Week 5 Story: Domestic Affairs

Katarina Felinus' mother and father had passed away long before she could remember what it as like to live with them. At the time of their passing, she was just a little girl. However, her older brother Ty was an adult by then and ending up taking her under his care. While her parents had left their children a large mass of their wealth and their prominent family name to live on, Ty would carelessly spend their wealth on himself and frivolous items, as well as on gambling, drugs, and liquor. This left Katarina just enough money to buy one small meal a day. This tiny allowance was able to support her as a child, being as small as she was, but once she hit her teens it was barely enough to even cover her breakfast. She realized she needed to find an alternative to feeding herself, however, she realized the status of their family name and did not want to disgrace her mother and father any more than her brother already had by blowing off all their earnings. She resorted to cloaking herself and sneaking out into the empty streets in the evenings, while her brother was out with his friends, to scavenge for unsold food discarded by bakeries and delis closing for the day. 

Once, when Katarina turned 15, she had worked up the courage to confront her older brother on the situation. She had asked him why he would hoard all the family money to himself, even though it was listed under both their names. To this, her brother became so infuriated that she was too petrified to ever bring it up again. She fearfully retreated to her room and decided then to carry on with her nightly searches for leftovers as a means to provide for herself.

The day came when Ty had grown brutally ill, probably the resulting from his misuse of various narcotics, but the cause of the illness was more of a private matter. In hearing the eldest son of the well-known Felinus family was in ailing health, many family friends came to visit. When the guests arrived to pay their respects, it was good customs to offer them tea. However, with all the family fortune going towards supporting Ty's pastimes, the entire household did not possess any teas to drink. In realizing this, Ty angrily ordered Katarina to go out into town to purchase some quality teas for treating the guests. Taking this as an opportunity to leave the dreaded household, and in fear of the possible consequences that faced her if she disobeyed, Katarina set out into town on her own, uncloaked, in search of tea.

The day had just begun at this time, and having only ever seen the city under a sleeping night sky, Katarina found herself mesmerized and distracted by the life and energy of the town. She passed a bakery whose waste pile she had rummaged through before for excess rations, but this time it was radiating with both warmth and aroma as the baker and his wife were taking fresh bread and pastries out of the ovens to display at the front of the store. She eyed the baked goods with a longing in her eyes, and inhaled as much of the fragrance as she could. No, I need to find tea, she thought. She reluctantly pulled herself from the front of the bakery and continued towards the center of city. As she went on, she passed a group of squealing children, with a scrappy, brown creature running behind them alongside the streets. The creature had jumped onto the backside of one of the children, knocking them down onto the cobblestone road. Panicked, Katarina rushed over to check up on the child, pushing the animal off the little boy as she knelt down. "Are you alright?" she flipped the boy over to see his face. He was laughing. "Haha, yes! Digby just likes to play rough," the boy exclaimed, ruffling up the animals fur. The strange creature did not seem phased by the rough actions of the child, and instead embraced the boy by licking his cheeks.  She stared as the boy embraced the furry creature that had initially attacked him. "Digby..?" she asked. "Yea, Digby! He's my dog." He held up the animal clumsily under it's armpits to show him to her. A dog, Katarina thought. She had never seen one in real life before but had read about it in books. By now, the boy's friends had come back for him after noticing he had fell behind. The giggling children helped their friend back up on his feet and they all proceeded to run down the streets together. Katarina stayed on the ground for a moment soaking in the moment. She realized that she had never had the experience of playfully running about with friends, she never had the experience of friends. Regardless of her situation, she smiled at the children's happiness. Tea, she remembered, I need to find tea. 

At the center of the city stood a small little store with the words "Tea Shoppe" across the top. Tea. As she opened the door to enter she heard the chime of a bell greet her, followed by a "Welcome!" She directed her attention to the origin of the voice. A matronly woman approached her from behind the shop's many shelves of tea leaves bins. "Are you looking for anything specific today, young lady?" Unsure of what categorizes as "quality" tea, Katarina and the middle-aged woman started to converse, first about the teas and then about Katarina, as the woman had never seen the young girl's face in town before. The woman began to notice the girl's frail structure. In her kindness and generosity, she offered the girl a warm meal with some complimentary tea, as she was her guest. Katarina enjoyed this hospitality so much she had forgotten her errand and luxuriated in the generosity.

Tea Time. Source: Pixabay.

Meanwhile Ty had been waiting at home for his sister to return with the tea. Katarina had been gone for so long that multiple groups of guests had come and gone to give their well-wishes to the sick brother, each leaving with a bit of disappointment at the lack of general hospitality in the home. This embarrassment enraged Ty so violently that he set off to find his sister, disregarding his state of wellness. He was so blinded by his rage he entered the town in a mad frenzy, causing commotion all through the townspeople. Word of a belligerent mad man bombarding the streets made way to the Tea Shoppe, where Katarina still was. As soon as she heard word of it, she remembered her forgotten task, thanked the charitable woman, paid for a new set of tea, and ran off for home.

On her way back, she ran into her brother who began to beat her. As this was only on her way home, the beating occurred in a large neighborhood, where people immediately rushed to help the poor girl. The people of the town came together to pull the aggressive man off the delicate girl, where they locked him up and took him to prison. At this, the kind-hearted woman from the Tea Shoppe had come to collect the battered Katarina. She took her back to her home where she cared for her as her own. Since then Katarina has remained in the town with the tea lady, making daily visits to the bakery to buy bread, and becoming good friends with all the little children of the town, and their dogs. 

Author's Note:

I wrote this story based off of How the Cat came to Live with Man by Mrs. K. U. Rafy. In the story, a cat named Ka Miaw lived in the jungle with her brother tiger, who is the king of the jungle. While they have such family greatness, he only cared for himself, leaving the cat to sneak out at night to hunt for food among mice, frogs, and other vermin. Her brother had an awful temper, and when she tried to confront him on the issue he became so angry it scared her to ever speak of it again. Then one day, the tiger fell ill and so the other animals came to pay their respects. In this culture, it was good manners to serve hookah, and so the tiger sent the cat to go fetch a firebrand to start the hookah. While Ka Miaw was off, she met children who showed her kindness and forgot her task, angering her brother to set off and find her. When they encountered each other, the cat threw the firebrand at his feet and ran back to human civilization where she stayed the rest of her days, feeding off small vermin and purring to the embrace of children.
I tried to stay as true to this story as I could, although I was trying to write it with human characters rather than animal. I meant for this story to be about domestic abuse, since the tiger often lashed out on his sister. I originally wanted the title to be a play of the word "domestic" used for "domestic abuse" and as "domesticated" as in a domesticated animal, or cat in this case, but I could not find a good way to word it since the story was not about a cat being domesticated but about a girl being domestically abused. Overall, I am honestly not entirely happy with how my story came out but I hope that you guys still found it interesting to read. 

Bibliography:

Folk-Tales of the Khasis by Mrs. K. U. Rafy (1920).