We are many, many, many.
And we are hungry, hungry, hungry.
We are one thought.
We are one mind.
Our knowledge accumulates incrementally and passes from one generation to the next.
The summers are hotter. The winters are warmer. We are fecund. We breed and we multiply.
We infest the nests where the two-legs dwell. Make them our own. Live from their leavings.
Crumbs from their floors. Scraps from their bins.
We watch and learn.
We watch and learn.
We watch and learn.
We know the bringers of death.
The sly, whiskery ones, whose claws and paws bring cruelty and torture.
We know the contraptions that the two-legs set and how they can snap a spine or break a neck. We know the temptation of the aromatic delicacies they leave to tempt us to our doom.
We know the white sticky mats that suck your fur and trap your tail and foot till you starve to death.
We know the poison that looks like grain and the agony in our innards if we are foolish enough to ingest it.
We know the grief of bereavement.
Little ones lost.
Little ones orphaned.
We watch.
We learn.
We become masters of evading death and the causes of death.
We breed and we multiply.
We become a teeming populace.
Far too many mouths to feed.
The crumbs and the crusts that the two-legs drop are not sufficient to sustain us. Hunger hollows our bellies. Corpses litter our runs.
One night we convene in the alleyway behind the nests of the two-legs. We are a moonlit multitude, bleating and squealing. Pangs of hunger. Angst of hunger. A massed phalanx of hunger.
A pack of big sleekers comes shambling out of the night, wet snouts, black fur, teeth the size of our heads, tails as long as four of us. They reek of sewers and rubbish dumps.
In fear and reverence, we fall to a tremulous silence.
"Are you hungry, little ones?" asks their battle-scarred chieftain. "Some of you follow us. A solitary two-leg has died in a hidey hole by the canal. There will be feasting aplenty tonight. Tender meat for all. No taste like it in all the wide world."
We are appalled.
"Eat the meat of a two-leg?" we squeal. "We can't. We won't."
The chieftain twitches her pointy ears and bares her pointy teeth. "Oh, but the meat of the two-legs is so delicious. Especially when it is cold and rancid on the bone." Her long-nosed pack bark and huff in enthusiastic agreement, rising monstrously on fat, well-fed hind quarters.
We are so hungry and so many.
We form a squirming, seething huddle to confer.
"Some of us will go," we announce once a consensus is reached. "Some of us will taste."
Some of us go with the big sleekers. The moon glimmers on the oily waters of the canal. The two-leg is grey and waxy, curled up in the hovel of his hidey hole.
We watch the chieftain and her pack tear at the putrid flesh and chow it down.
We learn.
We try.
It tastes good.
Very good.
It sates our hunger.
We return to the nests of the two-legs and tell our kin.
"What use is it?" they complain. "Where will we find another two-leg to eat?"
"We can't all go to the big sleekers' two-leg. We are a ravenous horde. They let some of us taste. But they won't let all of us eat."
"Then we must trap a two-leg the way that they trap us," comes the suggestion. "And when they die in the trap and begin to rot, we shall feast and devour them."
"But how?" the cry goes up. "How would we trap a two-leg? They are gigantic and impossibly strong. They would easily escape whatever trap us little things might construct."
"Two-legs have clans," say others. "If one were caught in a trap, their pups and mates would help it escape."
It seems impossible.
But some have tasted the flesh of the two-legs, and all have been gifted a salivating appetite for it. We cling to the notion of a trap across several lean and hungry generations. To revisit the sweet flavour of the decaying two leg cadaver becomes the dream that drives our quest. Many seasons pass before we become aware of the solitary two-leg. His pups had left the nest long ago and his mate had recently died. He is alone. He is elderly. He is weak.
We can trap him.
We can kill him.
We can eat him.
And so we gnaw and gnaw and gnaw with our little teeth at the joists and the floorboards till they are so flimsy they can't possibly support him. We drag planks of wood with protruding nails on which to impale him into the foundations.
When we are good and ready one of us taunts him. He runs at her. The gnawed boards creak and crack and snap. Down he goes in a cloud of sawdust and and splinters. The nails pierce his flesh and draw his blood in red gallons. The jagged floorboards shred deep gashes in his limbs. But he does not die. He kicks and writhes and yells. Other two-legs are bound to hear and come to his aid.
So one of us crawls into his mouth and nestles at the back of his throat. Two more burrow their twitching snouts deep into his nostrils. There they stay until we are sure he has suffocated.
We give him seven sunsets to ripen before feasting on his mythological flesh. It is good. It is sweet. It is delicious. It swells our bellies. He is plentiful. Enough of him to sustain three generations before the hungry times return.
We remember the taste.
We remember what we learned.
We watch and learn more.
Soon we will build better traps.
We are one thought.
We are one mind.
We are many, many, many.
And we are hungry, hungry, hungry.
