Chapter Text

Chapter 1: A Black Cat

A black cat stood in front of an empty house, a "Sold" sign hanging languidly in front of it under the summer sun. The cat was unsure of what to do. Most people wouldn't give a cat a second look. Even less in this town. They were such a common sight in Faraway, that the streets were veritably littered with both litter and clusters of cats. Or was that clowders of cat?

Glaring of cats?

The cat shook its head. Her head, she supposed. An entire life referring to animals with the pronoun it and now, finding herself on the other shoe, it felt demeaning. But then again, she wasn't your average cat. Something she learned dismayingly quick once she had enough sense of self to realize she wasn't normal.

She had memories. Fuzzy vignettes of what she eventually came to call a previous life. But they felt more vivid than mere pictures. Whenever they flashed in her mind, a sense of longing and sadness accompanied them.

It wasn't until she was… a year old? A year and a half? Maybe even two. She didn't pay much attention to time back then. Time for a street cat lacked meaning beyond when was the best time to filch food. But then, as the memories became clearer and her conviction grew, the meaning of time returned. Little by little, she pieced together her previous life. Like a puzzle that remained half done, a single piece being added only every few months. Blanks remained, but she remembered enough to figure out where to go.

She had once been a human girl. She lived in a place called Faraway, located at the far edge of nowhere… what a charming name. She had a human family. A mother. A father. A little brother. She couldn't remember either her or their names, but that mattered little. Most animals had no use for names. There were other miscellaneous tidbits: a piano, a group of friends whose faces were smudges in her mind, stairs. One particular detail she remembered with startling clarity was a sandwich. Maybe that was her favorite food back then?

There were a bunch of other errant thoughts, but the place and the family are what stood out to her the most. What pushed her to take on a journey that no cat has any business taking. Figuring out what car she could easily sneak into that would get her one step closer to her destination. Avoiding animal control and other pesky dangers like that. Figuring out how to procure food while on the road as a stowaway. There was a reason most animals didn't bother.

It was how she realized another thing: she was smart. Smarter than any cat has any right to be. That much was self-evident by her complicated internal monologues and how knowledge just seemed to pop up when needed: the meaning of a word, understanding of human speech, identifying objects,  that sort of things.

There was some degree of communication with other felines and animals, but it was so painfully basic, relatively speaking, that spending any amount of time with other cats was a trial of patience. A test on how long she could stand being with other cats before she entertained the idea of walking into traffic and trying her luck on the next life, now that reincarnation was apparently a thing. That is, assuming the other cats didn't feel threatened by your presence and attacked you. When did she become so… morbid?

Maybe when she got reincarnated, rather than the pearly gates she was promised in Sunday school. Now there is a fun memory she could do without.

She sighed. At least cats can do that and while the purpose wasn't the same as human, she was hardly a normal cat. It's not that other cats were dumb. They could be surprisingly cunning and she had learned a thing or two about survival from them. But they were so simpleminded. No matter how many steps and manipulations other cats pulled to score their next meal, at the end of the day the goal - get their next meal – was always the same and superseded the means.

Humans wouldn't care about understanding their pets if they knew how basic those conversation would be. Or maybe they would. One of her memories was, ironically, owning a cat. She would love to be able to tell humans she would like chicken rather than tuna… again. She's sure some pet owners would jump at the opportunity to make their pet’s live more comfortable ever so slightly. Variety is the spice of life and being able to say what food you're in the mood for is a little thing that's taken for granted.

She wandered to the window and with a jump precariously balanced herself on the edge, peeking inside the house. A room that simultaneously felt familiar and not. She… should have expected this. She had caught the date on a discarded newspaper and had kept, more or less, a rough estimate of a timeline. It would be around four to five years after she… presumably died?

She was pretty sure she wasn't that old. An amused huffed escaped her. Again, not a particularly catlike behavior, but she had come to terms with being some unfathomable amalgamation of a human and a cat. So why the amused huff? Because there was a delay in her presumed reincarnation and she couldn't help but think that whatever cosmic law managed such a metaphysical process was bungled down by some universal bureaucratic constant. It was an amusing thought.

She was a cat. She lacked opposable thumbs. So damnit, she was going to get whatever bit of joy she could muster.

Jumping off the window, she pondered her next action as she walked across the front of the house. If her death was as tragic as she suspected – and she wasn't just clinically insane and schizophrenic – it made sense her human family had moved. Pain was there to tell you what to avoid. What harmed you and represented danger. If being in this house hurt, you would want to move. And she desperately hoped she had been loved enough to be mourned.

Reaching the edge of the property, she glanced at the fence dividing the backyard from the front. On a whim, she ran and leapt over it, briskly making her way around the house. The backyard was trimmed and enviably green. A prickle on the back of her mind told her it was just like she remembered. With a skip to her steps, she quickly walked to the back, stopping in front of a stump with a single pink pinwheel carelessly spinning on the wind.

Has that always been there? She couldn't remember. Her memory wasn't perfect. Maybe there was a tree before. Maybe the stump. The pinwheel didn't look half a decade old, so she doubted that was there back then.

Whatever. It was an unimportant detail in the grand scheme of things. What drew her to the backyard wasn't that. She continued deeper into the trees that populated the backyard and soon stumbled upon what she was sure had instinctively called her here.

An old treehouse.

She looked warily at the wooden ladder leading into the wooden structured snuggled tightly to the wooden behemoth. God that tree looked tall. How do cats get stuck on trees again?

Steeling herself and claws at the ready, she approached the tree and began to climb, using the ladder as best as she could. As a human this would have been trivial, but as a cat it was nerve-wracking, even if it didn't take long to reach the top. Safely inside the tree, she took a few seconds to calm her nerves and look back down.

…How was she getting down? Is this how cats found themselves stuck on trees? Some shiny trinket catches their attention and next thing they knew they were looking down at a fall that looked downright terrifying? Maybe this is what they meant when they say curiosity killed the cat.

She'll cross that bridge when she gets there. For now, there was a treehouse begging to be snooped.

An immense wave of nostalgia hit her. Even abandoned and decrepit, a lot of the treehouse felt familiar. The low table where she was sure she spent countless hours playing cards with friends. The cartoon yellow cat peeking over a calendar four years past its expiration date. An old television which presence was ill-conceived at best. A fluffy, dirty pillow shaped like the head of a girl.

She took time to observe each and every object, hungrily devouring whatever little memory they jog inside of her. The memories remained a foggy, but every piece of her alleged past cleared the opaque veil little by little.

The last object sent a jolt to her system. A sad plushy, beaten up by time, its once vibrant and gaudy purple now dulled and dirty. The body was nondescript, but its head was the shape of a solemn eggplant.

What was its name again? It was something simple and silly. Mr. Eggplant? Eggman?

-o-

“XXXXXX! I got you something~”

“You got me a gift? XXXX, you’re the best!”

“Now, close your eyes… ta-dah!”

“A plushie? It's so… weird and ugly… I love it!”

“I saw it while visiting the next town and thought of you. I’m happy you like it.”

“It reminds you of me?”

“Yep. Your full name means ‘eggplant’, so I bought you an eggplant!”

“…I don’t like my name…”

“Hahaha! Give it a name of its own!”

“Hmmm… I’m going to call you…”

-o-

‘Mr. Plantegg,’ she remembered bittersweetly. It truly was an odd stuffed toy; squat and stumpy with a weird face and a weirder sound when punched.

She placed a paw on its head and pushed. Nothing. Whatever mechanism it had to make it squeak had succumbed to the years.

The girl in her memory had loved this toy despite its squat and stumpy cute ugliness. She was odd like that. She remembered squeeing in delight every time she saw the carry Mr. Plantegg up and down, beyond happy a gift she picked – a gift her mother had been reluctant to buy – was so beloved by the girl.

Seeing the toy in such a state of abandon tugged at her heart. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t shed tears. So she mewled. A long draw out lament, heartrending even to her own ears. She curled up next to the stuffed toy – a toy she once could grab with one hand now a few inches shorter than her – and rested.

There was nowhere for her to go. She could lay down and sleep for a bit.