The eyes opened, and the jaws stretched wide in a yawn, and the body crept forward from its hiding place, a skein of ragged, matted fur, wire tight muscles and clicking, articulated bones, sharp as combs' teeth.
The nostrils widened, taking in the scents of an early evening alleyway. Dusk was beginning to fall, and the pupils irised open to compensate, blackness swallowing ochre.
So many dangers to scan for. The small brain could hardly comprehend them all. It was best-suited to detecting prey- the rustle of tiny bodies in grass, the mindless twittering of an even tinier brain.
Or computing simple dangers, easily escaped- the vacuum-parting of air disturbed by wings, the sliding curtain of a shadow drawn across the light these eyes received, forewarnement of danger from above.
Not these Dangers. Most were too large to understand, and they became facts of existance, like the setting and rise of daylight, or the inevitability of rain.
If the Life went out into the Roads and it met with one of these forces, it would end.
Things were simple.
Most days consisted of searching for Food and avoiding Dangers. Sometimes all this would change, and the all-consuming need for food would be replaced by another need, one that burned even hotter. The body would be overtaken by a will that could not be resisted or understood, only obeyed.
Then, Dangers meant nothing. More lives ended in this time than in any other.
But that time was distant, then. Food was the only desire in the mind, and there was enough free will left over to remain aware of Danger.
The eyes registered the low light, the safest time. Not the daylight, when all was exposed, nor the full-dark, when the Roads became places of terror, lights brighter than the sun pinning a terrified body to the asphalt if it so chanced to be caught there, and all Life ending in a rush of air and metal and unstoppable force.
These things were known of, of course. The Life had seen them, had even had close brushes with them, but did not retain a memory or fear of them. They were.
When they were not, they were forgotten.
Now, they weren't.
The alley was as silent as it ever was, and to the nostrils, widened still to taste the air, there came a myriad of scents, each one catalogued by the small yet efficient brain into categories- Food, Danger, notfood, lives.
Yes, things were simple.
The body slid further out into the alley, and calm washed over the brain, settling it into its most commonly running state- not the Fear-state, a mass of adrenaline and flight response, nor the Attack-state, when adrenaline-fear was replaced by anger and territorial aggression, nor the Sleep-state, when full calm was attained.
This state was a mingling of the three- the Active-state. The mind was completely aware, but it was not resting on the knife-edge of adrenaline.
Reactions were slightly slowed, there was more time to sort out the actualities of a situation before it was reacted to. In simpler terms, the body might startle at a pigeon's take-off, but the mind would not let it flee until it had determined whether the danger was real or imagined
For those lives that didn't live by the rules this one did, there may have been other states.
For this one, the rules were simple, and the states the brain was capable of were few.
The Life proceeded to leave the alleyway, one slow careful step at a time. The whiskers processed changes in air currents, as the eyes processed light and image and the ears processed sound. Even the sensitive pads of the feet had a purpose- they weighed and categorized the vibrations read through the pavement.
Each hair, an erect and crackling antenna connected to nerve-endings beneath the skin, provided some small report on the environment surrounding the body.
This machine, this small vital organism, was as suited to its purpose as any product of an environment possibly can be.
The Life tightened its muscles and the body sprang upward, seemingly weightless, nearly so in truth.
Beneath its sheath of skin and muscle it was only bone and organs. There was no meat on its frame, no comfortable layer of fat to cushion the sharp edges.
It alighted on the metal framework clinging to the side of the building, its tensile sinews and bones folding and absorbing the shock. The landing was soundless.
The Life often chose this route. It was high above the untrustworthy Roads, and with carefully judged leaps and pauses, nearly perfectly safe.
The mind didn't make mistakes. If a leap was attempted, that leap would be completed safely. This perfect judgement was not a gift or talent to the Life, merely another fact of existance. It was part of it, something taken for granted and relied upon.
So when that fact of existance failed, the Life felt something that might have been called surprise.
The leap had been a simple one. A small horizontal leap on an upward vertical diagonal, from the fire escape on one building to the window ledge on the other.
The take-off was perfect. The body coiled together, then extended outwards. The front claws were already unsheathed, ready to grasp the ledge. In fact, they had made contact, and were pulling forward, the chest-muscles drawing the rest of the body behind.
The mechanics of the leap had been transferred to the rearward half of the body now- it was the duty of the back legs to bunch forward, the hind paws to catch on the ledge directly behind the fore and their impetus to propel the body the last six inches or so to safety.
But they did not do their duty.
Instead, the body jerked slightly. The mind registered pain, a small sharp intrusion on the left flank.
The hind legs remained rigidly extended outwards, the toes clenched as they had been when they pushed off from the fire escape.
For an instant, the forepaws remained clinging to the ledge, the shoulder and forearm muscles contracted, holding the slight weight of the body. It became perpendicular.
Then the claws gave way, and the body descended. The impact was lost in a fog of muffling whiteness, that obscured the vision and seared the sensitive nostril flesh with an odor only half-familiar.

When I awoke, things had changed. My plane had shifted in some indefinable way, and through the familar landscape of my thoughts,
this unfamiliar 'I' projected like a steel girder, immovable, unignorable, alien. I had never been aware of myself before.
I retained the memories of my former life, but it was like looking back on a black and white silent movie after seeing high-definition televison.
I was, in a sense, reborn.