Fresh air and a ball of yarn, Butters, the tabby cat enjoyed his time atop his kitty tower. His fur was pristine and yellow-orange, vibrant and luxurious. The room was filled with toys he could paw at and objects to jump on. He couldn’t be happier.

Butters leapt from his tower to the floor and strutted across the bakery. Pawprints were left in his steps from the flour on the floor. He brushed against some indistinct, human legs to show affection. It was his way.

Into the kitchen Butters went, where a bowl of fresh milk sat, just for him. His tongue dipped into the bowl, but Butters could taste no milk.

“Butters…” a searching voice was heard. He peered up, but there was nothing but pastry lining the prep table. Again, he attempted to drink.

“Butters?” the voice was somewhat concerned, but also sounded irritated. Butters did his best to search for the source this time, but now the bakery was empty of humans.

“Butters!” this time, the voice woke him up. He was not in a bakery, but instead on the back stoop of a small home.

 

 

“Was this you?” his ‘owner’ screamed, holding up a pee-soaked shirt. Butters didn’t understand, but hadn’t been allowed in the house in months. There was no way he could have soiled the angry man’s clothes. “Of course it was. That’s why you stay out here. You’re a BAD CAT!”

The angry man tapped Butters off the stoop with his foot. “Don’t even try to get in the house!” was the last word before the man slammed the metal door loudly, surely waking the neighbors this late at night.

In the rotted backyard of the house, with a barbed-wire fence, Butters found a corner where he could at least have some shelter with discarded wood and beer cans. He looked at his fur, which he dreamt was so clean, but saw missing and muddy patches only.

 

 

Through the rubble he huddled beneath, Butters viewed a sky vivid with all the universe. It looked like a reflection to him. A constellation stuck out and drew his attention. The stars formed a shape he knew. Pointed ears and fur patterns convinced Butters that he was looking at a cat, much like himself.

Butters didn’t know that the stars were there looking back at him. Cosmic powers had viewed the plight of the kitty and his mistreatment. The ancient being above became engrossed with compassion and empathy. It would come to Butters’ aid.

Sleep was disrupted by the metal door slamming against the outside wall of the house. Butters cowered within the rubble, hoping to avoid his abuser.

“Butters?.... Butters??....Butters!!”

 

 

Cans and wood exploded outward from a corner of the yard. Butters no longer had an owner. The angry man was the one who would cower from that moment on. A giant beast of a bipedal tabby cat approached the stoop, cracking his knuckles, ready to get to business, as the man had no confusion about who was peeing in his pants.

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.