Did kitties dream of superheroes too?
Coal Ball's answer was yes.
Because it wasn't an ordinary kitty. It was a super-smart cat.
Coal Ball had observed that ordinary kitties couldn't understand traffic lights, but it could. Ordinary kitties couldn't find their way home once they ran outside, but it could. Ordinary kitties couldn't understand human speech, but it could (though it didn't understand all that much).
And, and, ordinary kitties only lived a dozen years or so, but Coal Ball had already lived for more than fifty.
It realized it really wasn't an ordinary cat.
But not being an ordinary cat didn't change life all that much. It was still a cat with black fur.
It liked lying on rooftops in the sun, catching little fish in ponds, butterflies fluttering back and forth, sleeping somewhere warm, the sun breaking through at dawn...
There were so many things it liked. Of course, there were things it disliked too.
It hated getting its fur wet, children who threw stones at it, cicadas that never stopped chirping, cold winters without a single other cat in sight...
Before winter came, it followed the migrating birds south. Before summer came, it followed them north again.
Unfortunately, the birds flew very, very far south, farther than it could go. When they flew north, they went very, very far north, and it couldn't go that far either.
Coal Ball swished its tail and decided that when the birds weren't flying, it would stay in a city for a while and take a nap.
For a human, fifty-odd years was only half a lifetime. For a cat, it was truly five lifetimes. More than fifty years was such a long time for a kitty.
Sometimes, it stayed with a family, but most of the time, it wandered.
It