Translation from Spanish to English, sorry for any spelling mistakes, thank you.

Work inspired by the theft of Bolivia's presidential medal in 2018.

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MILLITA AND THE THIEF OF THE MEDALLION

Chapter 1: The Unjust Accusation

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The cold of the last month of winter was felt in the City of La Paz, as if to say: "Hua! Not that I was going to leave so soon! You'll see, you'll have to warm up more and put on gaiters up to your stinking knees!".

And so, everything seemed cold to the touch, including the walls of the houses, whether they were made of brick or of humble adobe, and it is precisely in one of the latter, where our heroine lives. Of course, to say that she lives is a word to indicate her dwelling more than her property, since she was not the owner of that two-storey building, which seemed to be very old because it had on its roof those old calamines which, compared to the modern ones, are much thicker and much heavier.

No, she had no role to prove her ownership, no papers or testament, and if you wonder why she didn't have any of these things, well that's simple, our protagonist is not human, she's just a kitty, a kitty named Millita, the working kitty.

Human beings cover themselves with several blankets to spend the night, sometimes it is a nuisance because of the weight, fortunately, an animal has its fur that gives better protection and also does not weigh anything, of course, sleep inside a house but in this case abandoned, is much better than doing it outdoors and at the mercy of rain, badly faced dogs or people with bad hearts.

Like every morning, the eyes began to open accompanied by the movement of the moustache and the nose.

"Aaaummm, it's already morning", thought Millita that she looked with her eyes still squint like the light of the day not yet towards apparition by the small windows of the second floor, which apart from being tiny and with an old wood frame and splintered on the outside, were extremely dirty due to the dust and to the grease or oils that had stuck from the outside for diverse motives through the decades.

There was no furniture in the room that was the only one on the second floor, nor on the first floor, except for a multitude of empty wooden boxes that previously contained dynamite to sell to the miners, back in the time of the Tin Barons.

Millita had no bed, nor slept on old and dirty garments, no, she only huddled inside a hole in the thick adobe wall, which adjoined the neighbor's brick wall.

It was an excellent burrow, since sometimes, especially in winter when the coldest nights were present, the brick wall seemed to heat up, perhaps there was a stove or some similar heater that was lit by the people living next door, she did not know for sure since the neighbors did not have cats or any other pet animal for her to ask.

Millita shook her moustaches more and then came out of the burrow, she stretched and before carefully wiping her coat using her little tongue for this, she took with her jaws a small rag from one of her nocturnal excursions, because the floor was already dusty and Millita was a lady, not a piggy pig full of mud.

She couldn't do much of the truth, but her effort was better than nothing, she didn't seem to care since Millita wasn't just any kitten, no, she was a working kitten.

The domestic chores of the cat consisted of going down to the first floor or ground floor depending on how one sees these things, and see that there were no mice present. It is not that she tried to protect some food kept by someone, but these pests, sometimes used to gnaw at the base of the internal walls with the risk of knocking down the whole structure, and Millita was not going to allow this, she was going to protect her home.

"No mice," thought Millita after snooping through the empty boxes, and again she climbed up to the upper floor made of long woods boards that were of such good quality, that they had not been bent despite the effect of time, the same as bleachers made of the same material.

One couldn't go out through the door or the windows, but a section of the roof was folded and the cat went in and out. There was no filtration of water by rain due to the strange angle in which the calamine was bent against a wall of the neighbor, only when it hailed or snow dripped water towards the interior, but that happened few times, neither the wind entered by the crack. The only time Millita preferred to sleep on the ground floor was when hailed very hard, the noise of the hail against the metal roof was unbearable.

"I'd better hurry up and get to work," thought Millita, who saw how the gray of the morning came in through the dirty window and became aware of the hour.

In spite of her good intentions, the kitten took longer than expected and then went out through the crack of the calamine, from there and jumping on one roof to the other, she could reach a place a little lower from which she could make a jump with the security of not damaging her paws.

The kitten did not intend to spend the morning lying on a roof and roast the fur of her back as other cats did because she was different, she was Millita, the working kitten.

The feline had an established routine that sometimes varied according to the climate and the position of the moon and stars, and this was one of those days. She usually woke up very early before sunrise and helped some women sweep the town, then went to collaborate with the protection of the morning newspapers and finally spent the day accompanying the shoeshine boys paceños, sometimes had a special night work, the last time was with some clowns that entertained a children's party.

This time, however, she had to go to the center of the city, more specifically, the Plaza de San Pedro, where the city jail and a church adjoined, and it was near the church where she had to meet a friend of hers, not a cat or another animal, but a girl called Clara, whom her loving parents always called Clarita.

Clarita's main characteristic, apart from her pearly smile, was the vivacious eyes that were the antechamber to her pure heart. Her skin was not white or coppery like the rest of her classmates, but had the colouring of ebony.

"Clarita must already be impatient," thought worried Millita, as she hurried her way, but she was not reckless because she always took precautions before crossing the street, seeing one side or the other if a car came, since some drivers from La Paz (not to say most) were characterized by driving very recklessly, stepping on the accelerator even though they saw that a stone's throw away there was a traffic jam, something common in the highest city in the world.

"Poor Mondongito, he must have crossed the street with more attention," Millita thought sadly when she remembered her thick-bellied old friend who, distracted by pigeons, had the bad habit of crossing the street just as a bus approached, which is a public vehicle with a larger capacity than a minibus. "Silly pigeons, they are like mice, a nuisance. I don't understand why humans feed them in the squares, don't they see that they transmit diseases like mice?"

Once it was verified that no cars were coming for the moment, Millita hurriedly crossed the street, but she still gave herself a fright when behind the entrance of a store a Pekingese dog barked at her with fury, who, not being able to go through the entrance fence, tried to sneak his small snout head through the thin fences.

"WUAU, WUAU, don't come near dirty cat. Don't come near or I'll bite you! WUAU, WUAU, WUAU."

"Stop barking, you little dog! Besides, who wants to go near such a dirty shop? Sure your owners are pigs."

"Don't insult my owners! My mistress is very clean! WUAU, WUAU, WUAU."

"I don't know if your mistress is clean or not, but at least she should wash you, especially your mouth with soap."

"WUAU, WUAU, WUAU."

"Oink, oink, oink." Milita mocked, trying to sound as good as possible to a pig.

As in these occasions when a dog has a cat in front of him and cannot reach him, the dog barked stubbornly, while the cat did the same thing that any of her species would do in this type of situations: she groomed herself showing supreme indifference to the dog. In short, a struggle of wills of the two favorite domestic animals.

The mental set did not have a winner since the owner of the Pekingese, alerted to the incessant barking of his lapdog, was rushing to her store, carried in her hands a broom because the barking was different from those that used to give her pet when an occasional customer approached.

"What's the matter, Lady? Is he a thief?" Shouted the woman to her pet, calling him "Lady" even though he was a male. "Who is there? It's just a cat, SHU, SHU, get out filthy cat, I'll throw you out with water! Where's the bucket?" said the woman, looking for the little bucket, reserved for bucketing every time a dog pissed near the entrance to her shop.

Millita, seeing the woman with the broom, didn't wait to hear how this angry saleswoman mentioned the liquid element and began to run along the sidewalk.

"Yes, keep running, they're going to bathe you in cold water!" The Pekingese shouted at a distance, telling her this and other things that Millita, despite listening to them with her fine cat ears, did not pay any attention to them, she had to hurry.

"That damned little lapdog wasted a lot of my time," she thought between angry and worried. "Poor Clarita, the poor thing must feel lonely. Don't worry, I'm coming!"

After a few hasty laps in which she had to stretch her legs more than necessary and was almost run over by a guy without a helmet riding a quite noisy motorcycle, she could see the vicinity of St. Peter's Square.

"Clarita, I'm here! Don't worry, we're going to work!" The kitten was already mumbling with a lighter heart when she saw herself in the vicinity of the church atrium, but something strange was happening.

There were a lot of people, at first Millita thought they were the usual customers who bought the old lady with the white apron, a lot of empanadas, full of delicious melted cheese and still hot, to serve as an accompaniment to a breakfast made up of steaming coffee or in these particular cases, very burning api.

"No, it is not possible, humans buy these empanadas in the other corner, not here", thought Millita intrigued, when she saw that the passers-by dressed all in the same way: green suits with black boots. They were policemen, a lot of policemen.

Millita didn't think this was good at all.

As the kitten approached, she saw something that caused the blood in her veins to freeze.

A policeman grabbed her friend Clara by the wrist, trying to drag her out of the iron doorway of the church.

"No, I'm telling you it wasn't me!"

"Don't lie, you brat! We caught you with your hands in the dough! What were you doing with that backpack?!"

"I didn't know it was a backpack! I thought it was a black bag for ordinary garbage! I thought there was only garbage in the bag! I just wanted to throw it in the bin because it's bad that there's rubbish at the entrance to the church!"

"Don't lie, you brat! You know you're a thief!" Said the policeman as he silenced the little girl with a strong slap in the left cheek, "You're the one who stole the presidential medal!"

CONTINUARÁ...

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