CHAPTER ONE
Amoudara
The earliest memory I have is of going to sleep as usual with my brother or sister but waking up in a completely different place. It was a shocking experience since my new place was very small - just enough room for us to lie down without being on top of each other.
Since I could not yet see I could only rely on my senses of smell and hearing to determine what was happening around me. I remember a terrible noise of what I now know to be cars, trucks and motorcycles almost all the time I was awake.
A human would come, eventually, after we had screamed long and hard enough, and shove a rubber thing in my mouth. If I sucked really hard it would produce a liquid that I somehow persuaded myself was almost like my mother's milk. Even though there was no warm fur around it I instinctively knew I had to drink from it to stay alive.
During my waking times I heard many human voices and I learned to recognize the one who brought the rubber thing. One day, when the rubber thing voice came near, there was another voice with it. A gentle voice. I had also become used to the 'rubber thing' human picking me up. This time other hands picked me up. I was a little frightened until I realized they belonged to 'gentle voice'. Then, to my surprise, 'gentle voice' pushed the rubber thing into my mouth, but this only happened once.
Several sleep periods went by and then I heard 'gentle voice' again. I was excited this time because I liked the way he had held me before and hoped it would happen again. He did pick me up but, to my horror, he immediately put me down again into a container that smelled similar to the one I was used to but felt completely different. (Humans call them "cardboard boxes". I understand perfectly, by the way, human English, American, Greek and German!)
This new box had a sheet of plastic, very cold plastic I might add, on the bottom and I was to spend the next few days in there.
A few minutes later something even worse happened. The noise which humans call 'traffic' suddenly got louder and I realized I was passing through it, albeit in my box. David, for that is who I now know was 'gentle voice', put me down somewhere. A machine started very close to me; I felt a strange vibration and went to sleep!
The next thing I knew was being lifted again and I immediately noticed the complete absence of noise. It was odd at first but I quickly decided it was rather pleasant. David was talking to me all the time and I somehow felt safe, although I would have much preferred the warmth and security of my mother's body. Still, my basic needs of food and sleep were in plentiful supply and I spent the next 3 or 4 weeks doing nothing more than satisfying both!
During this time the only human voice I heard was David's but I was not alone. My nose told me that there were other animals around but they did not smell nor sound like dogs. When my sight finally arrived I saw they were cats or, more accurately, kittens.
I first counted 10 but the mother left one day and one of the kittens went to live somewhere else. There were now 2 bigger, olde