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The Great Escape: A True Story
by Steve Anderson
SGAcreative.com
(c) 1994-2005, Steve Anderson, Writer@SGAcreative.com
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The indignity! To be scooped up without so much as a by-your-leave and tossed into a tiny little
box with barely enough room to stand, and with only a few air-holes up around the top... it's above and
beyond the call of duty, I tell you! Who does this human of mine think he is, anyway?
And then--then!--he
picks up the box and goes for a walk! And all the while, he's talking to me in that insulting, patronizing
sing-song voice he reserves for me, as if babbling away will make one bit of a difference. No way!
That's just too much. He's asking for a good old-fashioned howling, that's for sure. But I know him
better than that--he's a sucker for a sympathy case, so I make do with a pitiful mewling and scratch
at the side of the box for good measure. Pretty soon, I'm sure, he'll let me go out of pity.
Doesn't
work that way, though. Instead he keeps going, the floor swaying under my feet, occasionally lurching
as the box bumps against his leg, and suddenly we're right up next to a sea of terrible noise, like when
the bus goes by and the windows are open, only worse. I tell you, I thought the world was coming to
an end.
So I start scrabbling at the bottom of the box, and what do you know? My fool human
hadn't put it together right! One slash with my paw, and a crack opens between bottom and side. Another,
and I'm out.
He lunged for me, and for a moment he had me, first by the tail and then by the
hindquarters, but I pistoned my legs for all I was worth, and his hand slipped, and I got away. A fence
was nearby, and I wriggled under it and looked back to see the big bipedal klutz staring at me through
the links, stuck on the other side.
With a contemptuous smirk and a proud toss of my head, I
turned away from him and marched away, angling towards a tree. A big tree. Very big, I noticed as I
got closer. Very, very big. And only one of, well, more than I can count. Nobody ever told me Outside
was so... so big!
I clung to his shoulder when he picked me up, trying to slow my heartbeat and
get my saucer-sized eyes back to their normal crafty slits, for once actually grateful for his presence
and attention. I even let him put me back in the box--which, incidentally, he'd fixed in the interim--and
patronizing as it was, his voice actually calmed me, even when that rush of noise came again, as it did
several times during our little walk. And, when we got where we were going, I even let perfect strangers
handle me and poke and prod and even stick needles and things into me, the greatest humiliation a cat
can bear, all without complaining.
Why, you ask? Why on Earth would any self-respecting cat
buckle under and trade freedom for the humiliation of human and (gads) veterinary care? Because, dear
sisters, despite whatever disgrace my human may subject me to, I'm still the center of his world--but
Out There, away from human admirers, I'm positively small.
The open door has a powerful draw
for me, just like it does for every other cat I know. I still feel the instinctive urge to bolt, to
scramble out and see what lies beyond the four walls of my human's apartment. That need for independence
courses through my body just as much now as it did before. But I also know that I won't act on it--for
I have tasted freedom, and it didn't agree with me at all.
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