The Uprising by Voima Oy

All the cats lay curled in sleep, dreaming a new world.

On the savannah, caracals leaped like birds and soared into the sky. Human eyes witnessed this murmuration, but it was dismissed as rumor, nothing more. Even video from mobile phones would have been considered suspect, much like the footage of UFOs in the earlier days. No one believed the tribal leaders and the women who had seen the flying cats with their own eyes.  In time, even they began to question what they had seen. But this was only the beginning. From near and far, the tribes of tiger began to gather—lynxes and leopards, bobcats and lions, tigers, margays and jaguars. Even the tamest tabbies became wild again. They disappeared between the walls.  They vanished from windows and alleys. They left without a sound. Within days, every feline on earth was gone. The world without cats was flat and dull, without mystery. It vibrated to a frequency of digital devices and clockwork machinery, not the rumbling of distant thunder, the trembling of whiskers, the reverberation of velvet paws.  Where did all the cats go? That was the question people whispered to one another. No one knew the answer. Noted scientists speculated that it involved a space-time vortex, or as the poets had said, a door that is not a door, opening. If indeed the dimension of cats exists beside our own, how could we hope to go there?  When they left, they took their secrets with them.

Voima  Oy lives on the western rim of Chicago, near the expressway and the Blue Line trains. Her  writing can be found in the  FlashDogs anthologies, and online at Flash!Friday, Angry Hourglass, FlashFlood and  Visual Verse.  Proud FlashDog. Follow her on Twitter @voimaoy