The Tomcat

It's about a cat incel btw

Tomcat

The feline hunts alone. He’s gotten quite good at it, and it nets him many rats to eat. In this way, he has gotten very comfortable. There are no challenges to his authority, because he has none to lead. His coat shines and is clean of smells, so the humans like him. The humans love him. He gets treats whenever he is hungry, and there are many sunny windowsills for him to rest under. His life is full of leisure. Sometimes, the cat feels lonely. Tomcats tend to live alone, unlike the tabbies, who band together and are friends. Other males are competition; they don’t like him like humans do. When the cat is lonely he yowls into the alleys. A tabby sometimes yowls back. He chases, she retreats, and he yowls again. Sometimes the tabby enjoys the chase and continues their dance. Very frequently she does not, and the noble feline sleeps in a windowsill alone. He disdains dogs, who organize themselves in packs. They get to howl at the moon together, and he’s sure they are great friends. He wishes he had a friend that wasn’t a human. Humans are very transactional creatures, they give him treats and he purrs and nuzzles their hand, which gets tiresome after a while, so they can’t really be considered friends. He enjoys a tabby cat’s company often enough where he doesn’t go insane with desperation like some tomcats do. Those cats often end up sleeping in the gutters and emaciate themselves in depression, self-actualizing their prophesized rejections – or they give up entirely, surrendering themselves to the smothering embrace of a human, fattening their forms and atrophying their instincts. He is not like those cats.

But he is lonely.

One day, it rains. The tomcat is out on his evening quest for companionship when he makes his first observation – it’s raining a lot more than usual. The streets he roams are dark and damp and dreary. It fits his ever-souring mood, the rain. The tomcat looks in a puddle and sees his reflection. A wet coat does not suit him. He scoffs at his own reflection, a mockery of his groomed self. The street smells wrong when it gets wet, a pungent and unnatural odor pierces through the usual filth, leading a second assault on his poor nose. The tomcat likes this storm less and less with every passing moment. He begins to shiver. This is when he notices the water pooling over his feet, very rarely does it rain this hard. The cat should go back indoors. This thought comes from somewhere outside his head. The tabby scampers to his usual place at an elevated pace. It isn’t terribly surprising when he finds the window clamped shut. That’s what humans do, they can’t live in the elements like he, so they shield themselves from nature as best they can. It’s an unfortunate consequence that the proud tomcat finds himself temporarily without refuge. An emotion builds in his chest, one that has long become foreign to his routine.

He is afraid.

The sky begins to roar; individual sounds are washed away into indistinguishable reverberations within a torrent that has been brewing for longer than one could know. The tomcat is cold. He hates the way coldness rushes into his soul when his fur gets wet. He could tolerate much colder had he been dry, and he could evade the rain much easier had it not been so windy. Nonetheless, sensation retreats from his paws. Then his tail. He needs to move. The windowsill provides him no more cover than the street below. First, he descends several rungs of a fire escape to survey the alley below but finds instead a river too deep to stand. The tomcat’s plan to seek cover under the bonnet of a car, his normal refuge from the rain, has been swept away in the flash flood. He curses the lazy housecat for being so sheltered. He wishes he was inside. He wishes a housecat was outside to share his suffering. You can never truly be miserable with company.

An indescribable brightness blinds his maladjusted eyes.

And then the boom, at least ten times as loud as anything he’s ever heard, rends his soul from his form. He flattens himself without thinking and loses his grip on the slick metal rung. A short cry escapes his mouth before he can stop himself. The sound feels weak in his throat, his only solace being that it was swallowed by the rain before a tabby could hear him. Then, the tomcat remembers he’s falling. He desperately scrambles at the bricks to no avail, and lands with more of a thud than a splash. A sharp pain, origin unknown, floods his senses and overrides his reason. He tries to right himself and shoot away to safety, but a limb refuses to comply and his face plants itself back in the alleyway river.

He is going to die here.

This realization animates the tomcat like the convulsions of a beheaded chicken, and he shoots forward with neither grace nor precision. There is no destination in mind, his feline brain can only produce one thought: away! Away from this place he goes, and the ally twists and grows thin. The walls sweat grime and water and they grow and twist and menace the cat. The alley narrows into a throat, and he is something caught in it, something being swallowed. The walls seem to constrict and wrap around the tomcat, and for a moment he cannot breathe despite the rise and fall of his chest. If he faints, he dies. He knows this, so he cannot faint. He cannot. He has not done nearly enough; it is not his time.

It can’t be his time yet. Not yet.

Water swirls around his legs, higher than it was before. Staying still is death. Going back is death. He needs to get out of the water. The pain in his haunches reminds him he cannot climb his way to safety. Why did he leave the windowsill? The question flickers and vanishes as the current knocks him sideways. He is now tumbling in the alleyway-turned-river, his very home made hostile and foreign. There are times where his feet make temporary purchase against the ground, but he is too weak, he is too small, and he is soon whisked away again. He yowls again, abandoning all pride, a plea that someone – anyone – must come to his rescue. He sees neither human nor cat, smells nothing but sewage, and hears nothing but rain. The tomcat is thrust back into the street, the current sweeping him towards a drain. He lowers his head, pressing his nose into his chest, trying to preserve what little warmth he has left. His senses abandon him, and the cat embraces his fate.

Nature is cruel.

The tomcat awakens in a crate. His vision is bracketed with wire, and his body is bracketed with plastic. The rain is gone. His leg is stiff and bound, his body heavy with warmth. Humans have never failed him before, but how they managed to rescue an outcast like him, against the will of nature, still manages to surprise him. It disobeys his understanding of the world, and yet, here he is. The blanket he rests on is warm. Someone had seen his decrepit, repulsive body; felt his mangy, matted fur; heard his pathetic, cowardly yowls; smelled his rancid odor: and still decided he had value. That he was worth bringing in. That he was worth a second chance. Many are not offered such a gift. The tomcat takes the olive branch fate has extended to him. His life is worth living.

Even though he is lonely.