Feral/Drought

Prologue
Ruby had lived in the same Twoleg nest for her whole life. She and her brother Snowy had been born there, their mother had died there, and it was a comfortable homey place. Sometimes at night she and Snowy would listen to the caterwauling of the wildcats who lived beyond the fence and they would tell each other how grateful they were to be inside in the warm and the light.

There came a day when Ruby and Snowy moved away from that familiar Twoleg nest, and their Twoleg pets came with them. They travelled a long way in small tight containers and it was very irregular. Their cages were put beside each other, and Ruby was glad of that, because when the lights went off in the place that their cages were in she could mew to her brother through the slits in the side.

After a very long and confusing journey with a lot of bouncing, shuddering and terrible noise they arrived at their new Twoleg nest. The surroundings were different - they were hardly green at all - and strange unfamiliar smells filled the air. At night Ruby and Snowy heard the sounds of munching and thudding and sometimes they would hear strange barking in the distance. Once or twice they thought they heard a cat yowling.

There were lots of spiders in this new nest - huge ones far bigger than any they had ever seen before. Snowy liked to chase them through the house, dabbing a paw out to poke them and then watching them run. Ruby stayed away from the spiders - they were too big and brown and hairy and she hated them.

Snowy chased the smaller ones too, brown ones with white stripes and black ones with red tails. He grabbed one of the black-and-red ones in his mouth once, and it bit him on the tongue. It hurt, he said, and he spat the spider out and squashed it with his paw.

The next day Snowy's tongue was swollen and hanging out of his mouth, and he yelped when Ruby touched her nose to it. He started dribbling a lot and he didn't feel like eating or drinking. The day after that his whole muzzle was swollen and hot to touch - and his pads were hot too, when Ruby felt them. He lay in the sun all day panting hard, because he was thirsty but his tongue hurt too much for him to lap at the water bowl.

Their Twoleg pets noticed that something was wrong that day, and they scooped Snowy up with yowls of distress and carried him away in their big monster. Ruby watched him go from the window. His blue eyes found her green ones and he blinked at her encouragingly. She knew that blink was saying to not give up, he'd see her again soon. She blinked back at him, lifted her chin and tried to be brave.

Snowy never came back in the Twoleg monster.