifts are not something I can control, nor would I even presume to call them gifts except that Old Deuteronomy insists that they are. Most of the Jellicles know nothing of my past, and I prefer it that way. If they knew, I think I would be more of an outsider than ever I have been before.

I am unsure how to tell these things to Alonzo, my dearest and most beloved, but I know that however impossible the story, he will listen to me.

And yet it is tempting – so tempting – to hide in the shadows the rest of my days, to worry and fret over what I was born and what I might become… I greet him with a purr and a nuzzle. The sun is setting and he has waited for me here, to listen to the tale I may not yet be able to tell him. It is a frightening thing, to confront one's past and lay oneself completely bare. The shadows, present as always, beckon me. I am tempted. It is too light here, and I am a creature of the dark.

But for him I will dare the light.