No matter how quick the hand that reached in to grab her, she was quicker. It was a game, her favorite, evading the gloved hand. She charged around the cage, banking off the sides, darting and dodging, using the backs of her siblings for stairs. It often took two and three pairs of hands to corral her. Once caught, she hissed and wriggled, twisted and slipped, leading her captors on a merry chase around the other cages in the facility.

There were many cages. Sometimes the musk of the creatures in the cages was familiar; sometimes it was puzzling and strange. Sometimes the creatures were friendly, meowing and yipping and howling their approval, and sometimes they were hostile, trying to stick snouts bristling with teeth through the bars to snap at her as she raced by. She was too fast for them all.

That was how her early life went: She played with her siblings and nuzzled her mother and evaded capture as best she could. And then, one by one, her siblings were taken and never returned. There were nine, eight, then seven, six, five, four, three, two. One day, while she was sedated, they took her mother.

And Nine was alone in the cage.

Like she was now.

She didn’t have to nose along the bottom of this particular cage to find its boundaries; she had enough room to take five steps but no more. The smells of this place were too numerous to absorb: so much rage and sadness, desperation and despair. She didn’t touch the food the men offered her, though they offered it kindly. She was too busy testing the limits of the lock on her cage door. She leaned against it, pawed it, bit it. Was disappointed when it held. Was more disappointed when one of the men, not so kindly, reinforced the lock by wrapping it with wire.

This would not do.