I have known this house for most of my life.

There aren’t many memories that I have without it, but I know they exist—tucked away into the folds of another universe, one with no warm fingers to trace the notch between my ears, no lilting crescendo of gibberish to beckon me over, no treats waiting in the cradle of a palm. In that faraway lifetime, I am the same dirty runt paddling against rainwater in the shallow of a curb before being chosen. Damned to the rough of the streets. Unchosen, unwanted; a stray. But not this one.

Sometimes, when the sun comes to play, and there is a patch of yellowed light stretching across the floorboards from the foot of the window, I see them prowling along the narrow line of the fence. They are not like me. I am not like them.

I am better than them.

I am better than her.

She comes sometimes, stopping in to stare at me with her sharp, yellow eyes. Her jowls are fat, her face round, her tail always stiff and searching. I watch her, and she watches me. When I watch too much, she hisses at me, mouth curling over yellow fangs, and I skitter backwards at the sheer physicality of the sound. But it's thrilling. It’s so thrilling to be despised by her, with her mean face, unclipped claws and missing ear that she wears like she did it herself. Thumper. Her name is Thumper.

I wait for her by the window every day. Recently, she’s been plunging into the front yard and prowling up to the window, up to me.

“Your human put out food yesterday,” Thumper spits. I didn’t expect her to be angry, and the bite in her tone rakes through my fur. I tense as she continues. “What did you tell it?”

“N-nothing.”

“Lies.”

I sway away from the direct burn of her gaze. “You left a dead bird yesterday. It knows about you. It just wants to be nice. I don’t control it.”

“The bird was for you.”

“Oh.” I pause, hooking my claws into the gaps between the floorboards. “To eat?” Thumper snarls and bats at me. Her claws shriek against the smudged barrier between us.

“N-no, it’s just—”

“What? Not even a ‘thank you’? I didn’t expect it, not from you. You didn’t even come out and look. You never do. But I saw you watch your human pick it up and throw it out and then put out that slop. Like a gift. That shit isn’t a gift. That bird, I hunted it and caught it with my own teeth. For you. And you give me slop.”

“It’s good,” I say weakly. “I eat it every day and it’s good. And I am grateful. For the bird.”

“Sure.”

“I just… don’t eat bird.”

“Choke on a rat and drown.”

I cower away from her. An apology sits on the tip of my tongue, and so does a strange urge to yowl at her, because nobody has ever spoken to me that way—but I don’t. Everything Thumper does is abrasive, unforgiving. I expect nothing less from her embarrassment. As if she can read my mind, she buts her head against the glass and bats at it with her long claws.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re better than me.”

I don’t say anything to that. I do think I am better than her. I know that I am. I know because I have never had to wrangle a bird from the sky to eat. I know because I have never had to rest beneath the big monsters that race the streets when they sleep, teetering between dreams and the waking world in case they one day move and crush me beneath their blind, clumsy feet. I have never had to fight and lose an ear to a better warrior. I have never had to convince myself I was proud about it, either.

I want for nothing. Thumper wants for everything.

“Aren’t you ashamed?”

I tilt my head. “What?”

“We are predators. We are meant to be feared, meant to be great. We are meant to hunt and breed and climb and catch the stars from the sky. Have you ever even explored more than your precious tree-floor? Doesn’t that embarrass you? Aren’t you insulted by what you’ve become?”  

“No.”

She hisses. “You should be.”

“But why?”

Thumper rears back like I’ve shocked her. “There’s a whole world out there, and you aren’t even curious about it. You have no idea what’s out there. You have no idea because you’re stuck inside a comfortable cage. It’s pathetic.”

I don’t hiss at her. I don’t even walk away, too afraid that if I leave now, I will come back to nothing. Thumper is too proud to be as attached to me as I am to her. Part of me wishes I could follow her wherever she went. She could scream at me and scratch me and bite me. She could also latch her tongue onto the wounds she created and scent me, make it better.

Thumper’s meow softens, almost too quiet to hear.

“It’s not too late,” she says. “Join me. I’ll take care of you. And I’ll show you.”

It is so painfully tempting. I imagine what it would feel like to coil my tail around hers, and just the idea of the rough friction of her fur against mine, manicured and soft, contorts my spine. I imagine sweeping my jowl against her flank. I imagine walking in tandem, sleeping woven together, and then I imagine the fleas, the rabies, the hunger and the fear. Thumper isn’t afraid of anything, but I am. I’m afraid of everything.

“You should eat the food,” I counter. “It’s probably still good.”

“Nah,” she says quietly. “Don’t wanna get poisoned.”

“That’s not a thing—”

“You’d be surprised.” She turns away from me. “Your human is back.”

“Wait—”

“See you next time, Mr Periwinkle.”