by Searska GreyRaven The street lights were just flicking on as I walked up the sidewalk toward a dimly lit industrial building. Well, dimly lit for a human. My feline eyes had no problem with it. I reached the entrance and hesitated, one paw clutching a thermal bag while the other hovered over a faintly glowing doorbell. I tried to take a slow, even breath. It came in ragged and left even worse. Damn it, I had it bad. Cats are supposed to be aloof. I was anything but aloof. You can do this, Cal. Breathe. Just ask her. The worst she can do is say no, right?

by Gabriel Robinson A mouse was very sleepy. He could not sleep for thinking of the cat who prowled outside the hole in the baseboard. Sometimes the cat poked in a paw, lying on his shoulder to curl his claws upward in a playful way that made the mouse’s heart shudder. Sometimes he went away. He could be gone for hours. Those times were the worst, because the mouse never knew when he would return. He preferred the certainty that the cat was out there, with his fangs, pacing and watching the hole.

by Divyasri Krishnan Four of us were bred for the mission. We were of good Perognathus longimembris lab stock, sturdy, banister-brown, able to go 148 hours without drinking water, which ensured our feces would be as concentrated as possible. We had never been outside the silver grate of our cage. We had never tunneled in soil that didn’t taste like metal. But that was okay; we were special. We were astronauts. They introduced us to the humans a month before launch. The big one, like a long stick, didn’t take much to us. But the elderly one loved us and spoke to us often, even when the scientists got mad.

by Dana Vickerson If Mama doesn’t get up soon, we’re going to miss our chance to get off Mars. Mama is a human, but I call her “Mama” because she says I am her baby kitty and her special boy.  She is sleeping, but I am hungry. It’s a delicate art, waking up your human. If you’re too eager, they’ll likely get cross with you, and while Mama is a sweet and kind soul, I do not like to see her cross.  If you are too gentle, though, your human is likely to continue their blissful sleep while you sit on the floor with a rumble in your belly. 

by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden When you wake, you wait a few moments for your eyes to come online. You can manage without them, but it’s pleasant to lie in the dark warmth and purr while the blurred pixels slowly crystallise into your world. You stretch a striped arm and extend your claws until the pink quick shows, then pick up your other arm and lock it into position. Stretch. Extend. The joints move with ease and the claws, opaque white on this paw, click smoothly in and out. It’s time to begin. You’re a second-generation Bengal. Your parents were grown in the wombs of human women who needed the money…

by Anna Madden The moon is fat with silver the night men attack with metal teeth held in their hands. The stars are holes punched out of a black sky, arrows pouring down. I flee the torrent, the biting sticks like burrs between keeled scales. The air tastes of salt and danger. The nest is lost, but your egg is safe. I carry it within my maw. I fear you’ll be born a fool, like me. A mooncalf hatchling, or a shining new dawn? There are so few safe places left. Our world dies one wingbeat at a time, but still, I fly.   * * * About the Author…

by Amy Clare Fontaine Arthur dreamed an endless dream. He dreamed of sumptuous banquets with his comrades by his side, roast pheasants and bards and fire jugglers. Feasts where the wine and the laughter never ran dry, and the great hall rang with stories and songs all through the night. The hearth warmed his bones and the company warmed his heart… He dreamed of dancing with Guinevere in the courtyard in the moonlight, the fragrance of the flowers in her hair… He dreamed of chasing his falcon through the woods on a warm summer day, racing through the trees and laughing into the wind…

by Rebecca E. Treasure Harold was mostly a fish. Most days, at most times, he liked being a fish. Moving through layers of cool and warm, diving after drifting bits of this and that, spreading his milt over the sandy bottom. But there were times when he longed to stretch his fins beyond what nature seemed to intend, sprout feathers, and soar into the clouds. His fish friends both admired and avoided him for his strange habit of cultivating bird friendships. Susan, too, would sometimes chat with the birds — in particular a patchy pelican with the odd quirk of diving into the water for hours at a time. But,…

by Emily Randolph-Epstein “Flyflutterfly.” My body resists the calling song. Wings aching from flying lessons with my eggsitter’s mate. My tummy, bloated with spiders and seeds and sweet berries, makes me torpid. But the song acts as a crank, lifting my head from under my blue and black wing. Around me, my nestmates stir, blinking sleepy eyes. “Flyflutter.” The song, sweet and clear as dew on bunchgrass, drifts on the summer breeze. Not a war song or a warning song, or a mating serenade. The melody ensnares me as inevitably as any raptor’s talons.