Awash in White
Snow, Cats
The world ended overnight.
I knew this the moment I pushed through the cat flap and felt the wrongness beneath my paws. Where yesterday there had been concrete, familiar and predictable, now there was something else entirely. Cold seeped up through the pads of my feet, sharp and biting, and I jerked back instinctively before forcing myself forward again. A hunter does not retreat from the unknown. A hunter investigates.
The yard had vanished. In its place stretched an endless white plain, glittering under weak morning sun like scattered fragments of broken glass. I took another step, and my paw sank into the surface, disappearing up to my wrist. The sensation was so foreign that I froze mid-stride, leg suspended, uncertain whether to commit or withdraw. The white substance compressed beneath my weight with a soft crunch, leaving behind a perfect impression of my paw when I lifted it free.
I shook the clinging particles from my fur and watched them drift back down to rejoin their brethren. Then I shook again, harder, because some had worked their way between my toes and begun to melt into frigid water.
My fur rose along my spine, not from fear but from instinct, trapping warm air close to my skin. I had survived winters before, curled in cardboard boxes behind the restaurant before the small humans found me. But I had never seen anything like this. The familiar landmarks of my territory had been transformed into strange white sculptures. The garden gnome by the roses now wore a peaked cap of frost. The birdbath had become a solid disc of clouded ice. Even the air smelled different, clean and sharp, scrubbed of the usual layered scents of grass and soil and the neighbor’s dog.
I made my way toward the back fence, placing each paw with deliberate care. The cold bit at me with every step, but I found that if I moved quickly, the discomfort was manageable. By the time I reached the wooden slats, I had developed a rhythm: sink, lift, shake, repeat.
The fence presented my first real test. I had cleared it ten thousand times, knew exactly where to plant my hindquarters for the jump, exactly how much force to apply. I crouched, tensed, and launched myself upward.
My back paws slipped on launch.
The trajectory was wrong before I even left the ground. I scrabbled at the top of the fence with my front claws, hung there for one undignified moment, then dropped back down into a drift that swallowed me to the shoulders. I emerged sputtering, white powder coating my whiskers, my black fur now mottled with clinging frost.
I sat for a moment, licking my chest with sharp, irritated strokes. The substance tasted like nothing, like frozen air, and it melted against my tongue.
The next fence, I adjusted. I dug down through the white layer until I found solid ground, braced properly, and cleared the top with room to spare.
A hunter adapts.
By midmorning I had completed most of my patrol, though it had taken twice as long as usual. My paws had grown numb, then somehow warmer, as if my body had decided to ignore the cold entirely. I was moving through the Hendersons’ overgrown back garden when I caught it: the warm, earthy musk of mouse.
I dropped low. The white coating here was thinner, patchy, revealing brown grass beneath. I could see the faint disturbance where something small had tunneled just beneath the surface, leaving a raised trail like a vein under skin. I crept forward, weight distributed, breathing shallow.
The mouse emerged six feet ahead, its small grey head popping up through a hole in the white crust. Its whiskers twitched. Its black eyes scanned.
I launched.
My paws hit the spot where the mouse had been, punching through into empty air. It had dropped straight down, using its tunnel like an escape hatch. I dug frantically, sending white spray in all directions, but the passage twisted and branched beneath the surface, a maze I could not follow. The scent trail dispersed into a dozen false paths.
I sat back, breathing hard, and stared at the ruined snow around me. The mouse was gone. The white world had given it sanctuary.
The sun had climbed higher by the time I returned home, and I could hear the small humans before I saw them. Their voices rang across the yard, high and excited, accompanied by the scrape of shovels and the thump of packed snow. They had built something, a structure of white walls rising from the lawn. I approached cautiously and peered through the low entrance.
Inside, the girl sat cross-legged, her cheeks flushed red above her scarf. She spotted me immediately.
“Marshmallow!”
I walked into the hollow they had carved, sniffed the walls, and found them solid, insulating. Warmer in here than outside. The girl’s lap was warmer still, and I climbed into it without waiting for invitation, turned twice, and settled.
Her mittened hand stroked down my spine.
I closed my eyes.
