It was a dark and stormy night…
Torrents of rain poured down from the low dark clouds. Windows were shuttered and doors barred to the late hours and the miserable wet. Not a soul was about to brave this horrible weather, the people that lived on Macintyre street, with its small identical houses and postage stamp lawns, were either curled up in their beds or watching TV (or something equally cozy.)
A sopping wet ball of fur scurried along the sidewalk. It was about the size of a rat, and currently resembled a drowned one. Its little nose twitched sadly, searching for someplace warm and dry to wait out the storm. One single light broke through the gloom of the downpour – it was coming from a window in the second story of a house, not far from where the kitten, because that's what it was, was standing. A spark of hope lit in the kitten's small chest, and it began to run. Tiny paws kicked up rainwater and mud.
When it reached the house it was delighted to find a small swinging slat of wood built into the bottom of the human door that was just its size – this was almost too perfect! The kitten sniffed cautiously around the base of the cat-door before pushing on the wood with its head and sliding inside.
From the smell of the place this house was already owned by another cat – the kitten would have to be careful. Not a light in the house was on. Spotting some stairs the kitten remembered that the light had been on the second floor. Soaking wet paws left a tattoo of dark marks along the hardwood floor as the tiny animal made its bumbling way to the staircase. It took the kitten ten full minutes to scale the steps, but it finally made it. Nose twitching furiously, eyes dilated to their fullest to collect the most possible light in the pitch black hallway, it sniffed carefully at the base of every door it came across. The first two were duds – it could hear people sleeping in one, and the second one was empty.
The third door was closed, like the first, but the kitten could hear someone moving around inside. There was something squished between the bottom of the door and the floor so no light would leak out into the hallway – looked like a shirt or something. Smart. Being still extremely small, the kitten felt confident that it would be able to squeeze under that door to get into the room that it already knew was warm and lit. It purred happily to itself, loose skin stretching back from its face as it furiously wedged its round head under the door. The shirt that had been wedged beneath the door slid aside to make room for it.
With a resounding pop the kitten's head emerged on the other side! Its little backend wiggled triumphantly in the hallway!
Suddenly, a black hoodie came flying across the room, landing on, and successfully covering, the poor little kitten. It mewed in annoyance, pulling the rest of its body into the room and crawling out from under the black cloth.
The tiny animal squinted in the bright light of the room, eyes adjusting accordingly. It blinked happily, content and warm, and took in the scene: it was a fairly small room, walls painted dark blue, with a window looking out onto the street. A mattress was pushed into the corner with a few blankets and a pillow thrown over it – a makeshift bed, the kitten supposed. And, most importantly, stalking from one end of the room to the other, there was a boy. The kitten brightened immediately, it loved children! Happy and content with its new home, it pranced over to the mattress bed and cuddled up on the pillow, purring as loudly as physically possible.