Angry Cat's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Angry Cat did not go home. He walked until the cabin was out of sight, then sat under a tree and let the anger come in waves. It felt different now. Before, the anger had been his. Now it belonged to someone he never met, someone who gave it to him like a bad gift. Mother Cat found him the next morning at the old cat post near the edge of the foothills. She carried a paper in her mouth, the colors bright even in the gray light. She set it down without a word. The patterns twisted and spiraled, orange and white markers that matched his fur exactly. At the bottom was a name he had never heard before, connected to his by a series of lines that looked like rusted chain links, corroded and old. His birth mother. The anger in his blood, written out in shapes and colors. He stared at the display until the patterns blurred. Mother Cat sat on the lowest platform of the post and waited. Angry Cat wanted to shred the paper. He wanted to walk away again. But he also wanted to know if the chain went further back, if someone before his birth mother had been angry too, if it stretched all the way to the beginning of cats. He asked the question out loud, his voice tight. Mother Cat said she did not know. The records only went back one generation. Angry Cat climbed onto the post beside her and sat in silence. The anger was still there, hot and familiar in his chest. But now he knew it had a shape, a pattern that came from somewhere specific. It was not random. It was not his fault. And it was not just his to carry. He looked at the paper one more time, then pushed it off the platform with his paw. It floated to the ground and landed face down in the dirt. He did not need to keep it. He already knew what it said.