The Inky Blue

There once lived a cat with stars for eyes.

Her name was Stara. No one named her. She assumed it to be her name after so many shocked people pointed at her and screamed, “STARRRRRR!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” at the top of their lungs before the ultra-brilliance of the galaxy in her eyes blinded them forever. Only half of them lived to tell the tale.

Because of this, Stara became a very sad cat. She had no idea why these abnormally tall, furless creatures liked to make loud noises to greet her, then proceeded to collapse. At first, she found this behaviour extremely annoying and discouraging, because she heard from other cats that the Furlesses might be noisy (and smelly, and oily, and all sorts of nasty), but they gave very nice hugs because they were born to serve cats as hug cushions and food dispensers. Stara would like to experience being hugged and cared for by a Furless too.

“But your eyes are too bright. Even us cats think they’re a bit too flashy,” her friend Toby the Tabby said.

“Yeah. Stop stealing the spotlight,” commented another friend, Blah Blah the Black Cat.

Stara paid them no mind. This was her dream, and she was gonna make it come true. If someone were to describe Stara with one word, it would be determined.

Thus began Stara’s journey to finding the perfect Furless. She walked around different neighbourhoods to look for Furlesses, then hung around schoolyards for shorter ones because she thought short Furlesses wouldn’t scream as loud as the tall ones, but boy, was she wrong. At the end of the day, or perhaps the week, or the month, or even the year (because Stara got so dizzy due to the ungodly screams, she lost her sense of time and perhaps her sanity), the sad, dejected Stara limped her way to a low tree that looked just as sad and dejected, and proceeded to take a nap.

A nap that felt like forever, a nap that she woke up from thinking she was dead. Maybe a thousand cat years had passed during her search, or maybe this wasn’t even real and it was just a dream, because right in front of her was a Furless, and it wasn’t a screaming one or a dead one. It was a Furless with a soft, happy smile on his face, and he was petting her gently while humming a soft, melodic tune.

Stara, shocked, shot up suddenly and eyed the Furless as if he were going to scream any second now, but he only looked slightly surprised.

“Oh, you’re awake, I see,” said he. “Uh, meow?”

Stara held his gaze for a brief moment, then she meowed back.

The Furless giggled. The sound shocked her and almost caused her to scurry away, but she noticed sharply that this loud noise was different. He seemed happy, unlike those screaming Furlesses. He stopped giggling after a while and resumed his calm demeanour.

Stara calmed down too and stared at him again.

This time, he sighed. “It’s spring. Can you believe it? Too bad I can’t see flowers, but I know they’re pretty from memory.”

Stara had no idea what he was talking about, but she liked his voice. It was soothing and a bit slow. It reminded her of clouds slowly drifting across the sky. She inched forward until she was in his lap again.

“I think you’d like flowers too. You’re fluffy. I don’t know what colour cat you are, but I can imagine a cat in a flower field. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

She meowed in reply. He petted her gently again, and she purred in response. They spent the whole evening together. To Stara, life had never been so peaceful. To the young man, life had never been so vibrant.