• The first thing I became aware of was pain. My body burned and throbbed where it lay in the wheel-rutted roadway. I remembered the dog; it had surprised me while I lay beneath the shade of a clump of blackberry bushes. I had been dozing, attempting to avoid the worst of the noonday heat and it had approached silently from down wind. When I ran, it chased me and I soon lost all sense of direction as I madly attempted to escape from the hound’s fetid and gaping jaws. Blindly, I raced toward a tall sturdy elm growing along side a tall stone wall. If I could only reach its branches, I told myself, I would be safe. Perhaps there would even be a nest with fledglings that could provide me with a much needed meal. What I had failed to notice was the roadway and the approaching horse drawn cart.

    It had been chaos, a nightmare of screaming horse and plunging hooves, of yelps, sharp cries and pain. Then my world had faded to blackness.

    I was alive, I slowly came to realize, but badly broken. Both the dog and the cart were gone, but there were voices nearby and approaching voices. I lay still with eyes closed, listening to their approach.

    “Oh the poor thing!” one voice cried. It was high but pleasant, a human woman. “John must have hit it.”

    “And a fine thing he did,” replied another woman gruffly. “It’s likely diseased, the filthy thing. Just throw it over into the ditch. The foxes will make short work of it.”

    I felt coolness spread over me as one of the women stepped near and cast me in her shadow. Tender fingers softly caressed my head and ears and I opened my eyes to peer up into tear-rimmed eyes. I mewed up at her piteously and instantly regretted doing so as the pain in my ribs flared more intensely.

    “Martha, it’s alive! The poor thing’s wounded.” Carefully, she reached out to gather me into her arms. I cried out in pain, but was too weak to fight back as she wrapped me in the white linen of her apron and cradled me delicately.

    “Leave it alone, Sophie! If John hit it, it will die soon enough. A cat that color of black belongs to the devil and he can have it! It would be nothing but misfortune to you.”

    Devil indeed! I thought miserably. It would be my luck to suffer such misfortune at the gates of such a bunch of silly, superstitious humans! To be left for the foxes would be more merciful than the fates many of my kind met, but it also offered me more hope of escape than the pier offered. As Sophie stood I was already trying to marshal my strength so that I might crawl into some small space until I could heal, but she surprised me. Ignoring the words of the older woman, Sophie turned away from the road and walked back the way she came with me in her arms.

    “Black or not, Martha, it’s still one of God’s creatures. I’ll tend it as best I can until it’s healed, if it can be healed at all, and if it is the devil in disguise he’ll find me poor sport for his tricks.”

    The woman Martha began to protest, but Sophie continued to walk ahead of her and back in through the gates in the wall. The large wooden doors stood open today, but I didn’t fail to notice how heavy and think they were or the sturdy iron hinges. Clearly, their design had been geared more towards defense than welcome. The thought of the hound that chased me on the other side almost gave me cause to purr. Let the brute try to scrape and dig his way through that! Through a bustling courtyard and around back to the kitchen door, Sophie walked briskly but carefully. While hurried, her movements were fluid and her arms gentle as she passed the habited monks working in the garden. A stroke of luck had seen my misfortune befall me at the gates of what appeared to be a bustling Abbey!

    We passed quickly through the kitchen, and the rich aroma of succulent game and fresh bread made my mouth water. I knew little of these sheltered groups of devout humans, but the smells that wafted to me seemed a contradiction to simple robes they wore. We were through the kitchen before I was able to identify any of the smells, and Sophie turned down a long hallway. She opened one of the many doors and carried my into a small, bare room.

    “You’ll be safe here,” she said quietly as she laid me down on a narrow cot. She then lightly ran her hand down the length of my back and I closed my eyes. “I’ll ask Brother Justin to see to you, and I’ll bring you food from the kitchen. I work there, you see,” She explained, still stroking me.

    “You can stay here until you’re well, if you don’t mind sharing the room with me. The Abbey will be as much a home to you as it is to me if you want it to be. We don’t keep many animals, so there should be no one to bother you and plenty of mice for you to catch once you feel better.” I opened my eyes to see her smiling softly down at me, and I studied her.

    Sophie was scarcely a woman, more a girl-child with her softly rounded face and her glittering eyes. She was thin but not unattractively so, more that she worked too hard and often skipped a meal or two for the sake of completing whatever tasks lay before her. Her body was full of new curves that seemed to only recently have lost the last of their childish roundness, and all of this she tried to hide behind a dull, shapeless frock. She continued to chatter, her hands remaining gentle as they scratched behind by ears and smoothed back the fur on my head. Had I not been in such pain elsewhere, I would have enjoyed the attention immensely. She wasn’t thoughtless, however, and she soon left me in the small, dark room while she went to fetch Brother Justin.

    The monk, when he appeared, did not hold as much interest for me and he was quick to set about his task of examining me. His hands were not as gentle as Sophie’s, and more than once I howled or spat as his probing fingers caused the pain to flare more intensely. I was dimly aware of Sophie’s whimpers, of her sharp gasps when I cried out, and it struck me as strange even as I sank into unconsciousness. Who was this young woman that she was so concerned over me? I wasn’t used to such attentions.

    Brother Justin chose that moment to grasp my broken leg firmly and shift the broken bones. My vision faded to black, and Sophie’s distress became distorted and then silent. Then I dreamed.