Aire fresco y un ovillo de lana, Butters, el gato atigrado, disfrutó de su tiempo en lo alto de su torre para gatos. Su pelaje era prístino y de color amarillo anaranjado, vibrante y lujoso. La habitación estaba llena de juguetes que podía tocar y objetos sobre los que saltar. No podría estar más feliz.

Butters saltó de su torre al suelo y se pavoneó por la panadería. En sus pasos quedaron huellas de la harina en el suelo. Rozó unas piernas humanas confusas para mostrar afecto. Era su manera.

Butters fue a la cocina, donde había un cuenco de leche fresca, solo para él. Su lengua se sumergió en el cuenco, pero Butters no pudo saborear la leche.

“Butters…” se escuchó una voz inquisitiva. Miró hacia arriba, pero no había nada más que pasteles en la mesa de preparación. Nuevamente intentó beber.

“¿Mantequillas?” La voz estaba algo preocupada, pero también sonaba irritada. Butters hizo todo lo posible para buscar la fuente esta vez, pero ahora la panadería estaba vacía de humanos.

“¡Mantequillas!” Esta vez, la voz lo despertó. No estaba en una panadería, sino en el porche trasero de una pequeña casa.

“¿Eras tú?” gritó su 'dueño', sosteniendo una camisa empapada de orina. Butters no entendía, pero hacía meses que no le permitían entrar a la casa. No había manera de que hubiera ensuciado la ropa del hombre enojado. “Por supuesto que lo fue. Por eso te quedas aquí. ¡Eres un MAL GATO!

El hombre enojado golpeó a Butters con el pie. "¡Ni siquiera intentes entrar a la casa!" Fue la última palabra antes de que el hombre cerrara la puerta de metal con fuerza, seguramente despertando a los vecinos a esta hora de la noche.

En el podrido patio trasero de la casa, con una cerca de alambre de púas, Butters encontró un rincón donde al menos podría tener un refugio con madera desechada y latas de cerveza. Miró su pelaje, que soñó que estaba muy limpio, pero sólo vio parches faltantes y embarrados.

A través de los escombros bajo los cuales se acurrucaba, Butters vio un cielo vívido con todo el universo. Le parecía un reflejo. Una constelación sobresalió y llamó su atención. Las estrellas formaron una forma que él conocía. Las orejas puntiagudas y los patrones de pelaje convencieron a Butters de que estaba mirando a un gato, muy parecido a él.

Butters no sabía que las estrellas estaban allí mirándolo. Los poderes cósmicos habían visto la difícil situación del gatito y su maltrato. El antiguo ser de arriba quedó absorto en la compasión y la empatía. Vendría en ayuda de Butters.

El sueño fue interrumpido por el portazo de la puerta metálica contra la pared exterior de la casa. Butters se escondió entre los escombros, con la esperanza de evitar a su abusador.

“¿Mantequillas?.... ¿Mantequillas??.... ¡¡Mantequillas!!”

Latas y madera explotaron desde un rincón del patio. Butters ya no tenía dueño. El hombre enojado fue quien se acobardaría a partir de ese momento. Una bestia gigante, un gato atigrado bípedo, se acercó al porche, haciendo crujir los nudillos, listo para empezar a trabajar, ya que el hombre no tenía ninguna duda sobre quién estaba orinando en sus pantalones.

Bianca closed up the bakery later than usual, after a low traffic day. She cleaned the counters and the floors thoroughly, then packed up whatever leftovers she had. It was getting more and more difficult to keep the shop as her landlord raised the rent. People were going to the big grocery stores, like HungryWay for their baked goods. Thankfully, her large group of loyal daily customers would never choose to go elsewhere.

As she went to lock the door, she watched the beloved bakery cat, Butters, run into the alleyway through his cat door. Curious, she thought, so she walked around the corner to see what he was doing. He was often off on his own out of sight, but she’d never seen him leave the shop that late.

Butters paced in circles in the alleyway as if looking for a spot to sleep. He jumped onto the dumpster and sniffed the open side. With a disgusted cough, he tumbled off the top and fell onto the floor theatrically.

“Butters!!” Bianca shouted at the briefly knocked out cat, dropping everything to check on him. She knelt over him and felt his little cat chest to make sure he was breathing. He was truly just being dramatic, but she couldn’t tell. “Butters, Butters!!” She shouted a couple more times and at the final call, she was blasted out of the alleyway and into the street.

Though confused, Bianca had enough sense to see a car quickly approaching. She raised a hand and blasted buttercream towards the street to propel herself back at the bakery. With a gentle landing, she peered into the alley again to sort out what happened. Butters was gone.

Bianca ran back into the shop and into the back room, now convinced someone attacked her and stole Butters. She spun around and adorned the full BakeSale getup. From the cakes in the cooler she was inspired to wear a lemon loaf instead of her traditional cake mask, she felt it was more fitting to search for her yellow cat in his own color.

Out the back door of the shop, BakeSale flew through the air, covering the ground behind her in delicious icing. She followed the alley a few blocks and then looked around when she saw a more crowded street. This late at night, not many people were out, so she figured it would be easy to spot someone smuggling a cat.

Across the street, behind a seafood restaurant, she saw a large shadow being cast. She flew down quickly, feeling that this was the culprit.

“AHA!” BakeSale shouted, producing cream-filled croissants, which she launched at the giant’s back. Each small pastry knocked the yellow giant forward a little. It turned and BakeSale saw its face covered in tuna scraps. The pastries embedded in its back exploded and the cream went everywhere, though the giant didn’t react.

BakeSale threw more and more pastries, but the giant covered in fish just opened its mouth wide and enjoyed the snacks. She grew furious and decided to switch up her attack. She summoned dough and worked it in her hands for a moment to produce a dough-boy. It stood on the ground and grew from powerful yeast that BakeSale imbued within it.

The yellow giant wiped the fish scraps into its mouth and stood, upset that no more pastries were flying at it. BakeSale squinted at the giant and recognized the face of the beast. 

“Butters?!” She questioned with maximum confusion.

Butters looked at BakeSale, sniffed, and knew who she was. He shrunk back into cat form and walked between the legs of the giant dough-boy into her arms. Dough-boy fell apart, its mission over before it began.

“Buddy, I never knew.”

“Meow.”

The two returned to the bakery and Bianca spoke to him about all of her heroics. She fed him pastries as the sun came up and prepped to reopen the bakery.

Her first customer wore sunglasses and a mask, a first timer for sure. Bianca couldn’t stop looking at his midsection, which seemed to be an odd shape.

“Excuse me, miss. I’ll take a box of assorted pastries.” he looked up from the display case for the first time to see the baker’s face. “Do I… know you from somewhere?” He asked, almost seeming to get emotional.

Bianca was worried that the man recognized BakeSale and worried for her secret identity. She hid her face with a baking sheet and ran to the back room. “We’re all out of pastries, sir.”

The man shrugged, looking at the abundance of sweets before him. Butters rubbed against the man’s leg and received a loving pet on the back. 

“Uhh, I’ll come back then.” he said as he left the store.

“Please don’t.” Bianca whispered behind the wall, though he was already outside. She couldn’t shake the strange feeling she had. She recognized him too.

Butters dragged a sack of flour to the corner of a table. He scratched it open and then stood right where it was piling up on the floor, waiting for the right moment for it to gather enough below him and then allowed himself to be buried in it with only his head sticking out. This was the most comfortable way for him to sleep, even if Bianca didn’t appreciate the lost flour.

As he closed his eyes, Butters watched the starry ball of yarn roll right into the bakery, passing through the wall. His eyelids went flat at the timing. He stood in a swift, decisive motion and leaned to each side. Flour poured off of his back, some of it forming little puffs and clouds that rolled through the bakery.

Butters approached the yarn and as usual, it began to roll away. He didn’t think much of it, or of anything for that matter, but were he not so nimble, the speed of the yarn would make it very easy to lose track of. He had no trouble. It did seem to wait on occasion, when it knew Butters was falling behind at all. It did so just outside of the bakery, awaiting the little cat to come through the kitty door.

Butters gingerly followed the yarn into the alley and over fences down to the next street. He was entranced by the yarn. It unraveled as it rolled, the thread left behind was only ethereal and faded quickly. A few blocks down, the yarn took a vertical turn. It climbed the wall of an apartment building.

Failing to climb the bricks or some pipes, ultimately, Butters needed to be able to reach the retracted fire escape ladder if he were to scale the building. He lost sight of the yarn at a window many stories up, watching the distant thread sparkle and wane. If he let it go without him, he knew he’d lose his opportunity, so he hastened his efforts.

With closed eyes, in his mind, Butters heard the voice of the bad man. “Butters! Butters! Butters!”

In a snap, little kitty Butters transformed into big boi Butters. A puff of flour that didn’t shake off earlier expanded outward in his shape and then dissipated. He leapt up to the fire escape a few levels up, just below where he saw the yarn enter the building. Even at his enormous size, he was gentle enough and fleet-footed enough to maintain stealthy upon the old and precarious fire escape.

Through the apartment window, Butters watched the yarn enter a bedroom. Luckily, the residents left the large, double balcony doors unlocked. He pawed at the handles a few times until they opened. On all fours, he squeezed through the opening and strutted softly through the living room as if he wasn’t a behemoth of a cat.

Butters sped up as he heard muffled whimpering through the door. He knocked down the bedroom door and found the sound was coming from the bed on the opposite wall. The astral yarn wrapped around the person laying there and then vanished.

Butters’ quickly stomped towards the bed. A pillow covered the entire top half of the mattress. He realized that it was being forced down onto the person by some invisible entity. He extended his claws and dug them deep into the pillow. A hiss came up from the bed. Butters yanked hard and launched the pillow across the room. The man beneath gasped for air so violently that he didn’t even notice Butters for a while.

The big cat stood in the room, making certain the man fully recovered. When he seemed okay, Butters left the room, ignoring a slew of questions from the rescued man. He noticed the pillow was gone from the entire apartment. Whilst stepping out from the apartment, he recalled the man having two regular sized pillows that were also not white like the large one he removed.

From the fire escape Butters jumped, falling all the way to the floor and landing on all fours as a precious little kitty. He strolled down the alleys to return to the bakery, where Bianca was likely having a fit and cleaning up his flour, wondering why he doesn’t just sleep in the many cat beds she bought for him. Butters would never accept charity.