I remember being born. I wasn’t there, and then I was, just like that. Pushed out from the warmth into the cold, kicking weak paws, tangled in strands of sticky membrane. I felt air on my fur for the first time, my mouth opened for the first time to cry. She bent over me, big as the sky. Warm tongue, warm mouth about my neck. Come, little kit, we’re not safe here. Mamacat. The others we left in the mud. They hadn’t survived the passage. The soft shapes I shared the dark with during all those months, now still and pelted by rain. Come. She was frightened. I could tell, even as little as I was.

The storm must have lasted for days. I don’t know how many. We moved from place to place looking for warmth, shelter. My eyes weren’t open yet so the memories are of scent and touch: the soft earthy place where we slept, the acrid tang of rat. Her fur on my nose as she curled tight around me, the slippery odor of holly leaves.

As my eyes began to open I could see dimly. Rain poured down like shining knives. The world crashed and shivered. I had never known anything different, so I thought there was always a storm.

I learned to stand and then walk, a little. I began to understand that something was wrong with Mamacat, in her body. Her movements were growing slower. Less milk came.

One night we took shelter in a gulley. Overhead, brambles shivered and lashed in the gale. She warmed me and fed me. She purred. The sound grew weak, her warmth faded. Then she was still. The cold began to creep into me.

There was a roaring noise and a blinding beam of light, not the shivering light of the sky, but a yellow circle. A thing like a spider of flesh, gleaming with rain. I had no word for hand, then. It enclosed me, lifted me from my mama.

“What’s this?” The scent of wet earth was strong on him. His cuffs were slick with mud. A beast hummed nearby. He put me inside the beast. Rain hit the metal roof like little stones. He folded me up, warm. The blanket was yellow, with a pattern of blue butterflies. It held the scent of someone I knew, or longed to know. How could that be? I didn’t know anyone, yet.

“Poor little kitten,” he said. “I’m all alone, too.” I licked his thumb.