SuperCats!: The Magic Paw - Part One - Cornflake's Harrowing Near-Demise

She couldn't believe it had happened again. Cornflake had somehow, and for some stupid reason, jumped from her 15^th floor apartment window. What is up with that cat?

The last time he did it, she swore she had seen him fall straight to the sparkling decorative sidewalks near the streets below, but when she reached the ground floor, anticipating some horrific scene involving tufts of fluff and gore, she was instead greeted by a jovial and affectionate Cornflake after several hours of searching for his seemingly ill-fated remains.

But this time, he had been cleanly hit by a passing sanitation truck. This was not good.

~

Cornflake was dazed, confused and in pain. His ribs hurt. His tail was surely mashed beneath him. He had leapt from the window again, and again he had survived the fall. And what's more is that he was rapidly recovering. Cornflake could hear his broken limbs and fractured ribs snapping back into place and fusing like a series of large twigs snapping under the weight of a clumsy human male. He was hurt more this time than last time he jumped, that's for sure.

It had happened so fast that he wasn't sure why this time was worse than last time. He was much more broken now. Falling, he felt two blows; one immense blow that knocked him sideways, and one second, smaller blow when he hit the concrete at an angle and skidded along the wall near an alley. But in nearly an instant, he was fine.

~

After a few minutes of searching, Megan did not know what to do. Almost in slow motion, her precious cat Cornflake had leapt from the window. Panicked, she ran to the window to witness the truck hitting Cornflake, where she saw an orange ball that appeared to be Cornflake struck by a truck. Forgoing the elevator, Megan ran down the steps in her dusty apartment stairwell until she reached the ground floor and burst through the glass double doors.

But where was the cat? She stood flummoxed and gazing into the afternoon street, her eyes searching for the familiar red-orange color so dear to her heart. She saw nothing. The street was empty. It was a one-way street in a little-used alley of Los Angeles. She waited, and still saw nothing. Her heart sank. The transformer on the power pole buzzed ominously. She feared the worst.

Megan closed her eyes and collected herself for a moment before approaching the edge of the sidewalk near the street. She looked across the street. Near an alley entrance, at the corner where two concrete walls intersected, she some tufts of orange hair matted into skidded bloody scrapes. She drew her hand to her mouth in shock, then took a deep breath, checked the street for traffic and sprinted to the corner where the alley entrance was.

"Cornflake?"

As she passed the matted hair, she briefly examined the spots to see if the hair color matched Cornflake's orange hue, but could not tell in the blood and dirt whether the hair was his. But the stains were fresh. Her heart fell.

Despite her better judgment, she continued down the dark alley. As she remembered twisted stories of young ladies demise, each foolish victim found deep in the dark alley into which she'd foolishly wandered, she silently wished she lived in a better neighborhood. Her heart pounded. To her relief, aside from a few scattered trash cans, she was alone in the alley. Frightened and perplexed, she wondered if she'd find her cat. There was nowhere else to look.

"Meow?"

She turned around and saw the backlit shadow of a cat, its tail curled into a question mark. Gingerly, she approached to find an unharmed and eager orange cat curled around her ankles.

"Cornflake! I thought you were killed."

She picked up the cat and held him to her chest, carefully crossed the street and entered the double doors of her concrete apartment complex.

"How do you keep doing that?"