At the edge of the city's horizon, it was sunset, the flames sun boiling away into the crimson sky over the division, casting long shadows through the tiny yards of densely packed homes, including an overcrowded colony of feral cats, stuffed into a tangled mess of white styrofoam coolers full of straw, doors sliced into the sides, opening out behind a tiny detached garage. With the fading of the sun came safety and new energy, enough that the first wave of hungry felines was beginning to depart, slinking their way down from the ledge that the shelters sat upon.
First to leave was Moonchaser, an elderly grimalkin that had long ago sworn that she would catch and eat the light in the night sky. Long and lanky, she coiled herself and leaped the few feet up to the roof of the garage, staring at her hopeful prey for a moment, before gracefully landing on the far side, and stalking off in it's general direction. There were taller buildings in the city proper, she knew. Maybe she could reach from one of them?
Next came Blackpaw, the young tom's single black foot padding in time with the three white ones, stalking off in generally the opposite direction of Moonchaser. He didn't know much about what was out that way, not past the handful of blocks that marked the residences on the edges of the city. But either way, there had to be fewer of the things that hurtled down the road at entirely impossible speeds. Or not as many roads, that he'd appreciate too.
And so, one by one, they scattered to the winds, seven in all leaving, as Dark-Eye watched them go with her one working amber eye. Many were her children, or grandchildren, and send them forth caused her an unexpected ache in her heart, many times more intense than the one that had come to her when she looked up at the silent house that loomed over the garage and the tiny patch of grass, where one light could be seen through the upper windows, and thought that the gentle one might never feed them again. Her heart heavy, she laid upon the top of the styrofoam coolers, giving off a rumbling purr that she hardly felt herself, looking to the departing cats and to the house from time to time.