Artemis

A dilute tortie she-cat with a white chest and tail tip, gray eyes, and a rainbow collar

Artemis is a pale gray furred she-cat with darker gray stripes along her fur. She has a pale orange orange tortie pattern speckles across her body, with a darker orange stripes in the spots lining up with the stripes in her gray fur. She has a pure white tail tip, as well as a paw and a patch on her chest. She has pale grey eyes matching the stripes in her fur. Her twolegs also have her wearing a rainbow colored collar, although she pulled the bell off moons ago and they never replaced it.

Artemis is a nervous cat, worried moreso due to instability in her past than anything else. More than anything she longs for adventure and freedom, a world beyond the confines of the cat cafe she spends her days in. She fears any day might be her last at the place she vaguely calls her home. She wants to explore and learn new things about the outside world, but worries due to the stories the other cats have told her about wild cats nearby. Going outside is the first thing she has chosen for herself, and she is determined to make the most of it despite her fears. Her pale colored fur is something she take great care in keeping clean, as well as keeping any gunk out of her claws. At first this started to ensure her humans didn’t know she was getting out, but it has become something she does mindlessly even when her fur is spotless.

• Born in the Moon of Tiger's Wraith (2018) 117

Artemis had a home once. She vaguely remembers a warm bed, a mother, and some littermates. From what she remembered she had a good kit-hood, she was happy indoors with her family, that only lasted about two moons though. Her three littermates got picked off one by one, her mother said their owners were giving them new homes. She couldn’t understand why they needed new homes, they had a home here! Eventually she was the last one left, and then the owners came for her. They put her in a carrier that smelled weird, and gave her to this man whose face was all folded and he used a stick to walk. The man brought her to a house that smelled dusty and that was her life for a few moons. She always had a full food bowl and could do whatever she wanted, inside, alone. The man just slept a lot. Sometimes another person who smelled very spicy came by and brought food for her and the man and helped clean up their house.

She wasn’t exactly sure how long it was until she smelled it, this odd odor coming from the man. It was only a few sunrises after that he grew still and cold. He didn’t fill up her food bowl anymore, and she rummaged through the barren house for anything she could find, trying to ignore the strange smell coming from the man. He was just sleeping.. right? He’d never slept this long before. The person came by as normal two sunrises after the man grew still. She screamed, and then the still man was taken away.

Into a carrier again she went, this time she was brought to this building with tiny “cages” as the humans called them, she could barely walk two steps without bumping into a wall. The other cats screamed, they wouldn’t stop screaming. Faintly she could hear other creatures screaming too.. A loud rough scream she had only heard from outside her human’s door. Humans gawked at her, stuck their fingers through the bars of her cage, sometimes she was even brought to a bigger room to play. Cats around her appeared and disappeared almost at random. Some cats said they were going to a new home, some said they were suffering a worse fate.

Again, a carrier. She was in the carrier for what felt like an eternity this time. Eventually the carrier opened into a big room. There were other cats, all happily sleeping and roaming around the big room. It had tables, chairs, so many things to climb on, and more toys than she had ever dreamed of. The carrier was taken away and she explored her new home. Was this her home? Eventually she found out what this was, a place humans went to play with cats. Sometimes they chose to take a cat home with them, but the group was generally unchanging otherwise. The owners took care of them, played with them, and gave them a soft place to sleep.

She lived here for months, eventually she accidentally knocked one of the smaller squares underneath a cat tree in a hidden corner of the building and found a small hole. It was just big enough for her to squeeze outside, and she did. She stepped paw onto dirt for the first time. She found her way out from underneath the building and followed the light until she made it outside. She’d spent so long traveling from human to human, and now inside this building. The freedom of the outside was exhilarating. She vowed to herself that she’d go out more, and that she didn’t want to ever go into that carrier again. Thus she did, exploring the outside world and learning about what it had to offer.

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