The sun has set and it is time to prepare for the game. Not long now and the hunt will be afoot. It is so every evening as the sun's last light fades.
I feel my whiskers quiver in anticipation. I feel my eyes waxing large, growing in their strength while others feel their sight diminish with the waning of the sun. I feel my whole being coming alive in this moment of excitement, the final moments before the nightly hunt begins.
Let them assemble their hunting parties in their dusky halls. Let them don their heavy jackets and acquire their hunting kit. Let them bravely tell stories of hunts of old wherein they "had spied the cat among the bushes before the dark was full upon them and they had missed the curfew".
Allow them their final moments of jovial bravery before the hunt. Let them sally forth in great multitudes and be routed. Let them quiver in cold fear at the very thought of the sharp teeth of coyotes and imagine with feverish intent the cruel claws of owls. My courage will hold fast as the light weakens. Let them call and chase wildly in the night to no avail. Tonight I shall not be found.
There have been nights where I have been unprepared and caught up before the darkness falls. It will not be this night. There have been nights where the swaying grasses have betrayed me, parting to show my form. It will not be this night. There may be a night where the time of the coyotes and broken quiet falls suddenly upon the world before the light has even started to fade. But it will not be this night.
Tonight I will sit in perfect stillness. Tonight I will be the dusk and twilight gathering into night. Tonight I will claim my inheritance. I am a Cat. I am born of shadows and darkness. I am the stillness of the night and the danger in the shadows. The nighttime is my birthright, the legacy of my ancestors.
Lo there does the darkness call to me
Lo there do I see my father
Lo there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers
Lo there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
They bid me take my place among them, in the ancient rites of darkness where cats are king and the brave may live forever.
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