I’ll be dead before the cat gets me, but it won’t be from the fall or terror. It’ll be from the disgrace. I plummet straight for hell on Earth. A place with a sea of tiny pebbles and the occasional brown rock. A place that reeks of cat urine. A place the humans call “a litter box”. I glance around the room seeing my natural enemy, the cat, which looks at me like I’m a happy meal. I guess I was the closest thing they had to chicken. I see my friends. They sit, watching me from the counter. Furiously flapping with my one good wing, I plunge toward my certain death. Terror blinds me as unexpected teeth close around my feathery body. The pain seems not to come. Only the dull throbbing in my right wing from the accident remains. The shock of it all finally fades, and sleep takes over my body. I dream of my friends; they didn’t try to save me when it happened. They aren't  my real friends. I’ll die alone with the truth.

I awaken, not to painful claws and pointed teeth ripping me into bite sized pieces, but to something fuzzy and warm snuggled up against me. I steal a glance at it and glimpse the same orange tabby that planned to make a meal of me. My natural instincts cause me to run, but the sudden movement causes it to stir. A soft meow leaks from its mouth. I stop in my tracks. The meow sounds nothing like the roar of a natural born predator; I remember the lack of pain inflicted when it grabbed me. It saved me.

The cat saved me!

Maybe it will be my only true friend. I cuddle against my new companion once more.