The first time the boy saw the cat, it was raining.
Not the gentle kind of rain that smells like wet earth and feels forgiving, but the sharp, impatient rain that soaked clothes in seconds and made the world feel smaller. The boy stood under the broken awning of a closed tea shop, clutching a thin cloth bag that held his schoolbooks, a pencil with no eraser, and half a roti wrapped in newspaper.
The cat sat across the street.
It was small, grey, and thin, its fur clinging to its body like it had forgotten how to grow properly. One ear bent slightly forward, as if it were always listening. Its eyes—unusually alert for a stray—locked onto the boy with a kind of recognition that made the boy uncomfortable.
"Go on," the boy muttered, shooing it with his foot. "You'll get sick."
The cat didn't move.
It only blinked.
And in that blink was panic.
Because the cat was not a cat.
Not really.
Inside the small, shivering body was a boy who had already seen the end of a world.
In the other universe, the sky had cracked first.
Not with thunder, but with silence—an absence so heavy it pressed against the ears until people thought they had gone deaf. Then the lights flickered. Phones buzzed with emergency alerts that contradicted each other. Governments spoke, then stopped speaking altogether.
And people waited.
The boy in that world—older, tired, proud in the worst ways—had waited too long.
He had believed mistakes could be corrected later. That kindness could be postponed. That warnings were exaggerations meant for other people. He had ignored the quiet signs, the small fractures that appeared long before buildings fell.
By the time the world ended, it didn't explode.
It simply… failed.
Systems collapsed. Trust dissolved. And the boy stood among the ruins knowing that if he had acted sooner—if he had spoken when it mattered—some of it could have been saved.
That knowledge followed him when he woke up as a cat.
The boy under the awning sighed.
"Fine," he said. "You win."
He took off his only extra shirt—thin, worn, but dry—and wrapped it around the cat. The cat stiffened, startled by the warmth, by the kindness.
"Don't bite me," the boy warned gently. "I don't have money for injections."
The cat let out a small, confused meow.
It had forgotten how small sounds felt.
The boy tucked the cat under his arm and ran home.
Home was a single-room house made of concrete and compromise. The ceiling leaked when it rained too hard. The window didn't close fully. The stove worked only if you turned the knob just right and prayed.
The boy's mother was at work cleaning offices. His father had left years ago, leaving behind silence and a surname that the boy carried like a question mark.
The boy set the cat down on the floor.
"There," he said, smiling tiredly. "Luxury."
The cat looked around.
Bare walls. A cracked mirror. A mattress folded against the wall. A calendar from three years ago.
The cat's chest tightened.
This boy had so little.
And still, he had shared.
That was how the cat knew—without doubt—that this boy mattered.
Communication was the first problem.
The cat tried everything.
It meowed differently. Soft meows. Sharp meows. Long, mournful ones that echoed off the walls.
The boy tilted his head. "Hungry?"
The cat shook its head violently.
The boy frowned. "Thirsty?"
The cat knocked over the empty steel cup.
"Okay, okay," the boy laughed. "Drama queen."
The cat wanted to scream.
It tried scratching letters into the dust on the floor: A… B… C…
The boy stared. "Huh. You're… artistic."
The cat slammed its paw down.
No.
No, no, no.
Days passed.
The boy named the cat Mitti, because it liked sitting on the dusty windowsill, watching the world like it belonged to both of them.
The cat hated the name.
But it learned to respond to it.
The boy's life was simple and heavy.
School in the morning. Part-time work in the evening. Homework done by candlelight when electricity failed—which was often. Other boys talked about phones, games, vacations.
The boy talked to Mitti.
"You know," he said one night, tearing his roti in half, "if I had money, I'd buy you fish every day."
The cat stared at the roti.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
In the other world, abundance had made people careless. Here, scarcity made kindness deliberate.
The cat ate slowly, mind racing.
The disaster in this world had not happened yet.
But it would.
The signs were already there—subtle shifts, strange system glitches, power failures lasting a little too long. People blaming each other instead of fixing things. Leaders dismissing warnings.
The cat had come back for this moment.
And it could not speak.
The first breakthrough came by accident.
The boy borrowed a neighbor's old smartphone—cracked screen, slow processor—to access free internet near the railway station. He used it to watch lessons and send assignments.
One evening, Mitti pawed at the phone.
The boy laughed. "You want to watch cartoons?"
Mitti shook its head and tapped the screen again.
The boy unlocked it.
Mitti's heart pounded.
With shaking paws, it opened a notes app. The keyboard appeared.
The cat stared.
Letters.
Words.
Hope.
It tapped clumsily.
H… E… L…
The boy froze.
"…Did you just—?"
Mitti typed slowly.
H E L L O
The boy's mouth opened.
He laughed. "Okay. That's enough internet for today."
Mitti typed faster.
I A M Y O U
The boy's smile faded.
"Who taught you this?"
Mitti typed again.
P L E A S E L I S T E N
The boy dropped the phone.
It hit the floor with a crack that echoed like a gunshot.
He backed away.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
Mitti stepped forward.
The boy grabbed the broom.
"Get away," he said, voice shaking. "I don't know what you are."
The cat stopped.
This—this fear—this was familiar.
It had seen it before.
In another world.
When people stopped listening.
That night, the cat sat alone by the window.
Rain returned, tapping softly, like a warning trying to be gentle.
The boy lay awake on the mattress, staring at the ceiling.
By morning, guilt won.
The boy picked up the phone.
"Okay," he whispered. "If this is a joke… it's not funny."
Mitti jumped onto the bed.
The phone buzzed.
T H A N K Y O U
The boy swallowed.
"What are you?"
Mitti typed slowly, carefully.
I A M Y O U F R O M A W O R L D T H A T E N D E D
Silence filled the room.
Then the boy laughed again—but this time, there was fear in it.
"Sure," he said. "And I'm a king."
Mitti typed one final line.
I C A M E T O S T O P Y O U F R O M M A K I N G M Y M I S T A K E S
The boy stopped laughing.
Over days and nights, the cat told its story.
About warnings ignored. About small compromises that became disasters. About how silence felt safer than action—until it was fatal.
The boy listened.
"I'm just a kid," he said finally. "What can I do?"
Mitti looked at him with eyes that held an ending.
I D I D N O T H I N G A N D T H A T W A S E N O U G H T O E N D E V E R Y T H I N G
The world outside flickered.
Power cut.
Darkness.
The boy reached out and held the cat close.
For the first time, the cat felt its mission might succeed.
When the first real disaster signs appeared—network failures, misinformation spreading faster than truth—the boy didn't stay quiet.
He spoke.
He warned.
He shared.
People laughed.
Some listened.
And that was enough.
The cat grew weaker as time went on. Its body was not meant to hold this much purpose.
One night, as the city lights stayed on instead of failing, the cat lay still.
The boy cried.
"Did we win?" he whispered.
Mitti typed with trembling paws.
N O T Y E T
The cat closed its eyes.
The world continued.
Not perfect.
But alive.
And somewhere, in the quiet between moments, a boy learned that saving the world doesn't always look heroic.
Sometimes, it looks like listening.
And sometimes, it looks like loving a small grey cat who knew the end—and came back anyway.