- Aug 26, 2022
- 294
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A cat his size was not made for stealth, he felt dirty crawling on the ground to avoid being spotted and he hated the way things clung to his long fur as he crept along the forest floor in pursuit of the mouse he had spotted; but he held his tongue and coped. It was minor inconvienences and he had to get used to it all eventually, he had to learn. The mouse he had seen was perched neatly on a broken tree, split in half and currently leaning against another with its roots upturned and twisted like the legs of a spider. That it was right there in an open area was a blessing in disguise for him, he could simply sprint to it once he got close enough and the tree made a good cover to duck behind the more he inched along. It sat there, plump rump on a knot of the wood's surface and tiny hands rotating around what looked to be some kind of mushroom it was nibbling away at. Mice were cute, his first time eating one he had felt bad because they were so small and seemed so helpless that it hadn't seemed fair to him to just kill them, but eventually he learned that kibble was not presented in bowls in the woods and any chance he had at staying alive was to be at the expense of something smaller than him getting to live. The first time Rabbitnose had presented him the kill he almost refused, but by then he had been days without anything to eat and wandering alone that he had accepted it more out of feeling bad for the wasted effort than anything else. It was a wonder he wasn't dead.
Sunfreckle continued his careful attempts forward, one white-dipped paw after the other with a light hobble in his step every fourth from his missing leg. Eventually he felt close enough, the mouse was none the wiser and with a well-timed jump he could get onto the tilted log and grab it before it even had a chance to move. A perfect plan and for once his execution was decent, but the moment he had leapt forward onto the tree he realized something was wrong. It gave from under him, the bark crumbling and the blackened and burnt insides of his now hollowed interior had no solid surface to support his sudden weight on it. The mouse was nothing, a leaf settled upon its barky surface but he was a hefty tom and it was not capable of remaining intact beneath him.
The red tabby attempted a frantic swipe at the mouse as it darted away from him stumbling back, hindlegs giving into the shattering wood as it split fully in two and practically dissolved into char and cedar chips on the ground with him tangled in a heap in the hollow of the remaining roots that had gone untouched by the fires.
The tabby thrashed, hindlegs kicking and trying to twist himself out of the hole he had been subsequently wedged into to no avail.
Sunfreckle turned, his head and upper body popping out of one side of the kindling log and his hindend wedged through the other; he was stuck. He almost wanted to cry. He could have had that mouse if this hadn't happened! "This isn't FAIR!"
