The Pet

Marci lay atop her bed, stomach first with her had propped up on a cushy, cloudlike pillow. Her room was enveloped in a warm glow by the lights strung around her ceiling. Wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket with a hardback book resting in her hands, she was the picture of calm. Draped awkwardly across her back was her cat, Cricket. He was called this because as a kitten, Cricket purred in a sound quite like his namesake. (In Cricket’s opinion he would have preferred to be called King or Master. Really anything that represented power.) His forelegs and head rested on Marci’s back, his lower body hung off her, and his tail coiled elegantly over his back paws. His fur was a glossy sheen of black.

Suddenly, Marci snapped her book shut and turned to face Cricket, tucking a few stray strands of her dirty blond hair behind her ear. Her freckled face was slightly irritated, and her thin eyebrows were scrunched together.


“I’ve just gotten to the last chapter of my book, but I’ll be so sad when it’s over. It doesn’t have a sequel, so I’ll have no idea what to read next,” Marci stressed.” I could always not finish the last chapter, but then I’d be wondering how it ended for the rest of my life!”

Cricket was taken aback by the sudden gush of words his human had spoken to him. It was as if she thought he would reply! “Silly human,” Cricket purred to himself, “the feline language is too complex for your kind to understand.” However, he decided to humor his hilariously troubled human and responded with a  “Meow.”

At his reply, Marci rambled on about how she wished Cricket could understand her and other random things that he tuned out.

He let his eyelids droop and curled into a ball, deciding he had earned a nap from all this tiring conversation. Before drifting off, Cricket murmured, “Don’t know why I chose to have a pet human in the first place. It’s so exhausting to take care of a less superior species.”