Beginnings

The only thing that we had experienced worse than the steel metal cage was this cramped brown box with confusing round holes just out of reach giving glimpses of too many things all at once. We were swinging suspended by one of the humans and then we were placed in a confined space and things began moving way, way too fast. There was no sound or wind except for a humming sound far below us when the pressure of speed got the most, and then sometimes we would stop at completely random intervals for no reason apparent to us. The humans chattered in such a way that we had learned meant being comfortable and obviously unperturbed by what was obviously confusing to us. Occasionally they would stick their fingers through the little holes and make high cooing sounds at us. My little brother pulled as far into the corner of the tiny box as he could whenever they did this and I hissed to let them know how nervous this made him at least; I was more curious than anything. These humans smelled different and I was interested to see what they intended to do with us. Nothing could be as bad as what we had been through so far: born in the wild cold of brown and snow with warm fur and tongue-baths for what we thought would be eternity, and then the close-snap of a door in a box and rough human hands and an open-air fast flying to small rows of metal cages with strange bodies we had never met before in each. And then we were in one of the cells and the bar door was closed and we had the space for my little brother and sister and myself to sleep in one corner and a box filled with strange pebbles that was pretty fun to play and dig around in.