Sperantia crouched low to the ground, her lamplike eyes gleaming through the darkness. She remained perfectly still and focused, silent in the night, and kept her unwavering stare trained on the undergrowth in front of the house. A minute passed. Two minutes. Sperantia knew no impatience: she was a cat, one of the most successful hunting species of all time. One in three domestic cats make two kills per week, and of those 70% are not even eaten afterwards. The cat’s prowess at killing is so refined that it can afford the luxury of hunting for sport.
The bushes rustled. Sperantia pounced.
The wormlike tail slipped a hair’s breadth from her paws and vanished through a tiny hole beneath the foundations of the house, through which she could not possibly hope to follow. She scratched in frustration at the gap and pressed her ear against the wall, listening. The sounds of scrabbling were retreating as the mouse moved further and further into safety. Sperantia scratched at the hole again and grinned wolfishly when the par-rotten wood crumbled away under her strong paws, swiftly creating a gap large enough for a skinny oriental. She wriggled through into total darkness and crawled through the airtight space, following her ears as her panicking prey went deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
Presently, the scrabbling sounds vanished; the mouse must have found a way out and into the house. Sperantia followed her nose to a wider tunnel, which proved to be an air vent once she found the grill in the wall. The mouse must have slipped through. She rammed her shoulder roughly against it, jarring it loose; a second ram caused it to clatter onto the wooden floor. It was a loud sound in a quiet house. She heard a terrified scramble and didn’t so much as pause before charging after the unfortunate creature, up a flight of stairs and into a dark bedroom.
It was the early hours of the morning: the house’s occupants had been asleep for a while. Caught up in the chase, Sperantia neither noticed this nor cared. She shot through the ajar door with such speed that it flew wide open with a loud bang, and chased the mouse over to a large, wooden wardrobe. She crouched down on her belly in front of it and pushed her paw underneath, hoping to be able to scoop the creature out, but it was too far in and she was too large to get at it. It was while she was thus that the light flicked on, forcing her to blink rapidly to adjust to the sudden retreat of darkness.
Sperantia
la soledad es un tipo de veneno
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