Greetings, readers! Have fun reading this story and good luck figuring out what’s going on!
California is a beautiful place with plenty of open space perfect for any extroverted athlete. I loved running around, hunting and soaking up my vitamin D. Sadly, all good things come to an end. I still remember the horror with which I regarded the news that I had no choice but to move away to Paris. There, I could only dream of the wide open California fields I had so often taken for granted. I now had no choice but to spend my days in an apartment on the third floor. My energy faded, and I fell into a depression. My fellow playmates were shipped off to a summer camp before I could even recover from the move. Recovering is already hard enough, but trying to get back on my feet alone was impossible. I felt as if my days were numbered. I decided to make the best of things and do some exploring. On one of these ventures, I found an interesting opening that went somewhere completely unknown, since it faded into total darkness.
Being the brave soul I was, I decided to take a leap of faith and enter in to find out what lay beyond this mysterious doorway. As soon as I had entered, I felt myself falling, and I twisted this way and that to prepare for landing. Although I was prepared, I still enjoyed the flight. The adrenaline rush was incredibly exciting, and I knew that this must be what the birds feel when they are flying (except that they usually go up, not down until I catch and eat them). Unfortunately, I was never able to stick my landing. I was stuck instead. Somehow, I had gotten trapped when I hit something solid and I didn’t know what it was, because everything was pitch black. All I could feel was something and nothing. As they say, curiosity killed the cat. I had no way out. All I could do was hope and wish that something different would happen. But nothing did, and I lost track of time. I had no idea how many minutes, hours, days I had been in this nothingness – perhaps it was years. I became incredibly dehydrated. I started feeling hunger pangs that only grew and worsened. As if that wasn’t enough, the environment as a whole took the cake. As an outdoorsy extrovert, the inability to move and the darkness felt like a terrible pressure that threatened to crush me at any moment.
I was getting ready to give up, when I heard a faint voice from somewhere. “Newmannnn! Newmannnnn!” I replied with all my might. Then I heard silence for a few seconds. NONONONONONONO PLEASE DON’T GO! Then, again and (thankfully) a little louder. “Newmannnnn! Newmannnnnnnnnn!” I inhaled and shouted back again as loudly as I possibly could. There was silence again. I dejectedly went back to dreaming of nothing. Suddenly, my dreams were disturbed by the sound of voices and a lot of banging. Light opened up somewhere above me and I could see some sort of shape crawling toward me. I trembled in fear and awaited my fate. The thing picked me up, and I immediately attacked. I was not about to go down without a fight. It still held me close and moved upwards again, then somehow transferred me to another thing. I aimed another barrage of attacks at this thing before I realized that I knew who this thing was. Actually, it wasn’t a thing. It was a person whom I knew and loved and had missed during my century long captivity. As I contemplated these things, I was suddenly drenched in water. Apparently, the darkness had decided to use me as a coloring book.
My assistant will fill you in on the details regarding the human world’s shock and subsequent solution to my disappearance here:
Mrs. Jourlait and her husband realized that Newman was gone three days before their sons (aged seven and nine) were due to come back from summer camp. They tried to figure out where he had gone, but apparently, he had disappeared. Except, that there was one very suspicious looking orange-sized hole in the wall with a lot of cat hair around it. At 5 AM on a Sunday morning, one day before their sons return, Mrs. Jourlait decided to just see if Newman had fallen through the hole. She went over and called his name, and to her surprise she heard him reply. With that, she waited until 6 AM before proceeding to race down to the concierge (guardians of the building) for help. They went down and after removing ceiling tiles and employing a ladder, they discovered that Newman had fallen 3 floors and was stuck between the ceiling of the ground floor and the floor of the next floor. He was black from head to toe, and was so terrified that he scratched anyone who touched him, Mrs. Jourlait included. He was like a resurrected cat (since he was gone for 3 days) and he certainly needed a good bath.
Picture credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Picture credit: Mrs. Jourlait (who, in case you didn’t know, teaches AP English Language and Composition in the most amazing way possible. And of course, Mrs. Jourlait herself is very amazing. Forgive the redundant nature of this note.)