Oreo's Quest
by Sinead O'Kitty
This is a story that my kitty-mama used to tell my brothers and sisters and me when it was time for us to nurse and settle down for naptime, and I tell it to you in hopes that you will pass it on to others.Once upon a time, there was a small house in a small town, in which there lived a small woman by the name of Lady Ethel. By day, Lady Ethel was a science teacher, but during her free time, she engaged in her true passion—the breeding of cats. Lady Ethel was known as a bit odd—she had been widowed at a very young age and had never remarried—but all of the townsfolk knew that she took wonderful care of the cats in her custody.
What the townsfolk didn’t know about Lady Ethel’s cats was that she didn’t breed for color or coat type or ear configuration (although it just happened that most of her cats had shiny black fur and golden eyes). In acutality, she bred for a rare mix of intelligence, compassion, and healing ability.
Among these cats was a sweet lady-cat by the name of Oreo. Oreo was was black and white, a sport in a litter of pure black kittens with pure-black parents. Oreo may not have been black all over, but Lady Ethel knew as soon as she saw Oreo suckling with her brother and sisters, that Oreo had more intelligence and compassion than any other kitten she had ever raised.
Unfortunately, Lady Ethel was not young, and the years had not been kind to her body. One day, Lady Ethel fell ill. In spite of all her home remedies, the care of talented doctors, and all the healing heaped on her by her menagerie of gifted cats, Lady Ethel could not stay in her body any longer.
Oreo was heartbroken over Lady Ethel’s death. She wondered what she and the other cats would do? Would kind humans take them to their homes, or would they be removed to the dread confines of the Shelter?
The answer came sooner than Oreo expected. One day, a large truck with a picture of a cat and a dog imprisoned in a box painted on the side, arrived at the house. Several humans climbed out of the truck and were met in the yard by a woman Oreo knew as Lady Ethel’s neighbor. The neighbor woman opened the door, and the humans came inside, carrying cages and boxes.
All of Lady Ethel’s black cats scattered to dark corners to hide, and poor Oreo stood in the center of the living room, stunned. She knew they would catch her. But no! The humans chased all the black cats into their dark corners and didn’t even give Oreo a moment’s notice. Oreo seized the opportunity and bolted out the door. She ran as far as her legs would take her and then collapsed, exhausted, under a leafless bush, where she fell asleep.
When she woke up, Oreo looked around her. Nothing was familiar. It was cold and dark, and she was hungry. “Oh, my,” she cried. “What am I going to do?” She had never been Outdoors before, and she didn’t even know where to begin in her efforts to find shelter and sustenance.
Stunned, she crawled out from under her bush. The ground was cold and wet beneath her paw pads, and frozen water crystals fluttered down from the dark, unforgiving sky. She began walking, hiding herself under the meager shelter of branches and bushes whenever she could. But even as the sun began to rise, the world got colder around her, and the ground turned white as she trudged through the ever-deepening snow.
Soon, Oreo could no longer feel her paws. Her nose was cold, and frozen water melted on her head and dripped into her eyes. Hunger gnawed at her stomach and she grew weaker with each passing step. Finally, with a wail, she collapsed and let the snow cover her. “What have I done?” she cried to the goddess. “I’ve lost my home, I’ve lost my friends, and I’ve lost my human! What do I have left to live for?”
A voice answered her, still and calm and loving. “Don’t be afraid, Oreo,” said the voice, which sounded a lot like her beloved Lady Ethel. “You are a rare and gifted cat. It’s not time for you to come to this side yet. Don’t worry about me—I am safe and happy and whole, and I have found my beloved husband and the cats who have gone before you.”
Oreo’s heartbroken tears mixed with the runnels of melted snow as her eyes finally closed.
* * * From somewhere inside herself, Oreo felt the raspy bristles of a cat’s tongue on her head. “Come on,” a rough-sounding voice said. “Wake up! You can’t stay out here.”“Go away and let me die,” Oreo pleaded. She wanted to be with Lady Ethel again, not all alone in this giant, cold and cruel world.
“No way!” the voice exclaimed. The tongue moved down to her shoulders, and she felt a large, jowly head nudging her. Oreo opened her eyes, gave a feeble hiss, and tensed to give a whack to the cad who had dared to touch her and call her back from the other side.
“Whoa there, lady…” said the cat as he backed off….
…and Oreo’s eyes fell upon the most gorgeous tomcat she had ever seen. A noble ruff of long and well-kept black and white fur surrounded his regal head, and his sea-green eyes glowed with compassion and poorly disguised lust. His brush tail was the longest she had ever seen, and his white boots and mittens were sparkling clean in spite of being outdoors.
“Oh, excuse me,” Oreo said. “I’m terribly sorry! Here you are, saving my life, and I go and try to swat you.” A strange feeling arose inside her as she looked at this cat and his pheremones tingled the inside of her Jacobson’s Organ.
With a swish of his tail—oh, that lovely tail! she thought—the cat sat down. “Name’s Sylvester, by the way. Who are you?”
“I’m Oreo,” she said, batting her eyelashes demurely.
“What’s a nice Indoor Cat like you doing Outdoors on a terrible day like this? Are you crazy?” he asked.
“I escaped. The people from the Shelter came to my human’s house after she died, and I got scared and ran away. And then I got lost…oh my, I’m so terribly hungry!”
“Come on over to my shed,” Sylvester said. “I’ve got eats there, and it’s warm and dry and we can get you out of this nasty weather.”
“It’s not too far, is it?” Oreo asked.
“Nah, it’s barely a hundred paces away. You can see it through those trees!”
Oreo followed Sylvester to his home, and once she had fed and groomed herself, she curled up happily in a corner full of hay. Sylvester curled around her and said, “You know, you’re a really pretty girl. I like you.”
“I like you, too, Sylvester,” Oreo said, then jumped up and ran away from him. The two chased each other around the shed, playing hiss-spit-and bat, until finally Oreo decided it was time to let this handsome gentleman have his way with her.
She scooched on the floor, flicked her tail aside, and they did what came naturally.
* * * Some weeks later, after a long mutual-grooming session, Sylvester curled up next to Oreo and said, “You know, now that you’re about to have kittens, you really should find a human.”
“Do you want me to leave you, Sylvester?” Oreo said with tears in her eyes.
“No, no, baby…it’s not like that at all. What I mean is, I want better for our kittens than I had. My mother had a human, and then she lost her human and I was born in the wild. My mother scrounged and scratched for every morsel we had to eat. Sometimes we even had to eat flies! I don’t want my kittens to have to go through that.”
Secretly, Oreo was relieved. She hadn’t wanted to tell Sylvester, but even though she loved him and cared for him, she desperately missed the loving touch of a human. Oh, to purr and purr as your human massages you all over! A soft bed! Delicious food I don’t have to catch! she thought. A chance to…to do my job…to fulfill my purpose… “I suppose you’re right, Sylvester,” she said. “I want my kittens to be safe and warm and loved, too.”
“The lady who puts the food in my shed, she’s really nice. She never tries to touch me or catch me, she just leaves the food and water and hay. I bet she’d let you Inside if you went to meet her.”
Oreo had to admit that as her pregnancy had advae’d let you Inside if you went to meet her.”
Oreo had to admit that as her pregnancy had advanced, it had been harder and harder to get around, and it would be very nice indeed to be able to live a life where at least her basic needs were met.
“Come on, let’s go meet her!” Sylvester said.
The two cats strolled slowly into a puddle-filled yard and sat down on the doorstep of a long, thin metal house. Eventually the door opened, and Sylvester ran for the treeline. “Don’t forget to show those kittens to me,” he called as he retreated.
A breath of warm, sweet-smelling air rushed past Oreo’s whiskers and her ears perked at the sound of a human’s voice. “What a sweet kitty you are,” she said as she held a hand out for Oreo to sniff. “Oh, and very pregnant, too, I see. Well, come on in, let’s get you settled into a beddie and see if we can’t find you some yummies.”
Oreo knew this woman was a Good Human. She head-bumped the lady’s outstretched hand and invited herself inside.
Soon, Oreo gave birth to a litter of four beautiful kittens, two solid black girls—my sister Siouxsie and me—and two black-and-white boys, in the safety of a warm and loving home.
Oreo knew we were extra-special, and that we carried the healing ability, compassion and intelligence that Lady Ethel had strived so hard to bring into this world. She knew we had a special destiny, that we were to be the companions of a human healer. This healer was a wounded woman herself, and we would have to work hard to help this woman reconnect to her life’s purpose.
“You will have to strive hard to remind this woman of who she is,” Mama Oreo told us. “She will love you and treat you tenderly, but she won’t be aware of how special you are right away. She can’t even see how special she is right now. But someday, the three of you will be a powerful team, bringing love and kindness to humans and animals alike.”
Some weeks later, we met our human. I knew in the first instant that she was the one, and I came bounding out of my box to sit in her lap. “Come on, Siouxsie. Get out here!” I said. “I know she’ll want you, too.”
“But she said she only wants one cat,” Siouxsie grumped from inside the cage. Siouxsie never has enjoyed traveling; it upsets her tummy.
“Come on,” I said. “She just doesn’t know she wants two yet!”
Finally Siouxsie poked her head out and came to join me in the lap. The two of us curled up together in our best Cute Kitten Pose, and the rest was history.
And we lived happily ever after.