Saturday 5 May 2007

My First Memory

October 2003 and I'm terrified. I'm in a cardboard box with my 7 baby brothers and sisters.
It's been an hour since we were taken away from mum -she was very distressed too. What is happening to us? Where are we going? Why can't she come too?

It's so, so quiet - I cannot hear the others' crying as I can hear my own; maybe they are contented? Maybe they know what is happening but won't tell me? Nobody ever tells me anything!

I'm panting 'cause it's so hot. The sun is beating down on us in this confined space and there is no water to drink. I'm also hungry and I need to pee. God do I need to pee. I've been holding it for so long that my bladder is going to explode, but I don't think my siblings will appreciate it if I pee in here, as I certainly wouldn't if they did it.

I can't see, smell or hear mummy at all and this makes me feel even more frightened. I want to cry. I don't know where she is but at least I have my brothers and sisters to play with; not that anybody is in the mood for playing today.

Just why have we been dragged away from our mum so soon and why are we sitting in a cardboard box on the pavement in a hot day such as this with no food or water - I have no idea. All I know is that we are in a place called Plaza Alfalfa in Sevilla, Spain.

There's loads of alien smells around; I can't quite put my paw on it and this scares me too. To make matters worse every now and then a big, smelly and sweaty hand reaches in for me, messes up my fur, drags me around or picks me up in a very uncomfortable and clumsy way; damn my bladder is so full it hurts, next time this happens I swear I'll let i go!

Some hands are much much smaller than the average ones, I notice. These don't smell as bad but are clumsier, and I dread them. Later I'll learn that those hands belong to the offspring of the humans called children, and that they can be very nasty indeed.
However, if I could choose between big smelly hands and the small clumsy ones, well, the small ones are the lesser of two evils I guess, at least I can carry on breathing while they inspect me.
The smells that I smell on these people, I will learn later, are: cigarettes, cheap perfume and/or soap, body odour and alcohol. Yuck!

As I'm thinking all this, another pair of hands reach in for me and I make myself even smaller in fear. They too grab a hold of me but oh so gently and I feel myself relaxing all my muscles. And I mean all of them - so I pee. The hands get wet but they don't seem to care much and then they are soon dry again.

These hands are different - they're soft, they don't smell bad, and they are gentle and tender. It makes me think of mummy, so I curl up wanting to sleep. The hands take me to the face - where the eyes are - and two big brown eyes look at me. There's love and tenderness there. I feel so happy that for a moment I forget how hungry and hot I am.

Then before I can even get comfortable I'm back in the box again. I notice that one of us is missing; we are 7 now. I cry and cry but nobody hears me. I accept my fate and, exhausted, curl up against my sister to sleep. What else can I do?

In my dreams I feel those hands again. They hold and stroke me ever so gently, they put me against their body and I can feel its heat; they rock me from side to side. I want this dream to last forever, I don't want to wake up.

But I do, and I am no longer in the box. I look around me, and I am so petrified that I pee again. My brothers and sisters are gone, and I am all alone.

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