By Aram M

I was walking one day across the street. Then a cat appeared! The poor thing was stuck in a really tall tree. It meowed at me, heart-melting, but the crossing light was counting down quickly. 12… 11… 10… 9… So I hurried back across the street. “What’re you doing?” I exclaimed at the cat, though I knew it couldn’t understand me.

 I scaled the tree, gently grabbed the cat, and began the painful climb down. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. I scraped my hand. I scraped my knee. I scraped my chest. Finally, I got to the ground and slowly set the cat down. 

It was a brown tabby with black stripes, probably a girl. 

“Hey,” it mewed. 

Yes, it spooke. “Thanks for that.” It stood up on its hind legs and pressed its paws to my chest, causing a ripple of golden light to spread outward from her paws and over my body, erasing my wounds. “I’ll give you a present.” Her ear flicked. Her tail curled. Her rear end wiggled. And she pounced on a mouse! 

The cat picked the mouse up in her mouth and dropped it in front of me, and I finally found my voice. “Sorry, but I don’t really eat mice.” 

“What do you eat then? Vole? Sparrow? Squirrel? Finch?” She asked.

“No. And I don’t eat cat food either.” The tabby was taken aback. “What! That’s hilarious!”

“No, seriously! I eat vegetables, fruits, and cooked meats.”

“Ugh. Vegetables. Fruits. And you COOK your meat? How could you?”

“My diet is different from yours.” 

The cat rolled her eyes. “Fine, I get it. Mostly.” A simple cord bracelet appeared in the air and while it fell, the tabby flicked her tail toward my hand and the bracelet fastened itself on my wrist. Then the tabby scraped her ring finger claw on the ground, forming a golden-light line on the ground where her claw had touched. The line started wiggling and it formed into the shape of a miniature tabby cat. 

It floated off the ground, filled itself in with the colors of a tabby cat, and attached itself to the cord bracelet on my right wrist. So now I had a cord charm bracelet with a charm of a glowing gold tabby cat hanging on it. Very useful. 

“Use it in a moment of crisis,squeeze it three times and I’ll appear. And also, I have a second piece of advice for you-eat mice. And a third. Raw meat is tastier than cooked meat, so eat raw meat. There. That’s what I want to tell you. Thanks again!” 

The tabby cat, with a last grateful swish of her tail, disappeared in a column of swirling golden light that reached up to the sky.

Two years later, the charm bracelet helped me in a robbery. The thief left empty handed and clawed up.

About the Author

Aram M  happily lives in Sterling, Virginia with his grandfather, two cats, mom, and enthusiastic sister. His favorite activities include swimming, tennis, and horseback riding!