There was not much more than yelling and screaming in my life. But it was my life, and in the end I didn’t mind. I think I got to the point where I didn’t hear it any more. I’d just do my rounds around the room, concentrating on searching for something to eat.

My mother—I didn’t know my father—had said, since the day I was born, that things used to be different. That if I had been around fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have grown up so fast. Children used to be around. They used to rub our fur, and play with us, feed us, and well…keep us kittens, I suppose.

I used to sit still and listen to her. Sometimes I would even nod. It was all to make her feel better, even though I didn’t know what children were, or how they were different from anyone else. She didn’t seem to think that was important, however. What was important, like all parents were sure, was that I listened to her. So I listened. With half an ear.

I grew up on a farm, like the rest of my siblings and the dogs. Mud, rain, cold, wet and, sometimes if the humans forgot you, hunger. I couldn’t imagine such an odd thing as any of them spending their time rubbing our fur or playing with us. What I could imagine was sitting in the darkened dining room listening to them screaming at each other. About how they were going to fix the fractures in the world, how they were going to bring everything back to the way it used to be. By grabbing power, by making themselves seen. In the dark, dark, darkness that even we were afraid to go out in.

He came to the farm with two women, one dark and one light with crazy hair. Luke drove the car, and sat in it for a long time after they arrived before he was able to get out and go inside to the main house. They all called him Theo, the one I’m telling you about, and his fear actually made me want to stay away from him. The dogs, never, ever knowing any better, instantly wanted to take care of him.

The first time he rubbed my fur, I was eating my dinner. The humans would dump it on the ground and I would have a hard time getting to it if the dogs or the bigger animals smelled it first. I knew the humans cared for me, but they didn’t seem to get it. Since I’d been around—about four months now—I’d found it a hard thing to deal with and wished I could somehow make them understand.

But then he arrived and scraped up my food, placed it in a bowl and picked me up, placed me on a shelf with the bowl so only I could get at it. And then he stood by the shelf and rubbed my back while I ate, and I mistook him for one of those children of men my mother had told me about.

I tried to get a good look at him but I could only see his back, and when I came down from the shelves, only his black shoes and the legs of his trousers. But since I was really finally looking at him, I could also see his colors. Soft reds, meaning you couldn’t ignore the fact that he wasn’t safe for everyone, but also bright whites. Meaning he was safe for us, and for anyone else who needed him.

So every night he put my food out for me, and every night he rubbed me as I ate. He didn’t seem conscious of doing it. And to this day I still wonder how many days he actually stayed with us. But I remember thinking about my mother a lot in that period, who had passed away that winter, and understanding finally why she had wasted away on mere memories of the way things used to be.

The night of the meeting where everyone really lost it, yelling at each other like I’d never heard, I knew, just knew that was his final night with us. Every time I looked at him I saw his soft lights, the red receding and the white strengthening, and I kept thinking his mind was moving on. He was beginning to understand his purpose. I climbed to a higher surface and got a good look, and could see his eyes and his doubts, the painful fear he was already beginning to live with.

He was going to go all the way and turn everything over to the future, for those children. Whatever they were. That night I dropped from the bookshelf and made my way over to where he was standing. I didn’t expect him to be able to tell me one kitten from the next, but I wanted to be near him.

I arrived at his feet and got on my hind legs. My claws sank into his legs but he didn’t notice in the commotion. I made a lot of noise.

How was I going to help him? I didn’t know. But I kept thinking that my mother had not been making up stories.

He finally looked down and noticed my claws in his shins, and said, “Ouch.”

He didn’t shake his leg, but I let go. I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I sat between his legs. In the room they were still screaming at each other. I could see the light he was spilling out all around me. I put out my paw and swatted at it, and it didn’t change. It was the kind of light that gave off neither warmth or cold, but felt good to sit in. I sat there and listened to the rest of the meeting. He was screaming and yelling with the rest of them.

Halfway through, he slid down the wall and sat down on the floor. I called loudly to him and he picked me up and put me in the crook of his arm. Then he started rubbing my neck, and again I cried out to him. But he didn’t seem to understand. Soon, however, his fingers slowed to an hypnotic rhythm and didn’t do much more than roll around in my fur, and occasionally he spoke softly to himself and gently pulled on my fur. He seemed no less stressed but he grew calmer.

Eventually, I fell asleep. It was only as time passed that I came to understand what I had done for him.

But that night when I woke up I had to go upstairs to find him. He was pulling on some clothes and running for the dark and light women and hurrying out. I stood to one side and they passed without paying me any attention. I was devastated to see him go.

But his light was shining brightly, almost blindingly.

And that was how I knew, without my mother having to tell me, that the world was going to change.