I should have seen it coming.
His ears were flat, his eyes were slit in narrow lines of pure hatred, and his body all recoiled and ready to launch at the nearest thing that dared to get close to him.
"Ssssst!" I only saw a black blur, but the sting in my hand was proof enough that he had indeed moved his paw.
Frankie chuckled beside me. "You weren't kidding when you said he hated your frigging guts," she said as she watched me flail my hand in the air and groan a string of curses.
"It's like this every time I try to get near him. Look the state I'm in! Look!" I extended both arms to show her the millions of scratches I had all over me. "He had time to get used to his cage and he's not in pain, but he still tries to bite my hand off every time I get near him," I grumbled and shot him a dark glare.
"Ccccchh!" He hissed and glared right back at me from the bottom of his cage.
"He seems very resentful there," Frankie noted.
"Yeah, I know. I've apologized for the accident already, but he's not very forgiving. He can hold a mean grudge..."
The resentment in his eyes was clear for anyone to see and I couldn't help but shrink with guilt. ′You were the one who got me like this,′ his eyes silently said.
"I'm only trying to put the bowl of food in your cage, Lucky! So you can eat. I can't do that if you try to rip my arm off every time that I stick my hand inside." I tried to explain.
"Lucky?" Frankie asked.
"Yeah, I'm calling him that, because he survived, you see," I explained. "He's lucky."
A few days have passed since the accident and Lucky had recovered incredibly fast. He couldn't open his eyes or move in the first day after his surgery, due to the sedation and all the pain medication that Marie had given him. But eventually, the sedation wore off and he came to the realization that he wanted me dead. He tried to bite my fingers off at every possible opportunity since then.
"Marie says he's healing wickedly fast. Faster than expected," I said while I rubbed the scratch on my hand and studied a safe way inside that cage where I wouldn't be mangled by his vicious claws again. "Even his fur is growing back."
Marie had to shave him by the side of the head and over his ribcage, where she had to stitch him up, but the fur was already growing back.
"Isn't he supposed to be wearing one of those plastic cone thingies around his neck?" Frankie asked as she inspected the cage.
"Yeah. That idea earned me this nasty cut right here." I showed her the deep slash on my left arm. "You should have seen how badly he reacted when he saw me approaching with The Cone of Shame. I don't even know how he was able to take it off in the first place. We put the cone when he was out cold from the surgery. The next day, it was off. Then I had the brilliant idea to put it back on. Biggest mistake of my life, man."
He became the devil reincarnated whenever he spotted the cone. I gave up after the third attempt when he gave me a slash on my arm. The only way to get him to wear that cone was at risk of losing a limb. I figured it wasn't really worth the hassle, so I left him without it.
"He doesn't seem to be pulling or biting at his stitches. I think it's okay to leave him without the cone for now."
My arm sure appreciated the consideration.
"His eyes look funny." Frankie mused, peering into the cage.
He recoiled at the back and let out a low warning growl to not approach any further.
The first time Lucky had blinked awake, after his surgery was over, and glanced dizzily back at me, he had taken my freaking breath away. He had the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen, each one of a different color. The left eye was a sparkling green and the one on the right was a bright golden yellow.
"He has Iris Heterochromia," I explained.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I thought you said Marie had patched him all up," Frankie said and Lucky perked up his ears as if he was straining to hear what we were talking about.
I chuckled. "No, he's okay. Heterochromia is not a bad thing. It means a difference in iris coloration. One eye has a different color than the other. If you look closer, you'll see he has one green and one yellow eye. I don't advise getting closer though, unless you want to risk losing an eye yourself."
Frankie was a brave girl though, and risked a closer peek. Lucky rumbled another warning and turned his head away to stare at the wall as if he was trying to hide his eyes on purpose.
"He's very temperamental. And has a lot of attitude." She mused, chuckling.
"Yeah, if by 'temperamental' you mean 'viciously hateful' and by 'attitude' you mean he's a clawing maniac, then, yeah, totally." I snorted in scorn.
He let out an indignant huff from his curled-up position and whipped his tail back and forth in a brisk manner, a clear sign that he was getting irritated.
Well, more irritated than usual.
Body language is ninety percent of how cats communicate and it was best to pay close attention, especially if I wanted to keep my arm in one piece.
Cats usually only vocalize things when we, stupid humans, can't take a hint. For them, it's like having to state the painfully obvious. They bear through it only because we (stupid humans) also have tuna cans and can-openers. If it wasn't for that I suspect they wouldn't bother to try to tell us anything, really.
"We should leave him alone. He's getting edgy. The deadly claws come soon after that." I muttered, throwing the bowl inside and spilling half of the food everywhere before closing the cage as fast as I could.
"Well, that wasn't very graceful. What happened to your communication skills, Miss Cat-Whisperer?" Frankie laughed at my flustered face.
"Well, he seems to understand very well what I'm saying. So I reckon my whispering is working just fine. He just doesn't like me, or want to listen to anything I have to say."
To be quite honest, I was feeling increasingly miffed about this. Usually, it took a couple of days for me to earn the trust of any cat. They all ended up freaking loving me by the end of the second day. It was my thing, to make cats love me.
But not with Lucky. With him, it was hate at first sight.
The second he opened those beautiful colored eyes and stared groggily at me, he decided he was going to frigging loath me. It was like he couldn't forgive me for the accident. As if it was even my fault! I had told him I didn't order that damn car to run over him, but he wasn't listening to the voice of reason, that stubborn ball of menace.
"At the speed he's recovering, he should be good to leave by the end of the week, I think," I told Frankie. "Then he can go back to whatever hellish place he came from and hate me from there."
"Good, good. So, Mia, are you coming to the Fair with me tonight?" Frankie changed the subject, already bored with all the cat stories I've been spewing on her since she stepped foot inside the Pet store.
I snorted loudly. "No, Frankie. I spent all the money I have left on Lucky. I'm broke for the month, sorry."
"I can pay for you, silly. And I'm going to meet Bobby there tonight. I can ask him to bring a friend and we can have a double date, what do you say?"
Frankie didn't know that if it was up to me, I would never date.
I'm sure you want to know why. Well, first of all, because people suck.
More specifically, boys. Boys are the worst.
I never cared about dating, it all seemed a lot of ado about nothing to me. I was happy being alone, honestly, I really was. I was glad that I only had to deal with animals in the clinic. I loved animals. Animals were honest and sincere about their feelings. They didn't betray you, cheated, or lied to you. They certainly didn't spread nasty rumors about you just for the kicks of it.
I've managed to navigate through high school fairly unfazed and carefree, without any of the hassles of worrying about relationships and all the drama that undoubtedly followed it close behind.
But then Russell Cooper had to show up with the sole purpose of making my life a living hell.
The idiotic boy decided one day that he wanted to go out on a date with me. He was quite shocked when I politely declined. Apparently, my opinion on the matter didn't matter. What he wanted was all that mattered. He wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, since he was obviously God's gift to women kind.
At first, he thought I was playing hard to get, so he kept asking and asking, and every time I refused, he'd get more aggressive and more insistent. He couldn't understand why I wasn't agreeing to the date. He was a catch, everyone said so. Every girl in our school jumped hoops for a chance to date him.
I wasn't jumping any hoops though, and he was infuriated by it.
He made it his mission then to make me accept his date proposal. The bullying spread all over the school like wildfire. All of his friends began to pressure and harass me into going out with him. Just because frigging Russell wanted to date me, I had to do it. I should feel honored. I should be flattered to be even considered by him, they told me. It was a compliment and I should take it. This happened at school every day and I was getting sick of it.
If I didn't like Russell before, I freaking hated his guts now.
In his mind, a girl should be begging for the privilege of getting his attention. And when I refused him yet again, he started to act like a poor victim.
Suddenly all of this trouble was my fault and I was the one to blame. People began to call me a bitch for turning him down so many times.
It was the first time I was called that. It was shocking to hear that word thrown at my face, so carelessly like that. Why was I 'a bitch' all of a sudden? It stung and hurt and made me feel angry and humiliated, all at the same time.
Why did I have to be shamed just because I didn't like this one stupid boy?
It's funny how whenever a guy turns down a girl, he is a hot popular stud and she's a pathetic loser. But if a girl turns a guy down, he's treated like a poor suffering martyr, and the girl's a bitch.
And by funny, I mean outrageously revolting and disgustingly sexist.
Soon rumors that I was a frigid dike started to roll around the school's hallways. Surely, for a girl to refuse to go out with dreamy Russell, she had to be a frigid lesbian, there was no better explanation for it.
It turns out that girls are the worst too.
They were even more vicious than the guys, and the meanest with the rumors. They whispered countless times about how I was a stupid prude, destined to be forever alone, that I should kill myself for causing 'poor Russell' all that embarrassment, and that I was going to turn into one of those old ladies locked in the house with a hundred pet cats. They started calling me 'Crazy Cat Lady' while they laughed behind my back.
The nickname stuck like glue.
And that was why, after all this hellish torture I had to endure for months, I came up with this one golden rule for my life: No Dating for Mia.
"Seriously, Mia, when was the last time you've been out on a date?" Frankie asked, making me snap out of the horrific memories of Russell's abusive harassment.
"It doesn't matter, Frankie. I don't want to date anyone, okay? Not now, not ever." I told her firmly.
"That's nonsense, Mia. Everybody dates!" Frankie wailed in protest.
"No! Why you people can't accept I want to be alone? Why do you think that I'm a loser and a disgrace if I'm alone? I have to have a man by my side to have a life, to be happy, to be valued. This is preposterous! I'm not accepting this! I'm perfectly fine just the way I am. Alone. I won't date, ever! You can't make me." I stuck my tongue out and went to stock some dog toys on a shelf.
"Ugh! You're impossible when you're like this!" She shouted at me.
"I'm right and you know it!" I shouted back at her.
"Well, I'm going to the Fair with Bobby and you can keep hiding in fear here forever then." She harrumphed. "But listen to me, Emilia Atkins. This isn't the end of this conversation. I'm going to make you see that not all boys are awful like you think they are." She huffed at me before stomping out of the store.
...