The library was vast and held extensive knowledge. Extensive power. The secrets beyond these pages had been held in place for millennia, no souls had glanced upon the ancient texts this forest of paper retained. One book, one lonely book, on a shelf in a room, alone. Seemed to speak to me, I could feel the cry of it’s existence ringing true in my ears. Then was the books that many have searched their lives for. For this book contained the truth of the Earth before us. The truth of what roamed the Earth before my people.

I unlocked the clasp of its timeworn leather bound cover and blew off the layers of dust, that now coated my hands. I flipped over the first page and gasped at what I could see before me. A creature of fur, four limbs. It’s fur coat a marble of colours, black as the night enveloped in stripes of amber and white. It’s face a rounded square with a gently pointed nose. Wirey tendrils protruding from its face, I know from the text I’m reading that these are called whis-kers. Ears sat on the tops of its head, unlike my fellow humans, as ours sit by the sides of our heads. A long rope stretched from the end of its slender body, also patterned with a rainbow of black, amber and white. Tail. That’s what it’s called, I think. I haven’t seen creatures like this in my lifetime, like many of my ancestors, animals vanished out of existence thousands of years ago, nobody knows why. Many doubt their very existence. And yet here I am, finally holding proof of something I’ve searched my life for. This creature with its long limbs and beautiful for is simply called CAT. Beneath the illustrations of these beasts I can see, the text reads “born of land and not of the sea, the cat, loved my many. Was loved no more than the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, worshipped by the gods, as a god in its own right. Once a wild beast, was domesticated by the human race, to be kept as pets and familiars”. I’ve got it. I’ve won the battle of wits my family have fought for centuries. Evidence that I came here to claim as my own. Cat