Day 10

Eye of the Tiger

By Zeke Reichert

His name was tiger, but this did not matter to him. He is tiger because he is orange with stripes of brown also because he slinks around everywhere as if he is ready to pounce on pray. During the winter he stays inside, staring outside wishing he could run and play in the snow. But instead he is stuck inside sitting on the back of the couch while his parents watch the winter sports or some sort of soap.

He woke up for his daily routine every day at 6 AM, he walks up to his parent’s door. Meows a few times and walks away. This is just enough for his mom to get out of bed and feed him. As a part of mom’s routine she gets the newspaper every morning so this is the orange Maine coon’s chance. He gets down low and pounces straight out the door onto the porch evading mom at all costs. As he continues to run away from the house into the cold white environment he rolls over and flops into the untouched snow and watches as his mother gives up on getting him back in the house. She knew he would want back in after a few hours.

The outdoors are great the orange fuzz ball in the snow is thinking, but the outdoors during the winter aren’t as friendly as during the summer. There are no mice active, larger predators are more active and are its cold! And being an indoor cat his fur is much thinner than the other cats in nature. But he ventures on, leaving a trail of small paw prints in the freshly laid white dust. Tiger is off to his favorite place it go during the summer, an old nook of trees with lots of leaves to lay in.

Tiger safely arrives to his destination and finds his dry loft of leaves in one of the old sugar maple trees. He makes himself comfortable, rotating several times before actually laying down and going to sleep. The orange feline sleeps for multiple hours disregarding the cold until he is awoken to the sound of a branch snapping in the wind. There is a small flurry going on around him snow is coming down at a faster rate than before, his tracks are covered up and his sense of direction is now blurred and the large cat does not know where to go to get back home, and the fact that he is cold and hungry does not help.

He starts his venture out of the fort and bunny hops through the snow to the nearest house which he recognizes as one that gives him food when he comes up during the summer. He begs at the door and puts his face up to the window where the old woman sees him and lets him in. This is a nice change compare to the cold that awaits him outside but this is not his house nor is this his owner so he sits and waits at the door to go back outside. The old woman walks back into the room with warm milk and wet food. Tiger thinks this is the best meal I have had in all of my life as he wolfs down all of the food and walks out the door into the dark cold outside air. The orange beast now follows the trail of houses recalling his memory of where he is and finally comes to his house at the corner of the line of houses. He walks up to the front door of his house and yowls for his family which soon after open the door to let the cold tired but well fed kitty in the door. Tiger finally gets to walk over to warm fireplace and lay down, arms stretched and fall asleep for the rest of the night until another adventure comes…