Alexander The Great

ALEXANDER THE GREAT




     Alexander watched through the glass of his cubicle as the people moved around the store.  Sometimes people would stop at his cubicle and look in at him.  They would smile at him and tap on the glass of his cubicle, sometimes talking to him.
      “What a cute Persian cat!” some would say.  “Orange, almost a fire orange!” Then they would walk away.
      Alexander could not hear what they were saying to him from inside the cubicle of course, separated from the people by the glass but he knew that they were talking to him.  He would meow at them and paw at the glass.  The people always thought this was cute.  They would smile at him and so he would continue to do so, hoping that they would free him from being inside the cubicle, hoping he could go to a home.  Children always seemed to want him especially. But again, eventually the people would always move on, leaving him behind and this made him sad.
      There was not much room for him inside the cubicle, especially with the small cat box that was set inside with him and his food and water bowl.  There was not much room at all so Alexander would simply lie in his cubicle looking out at the people who sometimes looked in at him, hoping one day he might be free.
      He did have some free time from the cubicle however when one of the caretakers would take him out and play with him for a while or clean his cubicle.  But as much as he would plea with whomever the present caretaker was to not go back to the cubicle, eventually he would.  So this was Alexander's life, day in and day out for exactly how long Alexander had no idea but it sure felt like a long time to him.
      Alexander would reflect on the days of long ago as he lay in his cubicle looking out at the world.  The days of his early kitten-hood when he was with his mother and father, playing with his
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brothers and sisters.  Those were good memories, special times to hold onto.  Those memories helped Alexander get through the loneliness he now felt.  
      'Whatever happened to them?' Alexander sometimes thought as he lie there.  'Where are they now?'
      All Alexander could remember was once being free as a young kitten with his loving family and next being carried away from them and placed inside this cubicle at this store.
      One day Alexander was eating and suddenly there was a tapping on the glass.  He looked over and saw a young girl smiling at him brightly.  Next, a man beside the girl bent down and looked in at him.  The girl began talking to the man excitedly, looking in at Alexander often during her conversation with the man.  Alexander thought to himself, 'Well, here we go again,' and walked over to the glass and looked at the girl looking in at him.  He meowed and the girl broke into a huge smile, frantically pulling on the man's arm.  Alexander could tell the girl was very excited.  The man and girl continued talking with each other.  She was very emphatic with how she communicated with the man.  The girl looked in at Alexander again so Alexander meowed again and pawed at the glass to add a dramatic effect to it all.  Yes, he was hoping again.  The girl began bouncing up and down with excitement at this as she looked up at the man.  The man bent down again and looked at Alexander with a smile.  Alexander looked back at the man as the girl looked back and forth between them.  She smiled again.  Suddenly one of the caretakers Alexander had become accustomed to seeing over his time in the cubicle came over to the two of them and conversed with them.  Alexander watched them talk as the girl looked in at him smiling.  The caretaker walked away eventually as Alexander continued to look at the young girl's smiling face.  Next, there was a snapping sound so Alexander turned his head and looked behind him as the wall of his cubicle was being lowered.
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      The caretaker looked in at Alexander and said, “Hey buddy! Freedom!” and lifted Alexander out of the cubicle.  Alexander looked around the back room of the store as he had always done when freed from the confines of his cubicle.  He meowed and the caretaker petted him saying, “You have a home Alex.”  They continued walking through the back room of the store and then through some swinging doors into the place that Alexander had only viewed from the other side of the glass.  He meowed again as they approached the man and the young girl.  The girl looked at him, bouncing with excitement and clapping her hands and then suddenly she was holding him and hugging him, giving him kisses. Suddenly Alexander felt in a way that he had not felt for quite some time.
      That was the day Alexander came to know and love Kristin, his best friend in the whole world.  Oh, Alexander loved Robert (the man) and Roxanne too.  They were Kristin's parents and therefore good people because of that but Kristin was Alexander's world.  Now, a year later Alexander was a proud and happy member of the Mcpherson family and he loved living on the family farm.  There was so much land here and it was all his!  Well, he supposed the horses and cows had a legitimate claim to the land too but he still considered it all his.  Sometimes he would talk about such things as the land ownership with the horses, especially Target.  Target was Alexander's next best friend after Kristin and a lot of that had to do with Target being Kristin's very own horse of course.  Target was a beautiful black horse with a white circle around his right eye which is where he got his name from Kristin Alexander and Target assumed.  Alexander and Target would talk about many things in the barn.  Sometimes they would discuss sports, other times the weather (which Target especially enjoyed talking about and Alexander found boring.)  Most of the time they talked about news around the farm however, what the pigs were up to and their constant drama with the chickens and so forth.
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      Alexander always liked it best though when Target would be let out of his stable so he could run around in the pasture some.  He and Alexander enjoyed running around together and grazing with the cows.  Today though Alexander and Target were talking in the barn. A storm was beginning to brew in the distance and occasionally Alexander and Target would hear thunder clap. Alexander liked to be there for his friend Target when storms approached to help keep him calm. Target was eating hay in his stable as they talked when suddenly they heard a loud smacking sound.  They stopped their discussion they were having about the bull and looked at each other with wide eyes.
      “What was that?” Target said.
      “I have no idea,” Alexander replied, turning his head, looking around the barn.
      “Ohhh,” they suddenly heard.
      “What did you say?” Alexander said, looking back to Target.
      Target shook his head back and forth, “That was not me!”  He looked over the gate of his stable towards where the sound came from.
      “Ohhh,” they heard again.
      “There it is again!” Target exclaimed.
      Alexander turned around to look down into the shadowy barn towards where they kept hearing the sound.  There was a patch of light shining through the roof of the barn a little ways up ahead and something was moving around a little within it.  Target looked over from behind the gate of his stable again.
      “You are going to have to go see what that is!” Target said.  “But be careful!  I cannot go with you.  I am stuck in here.”
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      “I know, I know,” Alexander said to Target, waving a paw at him.  “I will be okay.”
      Alexander slowly began making his way up to whatever was moving around in the patch of
sunlight shining through the top of the barn.
      “Ohhh,” the sound came again.
      “Be careful!” Target called out from the back.
      “Shhh!” Alexander hissed, looking back at Target and then slowly inching his way up to the twitching thing again.
      “Ohhh,” the thing uttered again, then shifted quickly after seeing Alexander making his way up to it.
      “No! No! No!  Get away! Get away!” the barn owl screeched as Alexander inched closer.  “Get away!”  It tried to scurry away but could not. It could not seem to stand up. One of its wings seemed to flap awkwardly as well.
      “Hey!  It is okay!” Alexander said frantically.
      “No! No! No!” the owl stammered again, flapping its wings defensively.
      “What's going on!” Target called from the back.  This made the  barn owl more agitated.
      “No! No!” It flapped its wings aggressively towards Alexander.
      “I am not going to hurt you!” Alexander said loudly, shielding his face from the owl's beating wings.  “Relax!” Alexander hissed.  The hissing shocked the barn owl momentarily and it froze, saucer-like eyes staring at Alexander.
      “I am not going to hurt you!” Alexander said to the owl again.
      The barn owl stared at Alexander.  Alexander stared back at the owl.
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      “What's going on!” Target called again.
      “Wait a minute!” Alexander called back to Target as he continued looking at the owl.
            Finally the barn owl seemed to comprehend.
      “You....you are not going to hurt me?” the owl asked, continuing to stare at Alexander.
      “No!” Alexander said, a little defensively.
      “But....but you are a cat!” the owl said.
      “Well, so what?” Alexander replied.  “So I am a cat.”
      “Cats hunt birds,” the owl said, still staring at Alexander.
      “Well, not me,” Alexander replied.  “Are you okay?  You were moaning.”
      “I think I hurt my leg,” the owl said, looking down at his injured leg.  “Ouch!” he continued, “and maybe my wing some.” He winced as he tried moving his hurt wing.  He tried to stand again and failed. He plopped back onto the barn's dirt floor.
      “What's going on!” Target persisted.
      “Just a second!” Alexander called back to Target again.
      “Who is that?” the barn owl asked Alexander.
      “That's my friend Target,” Alexander said to the owl.  “He's a horse.”
      “Things sure are a lot different in the wild,” the owl said as he closed his wings around his body the best he could.
      “Stay here,” Alexander said.  “I will be back.”
      “I do not think I am going anywhere,” the owl replied softly.
      Alexander trotted back to Target and filled him in on what was going on.
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      “Oh my,” Target said when Alexander had finished telling him everything about the barn owl and his predicament.  “It sounds like he may have broken a leg and possibly one of his wings when he hit the barn,” Target said to Alexander.  “Did he say what happened?”
      “He said the storm approaching scared him,” Alexander said to Target. “The thunder and lightning in the distance.  He just spooked and lost control at that loud thunder crack we heard earlier.”
      “Oh my,” Target said again.  “We are going to have to get him help or rather YOU are,” Target corrected.  “I cannot do anything to help from here,” he explained.
      “I am going to go get Kristin,” Alexander said.  “You just talk to him, keep him calm.”
      “Now that I CAN do!” Target replied proudly, shifting around in his stall.
      Alexander left the barn to get Kristin so she could help the barn owl while Target kept the owl company until help arrived.  Target talked with the owl about the weather of all things.
      As Alexander came scampering out of the barn Kristin was stepping out onto the back porch of the house.
      “Hey Alexander!” Kristin called happily.
      Alexander came trotting over to her as she came down the steps of the porch towards him.  Just as Kristin was stooping down to scoop Alexander up in her arms he darted back towards the barn.
      “Alexander!” Kristin called out to him, laughing.  She began walking towards him again.  Once again, just when she got close to picking him up Alexander darted away again.  This time he stopped very close to the barn.
      “Alex!” Kristin called out, this time more assertively.
      Alexander looked back at her and entered the barn.
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      “What's going on sweetie?” Kristin's father, Robert asked, opening the screen door and stepping
            out onto the porch.
      “Ugh!” Kristin exclaimed, turning to look at her father.  “I don't know dad!” Kristin threw her hands up in the air with frustration.  “Alexander ran back into the barn.”
      Kristin's mother came out of the house as well and stood looking on the porch.
      “Well, get him in Kristin,” she said, looking at the sky.  “The storm is getting closer.”  Lightning flickered in the distance.
      “I will,” Kristin said as she walked to the barn.  “Alexander!” she called.  Kristin's mother and father watched as she entered the barn.
      “Alex!” Kristin called out as she entered the barn.  She stood still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust.  Suddenly she heard a meow.  With her eyes adjusted to the light Kristin turned and saw Alexander standing by something in a small patch of now fading, soft sunlight.
      “Oh Alex, what did you do?” she said to herself as she walked over to Alexander.  She saw the barn owl lying on its side looking up at her, twitching.  Alexander meowed again, looking up at Kristin.  Kristin looked at Alexander.  “Mom!  Dad!” she called out.
      When Kristin's parents raced into the barn they expected the worst.  Instead they saw their daughter kneeling down and petting Alexander who was gently nuzzling an injured barn owl lying on the dirt floor inside the barn.  From a little ways in the back of the barn Target was looking over their way from over the gate of his stall.
      The Mcpherson's took the injured barn owl to a veterinary specialist who cared for wild animals.  The barn owl made a full recovery.  The leg and wing healed completely.  Once healed the
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barn owl was released back into the wild.
      Today the Mcpherson's have noticed that a barn owl lives in their barn.  However, they very much doubt that it could be the same barn owl that was injured in their barn. Kristin's father, Robert feels that the trauma the previous owl went through would have most likely kept it from returning to the vicinity of their family farm.  Kristin however likes to think that it may be the very same owl.
      “I hope the two of you do not mind me moving in,” the barn owl said to Alexander and Target when he returned to the barn.
      “No! Not at all!” Alexander said to the owl.
      “We DO need to come up with a name for you though,” Target said, looking over his gate at the owl who was standing next to Alexander.
      “Yes, a name!” Alexander agreed, nodding his head up and down.
      “Well, I suppose I will have to give that some thought,” the barn owl said, looking over at Alexander who was now busy licking at one of his paws.  Target and the barn owl watched as Alexander continued to lick his paw. Target looked over at the owl who just shrugged.
      “Sooo, what should we talk about?” the barn owl asked.
      “Anything!” Target said excitedly, lifting one hoof then another. Target loved conversing.
      “Well,” Alexander began, done with licking his paw for the moment, “anything BUT the weather!” at which they all had a good laugh.


THE END

--msl2022