Lorelei, a brown-and-white cat, woke up with a yawn, hissing to herself at how dark the humans kept their house at night. It was the middle of summer, the sun should be rising by now, but the room was so dark that she could barely see her white paws in front of her face.

She rushed downstairs to see if the humans had filled her food bowl yet.

Of course it was empty, her humans never had a consistent time for filling it. And, she realised, it was the weekend. Some sort of weird holiday thing the humans celebrated once a week where they slept in late and didn't leave the house as often.

She climbed back up the stairs, and was about to scratch at her humans' bedroom door when she remembered they'd be mad at her if she woke them. Then they would just go back to sleep, not feed her or open the door so she could leave the house to catch her own breakfast.

A gust of warm wind brought a sliver of light into the hall. The windows were open behind the black curtains.

Lorelei ran back downstairs, she leapt up onto the kitchen counter and ducked through the curtains, jumping out of the open window.

She landed in the garden, the humans would definitely be mad at her if they found out she was the one who trampled their flowers. She didn't really care though, the ones she'd landed on were her least favourite. Tall purple flowers that smelled weird.

She licked the pollen off her fur to get rid of the evidence and headed to her neighbor's house.

Aurella greeted her by leaping up onto her brown picket fence. She was a black Maine Coon with a white streak on her chest and yellow eyes close to the same shade as Lorelei's.

"Hey you remembered the window this time. Sooner than last week. I assume your humans haven't fed you yet?"

Lorelei laughed. "Of course."

"Well come on, I'll get my humans to feed you instead." Aurella leapt off the fence and raced to the door, meowing at it for the humans to open it.

Lorelei followed, and caught up just as the door opened. She slipped inside behind Aurella as the humans poured food into a bowl.

The humans petted her as she ate, putting her on edge. Something about the feeling of being touched while she was eating made her feel vulnerable and insecure. Her back fur bristled but she managed to stay calm and finish the food without retaliating.

Aurella lead the way across the street to their friend Ruby's house.

Ruby was white with ginger striped patches and blue eyes, she wore a red collar with a bell on it.

The bell jingled as Ruby ran across her yard to greet them.

"Hey, you got out of the house earlier than usual. Race you to Ennay's house!"

She nodded to Lorelei and dashed off across the road again, heading for the house on the other side of Aurella's.

"You need to at least give us time to realise you just challenged us to a race, Ruby." Aurella called after her as the two followed.

Ennay was a purebred Russian Blue, he had iridescent greenish blue eyes with gold around the edges. His long ears made him look taller than he actually was, and he usually kept them flat against his head because he was scared of intimidating someone by mistake.

"Hey, Ennay," Ruby said quickly. "Let's go meet up with Irony. Maybe if you guys are faster this time we can explore more of the street than yesterday and make it back in time for lunch." Ruby seemed determined to examine every inch of the city without missing a single meal. Lorelei didn't think it was possible.

Before Ennay could reply Ruby had dashed off again, this time for his neighbor's house.

A large stone fence surrounded what Lorelei thought must be a mansion. It was the biggest house she'd ever seen, though it was barely visible through the unkempt and overgrown yard.

Irony's owner was a scientist who was trying to create magic or something. He always made sure his experiments were of the non-deathly sort and he had already done something to Irony. He thought he failed, but Irony seemed to more easily detect lies now. And her eyes had changed. None of them knew what her eyes looked like before but it was obvious their current colour wasn't natural. They were a deep, dark blue with rings of darker blue in the middle, getting darker and darker the closer they got to her pupils, almost making them look like her pupils were just spray-painted on.

Just as Ruby was about to jump over the fence, Irony leapt onto it. She was a large cream tabby, almost as tall as Aurella, and there was something odd-looking about her stripes.

"Let's go." said Ruby, jumping down from the fence once she saw that Irony was there.

"You're not still on about exploring the entire city before noon are you? I told you it's not possible, even the humans can't do that and they have cars." Irony replied, jumping off the fence after her.

But it was too late, Ruby had already started running up the street.

"Should we follow her?" Ennay asked, as the others started following without another word. "Shouldn't we decide together before we start running off again? Isn't this exactly what we keep scolding Ruby for?" He called after them.

"Why do we always follow her? We could just leave her alone and let her realise we don't like when she does this." He asked as he caught up.

"I dunno." Aurella replied, slowing down to meet his pace. "We always find interesting things when we're exploring."

Lorelei, who was at the head of the group, turned her head to the side, picking up the sound of running pawsteps on the other side of a hedge up ahead.

Before she could warn the others, a small black cat leapt over the hedge directly in front of them. Everyone nearly ran into the hissing furball.

Irony took a step back in shock. "What are you so furious about?"

The stranger was panting with a mix of rage and exhaustion from running, clearly she had run from somewhere far away; Lorelei guessed the nearby off-leash dog park. "Betrayal." The cat managed to hiss through her panting.

"You might want to calm down a bit so you can breathe better." Irony said.

"Who betrayed you?" Aurella asked.

"And who are you?" Ennay added.

"Niona." The black cat said, sitting down and licking her paw. "And the cat who betrayed me was supposed to be my mate. He just wouldn't listen to anything I said!"

Nobody could think of anything to say until Irony spoke. "Well, you could join us. We're going for a walk, we'll listen to you."

"Except maybe Ruby, she doesn't listen to anyone." Ennay joked.

Niona thought for a minute before standing up and raising her tail. "Okay."

As they continued walking, not bothering to try catching up with Ruby, they heard a yowl of pain from up ahead.

They all glanced at each other. Aurella gave them a "Let's go see what that was" look and they all hurried off, forgetting that Niona didn't know them well enough to recognise that look.

Ruby didn't look behind her as she picked up speed, she knew the others would want to investigate the screech as well, no need to slow down and wait for them or tell them why she was changing direction.

She ducked behind a fence into the yard where the sound had come from. A fluffy black cat was pinned under a rake that seemed to have fallen on him. Blood trickled down from his face.

"Oh dear." Ruby muttered, dashing over to help lift the rake off without another thought.

"Thanks." The tom grunted, putting a paw over his bleeding eyelid. "Could you promise not to tell anyone about how I failed to outrun a falling rake? It'd be embarrassing."

Ruby hesitated. The others would want to know what happened and why he was bleeding, and Irony could detect lies. What could she say?

She nodded. She could think of something later, her friends would take a while to catch up.

"What happened?"

"I was trying to find somewhere new to live, apparently these humans don't like strays and they started throwing things at me. One of the things hit the rake and it fell on my face before I knew what had happened."

Ruby stood up and grabbed the handle of the rake. The cat's blood was still on it and her friends would put the story together quite quickly if they saw it. She dragged it behind the shed it had been leaning against.

"So what's your name?" She called over as she turned the corner. "Mine's Ruby."

"Travesty." The tom sighed. "I never liked it."

"Well, then I'm going to come up with a new name." Ruby said, strutting back to him. "How does Traves sound?"

"A bit close to Travis but it'll do." Travesty replied. He took his paw off his face and tried to open his eye. "Ahh everything's fuzzy." He growled. Blood from his eyelid dripped into his eye and he closed it again, putting his paw back over it.

"What happened?" Said a voice from across the yard as Irony and her friends finally arived.

"It was the human's fault." Ruby said before Travesty could come up with a lie.

Irony gave her a suspicious look but didn't question her.

"He says he needs a place to live." Ruby added. "Could he live with one of us?"

Travesty squinted at their collars with his good eye. "You're house cats? No way, I'm not living with humans again."

"What kind of place do you want to live in then?" Irony asked.

A silence followed. Niona was staring at Travesty with an empathetic gaze, Ennay was trying to hide in Aurella's tail fur, Travesty was clearly thinking way too hard for the headache he now visibly had.

"Nevermind, too difficult of a question." Irony said at last. "Easier questions first. What's your name?"

"Unless that's too hard of a question too." Ennay interjected.

Travesty shook his head. "It's Traves."

"Travis?" Lorelei asked with a tilt of her head.

"Traves. There's a slight difference in the ending sound." Travesty corrected.

"Close enough." Lorelei said.

"Let's keep going." Ruby shouted, running off to explore farther.

Irony leapt in front of her before she could get very far. "No."

"Yeah, Irony's right," Ennay yawned. "Too close to lunch time. Besides I'm tired."

"Irony?" Travesty echoed.

Irony sighed "Yeah yeah, 'why would your humans name you something weird like that' the usual questions I get."

"No, I like it," Travesty purred. "It's pretty."

Irony gave a slight smile. "I've never heard anyone say that about my name before. I like it too, it represents the irony of my human's experiments. He thinks cats are better than humans in every way so he's trying to give us superpowers so we can be 'more better' as he says."

"Really?" Ruby asked skeptically.

"Probably not but I like to think it does." Irony tilted her head and bent her elbows, trying to mimic humans' shrugging.

"Can we go back home for lunch now?" Ennay's tail twitched with impatience.