Page 13 - My Life as a Cat

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For almost three hundred years, I had wished for hands. Every once in a while, I pictured myself holding an object in my own palm, with my own fingers. An apple, a book, an umbrella. I’d heard the most wonderful rumours about umbrellas – and rain, how it dotted your skin. Humans might take these things for granted (standing in the street, half shielded by an umbrella in a summer rainstorm), but I promised myself, centuries ago, that I would not.
It was all just so tremendously exciting, as I hitched a ride on that beam of light.
This trip to Earth was about discovery, about glimpsing another way of life.
And I was ready.
On the eve of our three-hundredth birthdays, all
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