9. Nine Lives

It is said that cats have nine lives. As Trixie, the black cat, peered over the rooftops below, she had a sinking feeling she may have used up all her lives already.

She placed one paw in front of the other and edged along the wall.

She had used up one life when she had got stuck behind a cupboard, and another when she had fallen into a packing box. There was the time she had got into a fight with a pigeon, and several scrapes with local dogs.

There’d been a few touch-and-go moments when she’d decided to explore the trees on the other side of the street. But she just hadn’t expected the climb onto her owner’s roof, along the gutter and up onto the wall that day would be so dangerous. Looking down at the sheer drop, she knew she was facing something serious.

She was either on her ninth life, or this was it.

Trixie gazed at the treetops, infused with the gentle rays of early spring sunshine. She saw the gardens in which she had prowled since youth, the gateposts on which she kept lookout, the hedges through which she watched passersby. She did not want to leave this world, her own little kingdom and jungle. Her heart broke in two at the thought.

She meowed in the hope someone might rescue her.

But no. This was her moment. She had got herself up here, and now she had to get down.

She raised her head and concentrated on the garage below. Then she leapt, her life flashing before her. The tiled roof was beneath her paws, then she skidded, then leapt again.

And she was on the ground.

The suburban street was quiet, unaware of the life-and-death drama of moments before. Trixie stealthily slunk along the pavement. Life number nine. Or was it eight? She’d remember before the next time she got stuck – hopefully.

An exercise in micro-fiction – stories which run from zero to fifty

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© 2014 M. C. Dulac

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