Seven months had passed since Nathan Alan Willoughby arrived at the Westwood Rescue for Good Cats as an unnamed cat living in a dumpster. His current dwelling was the "Red Room" of the old Victorian Home the rescue group used to adopt or "re-home" cats.
Nathan Alan Willoughby was happy enough with his new home. After all, how could he complain about food available at all times, a good window for watching the traffic on the street, and catnip mice? From the window, he watched the leaves fall off the trees, the winds blow them away, then the rain, the snow, the ice, and now more rain.
He was grateful that he had avoided the coldest part of the year. Now the buds on the trees and the warming of the window panes showed that spring was coming. All the other cats in the Red Room could feel the change in their bones. One day, a volunteer was in the room caring for the cats when a bird had hit the window. As it flailed on the windowsill, all seven cats in the room raced to window. The meowing and jockeying for position was awkward, and Nathan Alan Willoughby ended up behind the smaller, quicker cats. The volunteer stood and shooed each of them away and opened the window, carefully setting the bird on its feet. It flew away before any cat could make a calculated move.
Easily, this was the most exciting moment Nathan Alan Willoughby and the other cats experienced for months. The fragrance that entered the room from the opened window was heaven. He remembered that smell of new grass and sweet air. There also was a tinge of oregano, reminding him of his days in the dumpster outside the pizza parlor.
The food was boring, the window had lost its luster, and the catnip mice all ended up under the dressers before he had a chance to play with them. Food was his only solace. He suspected this was a bad thing from the way the volunteers and staffed knitted their brows at him. "He'll never get adopted looking like that," one said. "How can we put him on a diet with all these other cats?"
Every now and then, a new person would enter the Red Room and coo over each of them. It didn't happen often enough. Even rarer, a person might spend a lot of time with one cat in particular and then the cat would be gone. Nathan Alan Willoughby didn't understand what happened, but the people always seemed happy. Even the calico, Tau Tau, had gone away. A new cat came in a couple of weeks ago, a white cat with blue eyes. The next day, a couple saw her and made a fuss and the cat went with them.
Nathan Alan Willoughby thought of this as he groomed his back legs, exposing his white underbelly, which contrasted nicely with the black fur on his back. It was nice to have something as dependable as food, to be safe from the weather. But the place where the other cats went...where could that be? It seemed pretty good. He was afraid to imagine what it might be like. Hope for something better seemed indecent. He should be grateful to be safe and have food and water. On the inside, he knew there was more to life.
He looked at the large unusual lamp that sat on the desk near the window. Nathan Alan Willoughby had grown fond of the lamp and its large orbs. Sometimes it was the friendliest object in the room. He jumped up clumsily next to it and curled into a ball. With one eye out the window, he thought what it would be like to have a person who lived in this room all the time and not just show up to pet their heads for a minute and leave. A strong breeze blew hard enough to move some scent through the cracks in the old windows. He sniffed the air. Change was coming, he knew this now.
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